Chris Mejaki from Whistling Pine (A Dark Comedy) | Photo from the show page
Presented by Centre for Indigenous Theatre
While Whistling Pine (A Dark Comedy) does have plenty of humour, I don’t think the parenthetical descriptor is quite accurate. Chris Mejaki’s solo show is both raw and poetic, featuring a young Indigenous man named CJ in rural Ontario whose self-serving behaviour is also self-destructive. A drug dealer and user, he flounders abjectly until he eventually learns to recognize the wisdom his protective ancestors are trying to impart.
The pre-show projected backdrop is eerie and grounding. What I at first thought to be a photo slowly revealed itself to be footage of a house at dusk. Slight movement of trees in the wind are wait gradually clued me in. Headlights, the shadow of a moving figure and the reflected red tail lights of a departing car are eerie and ominous. A mundane, familiar place, where bad things can happen.
Director Ed Roy’s simple yet striking production uses these backdrop projections often yet with restraint. The freedom and openness of trees and sky is juxtaposed with the confinement of the wood panelling of a basement and cinderblock prison walls. Intruding into his terrestrial existence are awe-inducing vistas cosmic phenomena that represent the three ancestors watching over his desperate and misguided criminality.
I find Mejaki a very persuasive and endearing presence. An aspect of his rendering of CJ that I find especially appealing is the weird bafflement with which he regards his own circumstances, the haphazardness with which he fell into his drug dealing and prison. He’s not hardened or even particularly resentful, but vulnerable and persistent. He is a survivor with genuine compassion, who just keeps getting in his own way.
Without any contrived theatrics, he slips from CJ to the supporting characters. In both his writing and performance, these people and vivid and distinct. We truly get to know his family and prison-mates. The prison culture is is also well-rendered and compelling. We feel invited into that world rather than peering at it from a safe distance. In one hilarious and cringe-inducing episode, he walks us through his attempt to hide his stash of cocaine.
“I did what I needed to do to get what I want.” Confronting this truth head on and wanting to carve a more considerate and generous existence for himself, he finds the inspiration and opportunity, even within the tough, defensive instincts demanded by prison life.
Mejaki infuses the story with whimsy, though he (and CJ) remain consistently grounded. The ugly spectre of the residential school system is raised. The reference is brief, but potent, conveying his family’s internalized trauma. By the end, we get the sense that CJ has found himself and is, ultimately, going to be ok.
