Métis comedian mines a rift between cultures
Métis Mutt
K (out of 4) Written and performed by Sheldon Elter. Directed by Ron Jenkins. Until Feb. 5 at Aki Studio Theatre, 585 Dundas St. E. NativeEarth.ca or 416-531-1402 Sheldon Elter’s solo show Métis Mutt begins with a cringe — the former standup comedian enters a ring of stones and sticks with a microphone in hand, as the projection behind him fades into a red-brick backdrop, and his routine starts.
“My name is Sheldon Elter and I’ll be your native comedian for the night.”
A string of one-liners follows, each punchline involving negative racial stereotypes.
The fact that they get laughs at all is enough to make your skin crawl, as they get more offensive and Elter reveals more of his anger underneath.
As he reveals in this semi-autobiographical show, Elter’s entertainment career began by touring smalltown Alberta as a comedian as part of an act with a hypnotist.
That hypnotist, presumably white, encouraged Elter to lean into his indigenous ancestry as the defining feature of his act, resulting in bits like the ghastly “Indian12 Days of Christmas” that swaps the traditional Christmas gifts with “five welfare checks,” and instead of given by a true love they’re gifts from the government.
Elter says his Métis status, with both indigenous and white heritage, puts him in between cultures, and there’s an interesting tension in Métis Mutt that explores when those two worlds collide. For example, in his first foray into comedy.
At another point, Elter tells how a mysterious childhood illness causing seizures perplexed several doctors at an Edmonton hospital, but disappeared after he saw a medicine man with his stepfather.
In this way, Métis Mutt brings up issues from tokenism in pop culture to the assumed superiority of West- ern customs over ancient ones.
By the end of the show, through the telling of his story, Elter seems to have reconciled the ways in which he has played a part in propelling the negative stereotypes of First Nations and Métis people, as well as the harmful effects of colonialism on his family and himself.
Capably performed by Elter and directed by Ron Jenkins, Métis Mutt loses its impact when it comes to telling Elter’s family life, re-enacting stories of domestic abuse, a distraught relationship with his father, and a history with drugs and alcohol.
The material is compelling, of course, but oddly broken up and told out of order so that the audience often knows the ending of a story before the middle is told. Other interludes are cut off so short that they have no room to impact Elter’s narrative.
And while he’s an evocative storyteller, Elter is less comfortable jumping from character to character, sometimes muddying the players and the action and slowing the pace.
Elter premiered the show in 2002, when it won two Sterling Awards (the Dora Awards for Edmonton), which makes it intentional programming at Native Earth Performing Arts in 2017, the year of Canada’s sesquicentennial.
Keeping indigenous stories front and centre throughout the year will be important as we celebrate and criticize what Confederation means to all Canadians.