On The Road

I've been out on the road now for just over a week.

I flew to Winnipeg, then drove up to Gimli, Manitoba to visit my Mom and Dad and do three shows there. Tomorrow I have a show in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, then I'm back to Winnipeg to showcase at a booking conference and run a workshop on Marketing Theatre at the same conference.

This was the second time I've done a series of shows in Gimli, and for the same reason. The first time was with "The Truth About Daughters", and I went to Gimli because that's where my Mom and Dad live and I thought they'd like to see what I do for a living. Since Mom wouldn't fly anywhere else I do shows - she hates to leave her little town - I gave up and arranged to do the shows at the tiny, charming converted church that is now called A-Spire (oh, come on, you get it - it's a church, there's a spire?) Theatre. Jammed to the rafters, it holds 90 people. And this past weekend I did "The Truth About Love and/or Marriage" there.

The shows went well. Mom is slowly coming around to the realization that I'm not "out of work" - that this is, in fact, "what I do". I'm sure she still kinda thinks that it's cute that her boy "has gotten up a little show" and wonders when I'll get a real job with a pension and benefits and such, but ... well, that's Mom, and no amount of postcards from tour stops in Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, England, The U.S., or anywhere else could reassure her.

But she does like being out there in the audience when I'm onstage. At the end of the show they attended, I introduced Mom and Dad as they sat in the audience. "The Truth About Love and/or Marriage" is primarily a comedy, but at its heart it's a show about the power of love. I introduced them as "... the people who taught me how to laugh ... and how to love."

Except it came out as " ... and how to lo(gurgle)." I choked up. I never choke up, at least not onstage. Offstage, sure, I can mist up at the drop of a hankie. But onstage? Never. Until that moment.

I guess if you have to choke ... that's as good a time as any.

Comments

[Craig Willson]

Except it came out as " ... and how to lo(gurgle)." I choked up.

Treasure that moment Nils, it will be with you until the end of your days.

[Cranky Chick]

Parents have a way of getting to you, don't they? My mom is my best friend, and the one and only reason I'm the kind of decent person I am today. I often get teary-eyed thinking about all she sacrificed for me. Did I ever mention to you that I was painfully shy as a child? Neurotically, unhealthily, clinically, shy?? It's only for the patience of my mother and her undying, unconditional love, that I am here, uninstitutionalized, untethered, and free to inflict myself on the world around me. :)