PROGRAM NOTES MARY WALSH IN DANCING WITH RAGE Written & Performed by Mary Walsh
Co -Directed by Andy Jones & Mary Walsh
Wednesday, October 2, 2013 @ 8PM Centre In The Square, Kitchener
THE CREATIVE TEAM
Mary Walsh Hailing from St. John’s, NL, Mary Walsh was an original member of the infamous CODCO sketch comedy series, which ran on CBC Television from 1987 to 1992. In 1992, she began to work with Rick Mercer, creating and starring in the highly acclaimed series This Hour Has 22 Minutes, where Mary's Warrior Princess character Marg Delahunty became famous for ambushing politicians and submitting them to satirical interviews. In 2011 she reprised the role of Marg Delahunty, conducting the now infamous ambush interview of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford at his home. Mary Walsh is the recipient of 25 Gemini awards, the Order of Canada award and in 2012 she received a Governor General's Performing Arts Awards for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.
Andy Jones Andy Jones has been a professional writer, actor and director for over thirty years. He has written five critically acclaimed one-man comedy shows, which have toured extensively across Canada, the UK, and Ireland. Andy was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland where he co-founded the Resource Centre for the Arts at the L.S.P.U. Hall, co-writing, acting in, and directing many original productions. He is well known in Canada as one of the groundbreaking Newfoundland comedy troupe CODCO, in both its theatrical and television incarnations. Andy’s numerous awards include two Gemini awards, five Gemini nominations, two Emmy nominations, two Genie nominations, election to the Newfoundland Arts Council Hall of Honour, The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council’s Award of Excellence, and the ACTRA Award of Excellence for Lifetime Achievement.
Set Design …………………………… Stephen Osler Lighting Design ……………………….. Boo Noseworthy Costume Design ………………………. Marie Sharpe Sound Design ………………………….. George Robertson Stage Manager ……………………….. Victor Tilley Research & Props …………………… Kristen Joy Screen Sewing …...... Fionnuala McMahon Set Builder ……………………………….. Marty Sexton Set Painting ……………………………… Derek Holmes Video Producer ………………………… Paul Pope Camera & Editing …………………….. Heavyweather, Adam Penney & Justin Davis Video Editing ……………………………. Chris Darlington Video AD ………………………………… Shannon Hawes Video Movement Consultant …... Anne Troake Music Video Composer …………… Alan Doyle Video Rigging …………………………… Josh Munden Video Wardrobe ………………………. Marie Sharpe Video Hair & Makeup ……………….. Victoria Noseworthy QLab Video Programmers …………. Flora Planchat & Pat Dempsey Video Green Screen Set Up ……….. Pat Dempsey & Robert Gautier Video Casting …………………………… Maggie Keiley Mrs. Enid ………………………………….. Cathy Jones Other Mrs ………………………………… Janet Cull Young Girls ………………………………. Olivia Parsons & Catherine Crowe Bert Peter …………………………………. Halley Photograph Manipulation ………… Gary Taylor & John Dencher
Originally Produced by Theatre Passe Muraille & RCA Theatre Company.
Originally Directed & Dramaturged by Karen Carpenter
Mary Walsh is represented by Michael Oscars – Oscar, Abrams, Zimel & Associates
DANCING WITH RAGE is represented by Tammy Fox – The Collection Agency Entertainment.
STAR OF CBC-TV’S “THIS HOUR HAS 22 MINUTES” BRINGS HER ONE-WOMAN SHOW TO TOWN
By Dennis Kucherawy
Believe it or not, some people have never heard of actor/comedian Mary Walsh’s most famous character Marg Delahunty.
Here’s how you can recognize her. She’s easy to spot if you google the famous viral news clip in which the “sword-yielding princess warrior” ambushed Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on his driveway.
She’s the one in charge. He’s the one skedaddling back inside.
Canada’s beloved M&Ms … Mary and Marg (red leather armor, cone-shaped bra and all) … are on their way to save the day again with their most potent weapon—laughter. Mary Walsh will present her acclaimed one-woman show “Dancing With Rage” at The Centre for a one night performance on Wednesday, October 2 at 8PM. This is the latest stop on her current cross-Canada tour. “Garrulous, raunchy, hilarious, poignant” are a just a few ways to describe this comedian/actress’ talent for making them roar and cry.
Her multi-media show combines live performance with film, video and projection to depict Marg Delahunty’s quest to find her love child she gave up after she got pregnant at Expo ’67. Like Mary herself, Marg suffers from macular degeneration, a visual impairment. She is determined to see her long-lost baby before she goes blind completely. Back in 1967, Marg’s mother insisted she put up the child for adoption. Marg does not know whatever became of it.
Along the way, we meet many of Mary plays many of her characters from her years with CBC’s “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” and CODCO as Mary changes her makeup and costumes before our eyes. They include Dakey Dunn, a macho, sexist fool who is driving Marg across the country. (In one scene, theatre wizardry creates the illusion of Dakey driving Marg. She is playing two characters at once.)
Other characters include Connie Orton, a habitué of Joe Orton’s doughnut shop, Miss Eulalifrtata Turpin and Mom Reardon. There’s also Marg’s elderly mother and daughter who adores Oprah. The thematic relationship between mother and daughter appears when Mary reads from a fictional doorstop about a dysfunctional childhood called “The Little Girl Who Grew Up Next Door to Her Family.” The title character is said to represent Walsh’s upbringing in St. John’s as one of eight siblings. Walsh cautions against such an interpretation, saying “this is fiction. I’m not writing a memoir. This is a play.”
“Dancing With Rage” presents sources of Marg’s anger including self-pity, neglect, abuse and alcohol abuse. There’s also hilarious insanity including a video montage of Marg the Princess Warrior’s best moments, including her hilarious ambush of Mayor Ford.
Walsh is the co-director of “Dancing with Rage” with Andy Jones, her friend, CODCO mate and muse. “He had an important impact on me,” Walsh explains. “I never thought I’d be either an actor or comedian. When I met Andy, he had all this comedic Newfoundland material. But to raise it up to an art was so mind-blowing! We all kind of thought that’s what I wanted to do.”
“Dancing With Rage” is loaded with the satire and political outrage that fuelled CBC TV’s parody of the nightly news “This Hour Has 22 Minutes.” Launched in 1972, Walsh co-starred with her CODCO colleagues Rick Mercer, Cathy Jones and Greg Thomey.
Walsh’s favorite joke was Rick Mercer’s proposal for a national referendum in 2000 to force Stockwell Day, leader of the Canadian Alliance Party, to change his name to Doris Day. “It was the first time we used the Internet,” said Walsh. “The Alliance said that referendums should be held on any proposal supported by a petition signed by three percent of Canadian voters. How ludicrous was that? Law-making by write-in!
"Rick Mercer wanted to show any idiot could trigger a referendum. So he proposed a national petition for a referendum demanding Day change his first name to Doris. Millions responded. It was a good use of humor.”
Walsh believes, perhaps that all comedy is fuelled by rage. “Even slipping on a banana peel,” she told Liz Nicholls of The Edmonton Journal. “Ah, the horror, the anger, the rage… I read somewhere that all human reactions are based on fear and anger. So you twist them into a laugh.”
Maybe she’s on to something. Let me be the first to proclaim Marg Delahunty for Mayor!
Anybody want a lawn sign?