Heart-stopping drama
Menno Kehler seemed invincible, as evidenced by the title of his daughter Leigh-Anne's latest production at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival.
'You know what the first line is? 'My father's heart exploded in the surgeon's hands,'' the playwright- performer says.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Leigh-Anne Kehler's latest show is a deeply personal story about medical scares and close conversations with death.
That's only one harrowing medical episode recounted by Kehler in The Man Who Couldn't Die, a solo performance that marks the Neubergthal-raised artist's first original fringe play since 2015.
A veteran of 17 festivals whose previous shows include the well-received Fire Women, Die Shakespeare Die and the FemMennonite series, Kehler says the story of her father's artful, stubborn evasion of death, which foretold her own medical challenges, simply wouldn't leave her alone.
The new performance, which runs to July 27 at Venue 9 (Planetarium Auditorium), originated in 2013, when the artistic director of a storytelling festival in Toronto asked Kehler if she had anything she could perform in hospitals centred on the topic of death, dying and the emerging concept of MAID (medical assistance in dying).
The result was a show, performed with and for medical practitioners, called The Final Hour. An invitation to perform at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa soon followed, as did a personal experience that added new layers to what already felt like a finished story inspired by her father's time in palliative care.
'I had the first symptoms of what would eventually (be diagnosed) as my father's illness,' she says about a rare brainstem disorder that can lead to bouts of acute head pain, seizures and even paralysis.
Doubled vision, dizziness and general unsteadiness gave way to such severe pain that Kehler nearly cancelled her Ottawa show.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Winnipeg storyteller and playwright Leigh-Anne Kehler returnst to the Fringe Festival with The Man Who Couldn't Die, which blends bittersweet comedy with painful observations on loss and memory.
'After that performance, one of the matriarchs of our storytelling community told me the show was beautiful to watch and listen to, but that something was missing, and that she knew I was going to find it, and the thing that was missing was that I had to go through years and years of pain and struggle,' Kehler says.
'I won't get into it much right now, but I died and I chose to fight my way back to this body.'
The Man Who Couldn't Die is for Kehler 'a culmination of 12 years of lived experience.'
'It's the story that won't leave me alone because I live it every day, but I also want to share it very deeply.'
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Despite the heaviness of the stories recounted, Kehler says the show is flecked with humour and warm memories of her upbringing, drinking cherry Coke through a licorice straw and listening to her father's inappropriate jokes and epic stories as recounted to a captive audience of rural Manitoban coffeeshop hoppers.
'My dad was usually the MC, always a storyteller. At an event celebrating the centennial of our village, he told a very funny story about his teacher at the one-bedroom schoolhouse and he didn't know she was in the audience, in her 90s. After he was done, she slowly made her way up to the stage with a stick in her hand and said, 'Menno, I should have done this to you years ago,' and she whacked his butt,' Kehler says.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Leigh-Anne Kehler's latest show is a deeply personal story about medical scares and close conversations with death.
'My dad just went for it. He was such a great comedian.'
The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival runs to Sunday. Tickets and information available at winnipegfringe.com.
ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca
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Ben WaldmanReporter
Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben.
Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
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