Emokhare Paul Anthony
Daily Herald
“A Man Walks into a Bar” producer Adreanna Gareau says Prince Albert audiences will get their moneys worth when the performance opened on April 24 at the Spice Trail and continues from April 25-26 and May 1-3.
Gareau said the two character play focuses on a woman telling a joke to a man, but the perspectives start to change as the perspectives of the people in the joke and the people telling the joke begin to merge.
“Throughout the play they’re jumping from the telling of the joke to a little audience, to the world of Steve and Jenny in the bar, and as we go along, the lines start to become kind of blurred,” Gareau said in an interview. “Is this a man and woman telling a joke or is this Steve and Jenny in the bar? Then we get to a point where it doesn’t really matter, because it’s just about the content of what they’re talking about, which I think will be really relatable for audiences.”
This play has been a longtime coming. Gareau wanted to produce it years ago, but COVID and other factors got in the way. Finally, she decided to just go for it.
“It came to the point I felt, well, if we’re going to do this show, then I guess I’m producing it. I’m the kind of person where, if I want to do something, let’s find a way to do it. Why tell ourselves we can’t?”
Gareau will play the dual-role of Woman/Jenny Dave Lokinger slots in as Man/Steve. Lokinger has performed in The Full Monty, which Gareau directed. His wife Stephanie also performed in one of Gareau’s plays, and suggested Dave give ‘A Man Walks into a Bar” a shot.
Lokinger said Man and Steve have some differences, which has made acting a challenge.
“Man, he likes to mansplain things and he doesn’t really think much of woman, so you’ve got that as a base of what’s going on, and then you’ve got Steve who basically, I think, is just a really nice guy who gets mixed signals as sometimes young men do,” Lokinger said.
“My perception is that Man’s voice is watching this guy maybe being laughed at, and he gets very offended by that, so that kind of amps up what happens toward the end of the show.”
This show will be performed at the Spice Trail, a familiar spot for Gareau’s other labour of love, Off the Cuff Improv.
She said the script reads as if the characters are at a comedy club or a lounge, and the Spice Trail provides just the right atmosphere.
“It’s that sense of being immersed in the show,” she explained. “We’re not going to be interacting with the audience in character like we do with our murder mysteries and medieval feasts and stuff like that, but the audience is very much in our space and we’re in theirs.”
At its root, Gareau said the play is about communication, or a lack of it. She described her character as someone who is trying to talk about what’s bothering her, and doing it in the form of a joke because it’s more palatable.
“She doesn’t know, really, how to talk about it,” Gareau said.
“There’s this undercurrent of misunderstanding, which I think is common in everyday life, and how sometimes our intentions are misinterpreted or misunderstood.”
Each show will have a talk back after each show facilitated by director Cara Stelmaschuk. Lokinger said he hopes people will come out and enjoy the show.
“Take a chance and enjoy some live theatre in a really cool venue, and come with an open mind,” he said.
Tickets for ‘A Man Walks into a Bar” are $25. For more information, visit the Upcoming Events section of www.otcimprov.ca.
–with files from Michael Oleksyn/Daily Herald
