Homebody Kabul

My friend, Gregory Myers (which is his stage name, which feels very celebrity since only his real friends know his "real" name) is in a play, Homebody Kabul (by Tony Kushner, who wrote Angels in America). Greg's also been in Honey (you know, with Jessica Alba) and The Gospel of John (which is a three-hour epic), but he didn't have any lines in either so I was really excited to see him in live theatre, where he had not one, but two parts. For his role as an Afghani soldier he had to grow a beard. He's also a supply teacher for grade school kids, and apparently there's a new song going around the playground:

"Mr. Myers is so weeeeeeiiiirrd, Mr. Myers has a beeeeeaaaaard."

I think the beard is awesome, but I do recall, when I was younger, that teachers who did anything differently than say MY parents WERE weird. Because I saw my parents everyday. They were the authority on being an adult, so I felt that they were the right way, and anything else was just, well, weird.

For example, my seventh grade art teacher had very, VERY large breasts. She was a large woman, however, so they sort of went with her body, but they were so large that she would rest her arms ON TOP of her breasts when she was speaking. This, to me, was weird, if only because my own mother was an A cup, which was more like a small hiccup in the wall (I can say this as an inheritee of the A cup), rather than a full-blown ledge and so I didn't understand it. It was like an entirely different body part I wasn't familiar with. By comparison, my seventh grade georgraphy teacher wore Birkenstocks and socks, even in winter. There's a very good chance, looking back, that he needed orthotics and this was the most comfortable footwear for him, but of course, I didn't know that and since my own father wore closed-toe shoes to work everyday year-round, the Birks were weird. (Birks and socks would later become the status symbol of being a rower in high school, something I joined to be around the hot guys who rowed only to discover that with daily 5 am practises in freezing temperatures, there was no hope of looking cute for the hot rower guys -- who somehow managed to look just as hot at 5 am as they did once they were washed and combed and in their school ties later in the day. I, on the other hand, looked a little like Rainbow Brite, wearing as many clothes as I possibly could, with matted hair and no makeup. Needless to say I was boyfriendless for most of high school).

So back to the play. I tend to see a lot of theatre because I like it and also so that I can write about it for Sweetspot. A lot of the time, I would've never seen the play, simply because I'd never heard about it. There are just so many small-budget, short-run plays that don't have budgets to advertise and rely on word of mouth publicity. The unfortunate part is that by the time someone sees the play and tells their friends there's maybe a few nights left of the performance, and sometimes, I don't tell anyone about the play I've seen simply because there's nothing to say. Often, they're not very thought-provoking or interesting. And by the time I'm in a cab I'm thinking about what I'm going to do when I get home. After Homebody Kabul, the Hubs and I were walking up to a busier street to hail a cab, but we started talking about the play, and didn't stop, and walked all the way home. And we weren't just talking about Greg's beard.

There are only a week's worth of performances left of Homebody Kabul, but if you like theatre, I really recommend seeing the play. Not just because it's at the Berkeley Street Theatre, which is just one of the most adorable theatres in the city. And not just because Fiona Reid, who has an Order of Canada, has a one-hour monologue at the start of the play that is so captivating you'll fall in love with her. Or because Greg has a super cool beard.