COMING-OF-AGE STORY MÉTIS MUTT EVOLVES
Latest incarnation of Elter’s one-man show gets some theatrical flair
With its focus on storytelling, Sheldon Elter’s Métis Mutt doesn’t require a lot of theatrical flourishes. This can be a good thing, especially when the actor shares a gym with a floor hockey game.
“They told me, ‘The entire community’s coming. That means there are no babysitters’,” he said, recalling one particular performance on a reserve.
“I said, ‘This is not a story for young children, it’s a coming-ofage story with a lot of intense content.’ ‘We don’t care. Everyone’s coming. They all want to be here. So we’re going to put the kids in the back where they’ll play floor hockey.’”
In his one-man play/monologue, Elter recounts growing up as the eldest child in a family with a violently alcoholic father.
Métis Mutt also tells the story of the adult Elter’s struggles with drugs, and his determination to carve out a creative life for himself. The piece incorporates standup comedy, original songs, storytelling and multi-character vignettes.
“It’s hard to do, because I have
to re-face my addiction issues and family violence,” he said. “But the whole point of the play is not to make people feel sorry for me, but for me to come to terms with the fact that my father was a man, that he had his own issues.”
In 2017, Métis Mutt was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award (Outstanding Touring Production) but Elter has been performing the play various incarnations of the piece since 2001.
Then, it was an eight-minute version Elter had written as a theatre student for an emerging artists festival in Edmonton. He wrote and starred in a full-length version the following year.
Before the play, Elter’s performing career had consisted mostly of standup comedy. He started off hosting an amateur night at a pool hall in Grande Prairie. His burgeoning comedy career led to touring with hypnotist Marc Savard. The Peace River-born Savard took his fellow Albertan under his wing.
“Sometimes he spoke in these bizarre clichés, but everything he said changed me to my core,” Elter said. When Elter began slipping into drug addiction following the deaths of his father and a friend, Savard intervened. Elter returned to theatre school, and to work on Métis Mutt.
The play that Elter brings to Vancouver is more theatrical than the one-man-and-a-chair version he has been taking to reserves and rural Alberta high schools.
“It had become more of a motivational speaking tool,” said Elter. “It’s hard to do your own work and talk about yourself. It becomes less of a play sometimes. It’s not even cathartic anymore. The hard part is keeping it fresh.”
When Ryan Cunningham, a former artistic director with Toronto’s Native Earth Performing Arts, asked him to mount Métis Mutt in Toronto for the first time, Elter decided that “If I’m going to redo this, it has to be refreshed. I want it to be more of a theatrical piece, and to embrace all the technical elements and things that can help elevate the story.”
Elter worked with a team that includes projection designer T. Erin Gruber, sound designer Aaron Macri, and set and lighting designer Tessa Stamp.
“We went from having 70 cues to 370, with cool lighting and projections,” Elter said.
The additional elements aid with transitions and cut down on exposition.
“People hear things, or in some cases I hear it, and I’m whisked away to the next part of the story. It’s almost like a road-trip through Alberta as my mom would pack us up and move us away, and then my father would find us and she’d take him back.
“Until we were finally free, when she decided she was strong enough and brave enough to walk away for good.”