Preview
SEALBOY: FREAK
CIRQUE DU CABARET
Mat Fraser
Presented by Stage Left Productions
Runs December 9 to 11
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Mat Fraser doesn’t claim to be politically correct and he’s definitely not for the easily offended. Fraser, one of the U.K.’s best-known disabled actors, pushes the comfort level of his audience with his upfront and no-holds-barred stage performances. For his one-man show Sealboy: Freak, which he is performing at Stage Left Productions’ fourth annual Balancing Acts disability arts festival, Fraser admits to hijacking the audience in the opening scene.
"Most audiences don’t know what will happen in the beginning. They become the freak-show audience and their modern-day PC-orientated attitudes have to go out the window," says Fraser. "I ask you to stare at my arms, as I flap them around for your fun, and invite you to indulge in the schadenfreude of my body against yours."
Fraser, London based actor, poet, musician and writer, was born with phocomelia – shortened, "seal-like" arms caused by the drug thalidomide; like many women in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Fraser’s mother took the so-called "wonder drug" for morning sickness when she was pregnant. This year, Fraser is visiting Calgary as a featured international performer at Balancing Acts, where he will perform his Cirque du Cabaret as well as Sealboy: Freak.
"My cabaret material is fast, funny, fuming, ferocious, sometimes sad, not often soulless and offensive if you’re a body-fascist motherfucker," says Fraser. The cabaret performances include rap, poetry, comedy, songs and audience participation.
He’s performing the cabaret on Thursday, December 9 at 9 p.m. Sealboy: Freak is featured on Friday, December 10 and Saturday, December 11, with both performances at 8 p.m.
The show, which Mat has performed in Britain and Australia, is a six-scene play with two short-armed characters. One is Stanley Berent, or Sealo, the Sealboy, as he was known, a historical character who began touring with American freak shows in the 1950s. Juxtaposed with Sealo is a modern character loosely based on Fraser himself.
The concept of Sealboy: Freak came to Fraser after a period of being turned down for acting jobs.
"I saw a picture of the real Sealo, the Sealboy and thought, ‘That’s my one-man play!’" he says. "It was a part no one could take away from me, a part that only I could really do justice to."
The play deals with perceptions of disabled actors and explores what was behind the mentality of the freak show. Was it all coerced and awful, asks Fraser, or did some performers actually like it? Were freak shows, in fact, actually disabled performers’ cultural-historical performance heritage?
Fraser’s own performance heritage includes two actor parents. His mother even acted with him in Britain’s Channel 4 drama Metrosexuality, where Fraser’s impairment was merely an incidental aspect of the character he played. That is the type of role he says disabled people long for. He has worked in radio and film as well as theatre and television. In September, he played the male lead in a BBC movie, Every Time You Look At Me, a contemporary love story about two disabled people. In 2000, he was a host on the TV show Freak Out – an attempt to broaden viewers’ perceptions of the disabled.
"Up to that point, all we had on TV about disabled people was PC moaning about lack of access," says Fraser. "So we made Freak Out to shock people out of this complacency and to show we like to fuck and fight and fart like everyone else."
Fraser says people often react to his performances very differently. Many people tend to be shocked by the honest, unpretentious performances of Sealboy: Freak and Cirque du Cabaret. But this is what Balancing Acts is all about – a celebration of creative self-expression by people with disabilities – and Fraser is looking forward to his Calgary gigs.
"I love international disability arts events, they nourish my soul," he says. "One learns so much of different cultures, including disability cultures. I just can’t wait to see what Canada is like."
Balancing Acts continues through Saturday, December 11. For information, call 831-0455 or go to www.stage-left.org. |
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