The other side of the mask
Second City director Melody A. Johnson seeks truth in comedy
If Joan of Arc had done comedy, she probably would have looked a lot like Melody A. Johnson: closecropped hair, dreamy smile and a misty gaze that makes you certain she’s listening to invisible voices. And she is. “I try to get inside of the heads of the characters I’m directing. I ask them what they want. Sometimes I even find out,” says the woman in charge of Second City’s latest show, We’ve Totally (probably) Got This!, which opens Aug. 28.
Then she giggles. It’s one of the happiest sounds in Canadian theatre, caressing the ear even as it reveals characters so unhinged they perch halfway between Stephen King and Steve Martin with the spirit of Elaine May hovering just overhead.
The Brantford-born Johnson has been delighting audiences for more than 20 years, but this is the season she’s really coming into her own.
Once she finishes her Second City duties, she takes a revised version of her 2010 SummerWorks hit, Miss Caledonia, on the road throughout Ontario and the Maritimes, before opening at Tarragon on Oct. 24.
When that closes, she steps into the cast of the third mounting of Adam Brazier’s hit production of Assassins, which goes to the Sondheim Festival in Winnipeg early in 2013.
Johnson plays terminally unhinged Squeaky Fromme, the Manson family member who tried to shoot President Gerald Ford, in that show.
Ask Johnson what the latest Second City revue is about and she deadpans her answer.
“Fear. Lots of characters in fear and despair. The kind you find all over the world today. Oh yes, and some duplicitous people, the kind who create false alliances.”
The world has gotten darker and so has its comedy.
“We find laughter now in different things,” Johnson says. “People doing stupid reflexive actions, deflecting fear onto others, bullying peo-
“I had to convince my family that it mattered to be in theatre. To this day, I still find myself defending comedy, improv, musical theatre to thespians who don’t understand that comedy is the other side of the mask.” MELODY A. JOHNSON SECOND CITY DIRECTOR
ple. Lots of bullying. No, that’s not funny in itself, but we have to find the humour in the bullies so they lose their power.”
Johnson says she’s become disheartened by “the lack of characters in comedy, not just at Second City, but everywhere. Improv today can become so fast and slick that it becomes nothing but a bunch of quippy talking heads.” In the latest show, “you might see costumes or even a wig or two. Oh, I’m not saying there’s Edith Prickleys all over the place,” she says, referencing the beloved leopardclad creation of Andrea Martin on television’s SCTV. “I love that and what it stood for. We need some more of that, for sure.” When the conversation turns to Miss Caledonia, based on the true story of an Ontario beauty pageant winner who set her sights on Hollywood in the1950s, another Johnson emerges: the playwright who isn’t afraid to dig deep into her own past. “I twirled a baton competitively when I was 8 years old, so when I do the show I become eight inside again for a little while,” she says of the show’s flashy gymnastics. “I think about my relationship with my own mother. “In the end, I think the show is all about work. In my family, they felt that if you grew food, at the end of the day you could see what you had done, with your bruised hands and farmer tan showing what you had done. “I had to convince my family that it mattered to be in theatre. To this day, I still find myself defending comedy, improv, musical theatre to thespians who don’t understand that comedy is the other side of the mask. “I try to find the honesty in what I do and not to be mushy. I’m always searching for the truth in the work I do and allow that to resonate.”