There is a warning for Kicking Horse Cultures next LIVE Kicks performance: This play is for anyone who is going to be a dad, is a dad, or has a dad.
Perhaps that sums up the tone and subject matter of Lucas Meyers’ one-person play Hello Baby!: An Instructional Lecture by a First-Time, Semi-Competent Father.
It’s funny. It’s helpful. And most importantly, it reaches out to the audience on a human level — whether you’re an expectant father, a grandmother or someone who thinks having kids is a bogus idea.
Meyers has two young children and said that Hello Baby! is based loosely, and at times not so loosely, on his own experiences of having a baby.
His play, he says, will answer the burning questions that arise when a self-involved man-child becomes a new father such as: “Is life as you know it truly over?” And “Can you function on two hours sleep?” And “Is it really possible to become so obsessed with bowel movements and nipples that you make up little nicknames for them? Like ‘Jerome’?”
“In truth, I did find the information in our pregnancy process, geared, and rightfully so, at the expectant mother. I mostly got the message of…be supportive”, said Meyers. “ Men tend to be stoic and don’t want to admit the truth, and that’s that it can really be a terrifying process.”
Meyers, then, is interested in exploring and expressing what happens on the male side of things when families decide to make the leap from a unit of two to a gaggle of three.
And best of all? It’s funny. Meyers says he likes to do comedy that’s on a “human level”; comedy that deals with the truth of a situation and reaches to a wide audience.
“The show highlights some of the most hilarious situations in the whole process,” said Meyers. “There’s prenatal class where everyone involved looks like a deer in headlights, which always is comforting. There are the doctor visits. And then there’s dealing with friends and family and all their expectations.”
The lecture features optional audience participation and new tunes like Rebel Dad, Nobody Warned Me ‘Bout the Drool, and Yes Honey I’d Be More Than Happy To Get More Diapers And Make Dinner And Hand Wash All These Cloth Diapers As Soon As I Finish Giving You A Back Rub And Vacuuming The Floor Again Because You Are Hyper Paranoid About Germs, Really I Would.
Meyers studied theatre at the University of Victoria and The National Theatre School (NTS) of Canada. Since graduating from NTS he has performed in many of the major theatres across Canada as well as touring internationally to the US, England, France, Switzerland, Mexico, Singapore, New Zealand and Brunei. He has also studied physical theatre and collaborative creation with The SITI Company in New York and Boca del Lupo Theatre in Vancouver, written one-person shows, a school musical, and many songs and short plays as well as leading workshops in character development, performance awareness and site specific theatre at high schools in the Nelson area and Summerland’s Shakespeare Festival.
Meyers started creating and performing one-person shows in Victoria when he wanted to “branch out”.
“I wanted to play around with my own form of expression, to involve some of my stand-up and music.”
When Meyers started his own theatre company, PilotcoPilot in Nelson—a company that strives to “reveal the dazzle behind the mundane and bring catharsis through exposing the heart beneath the hilarity”—he was delighted to find that the West Kootenay audiences were receptive to his one-person shows.
“It’s fantastic having a company here,” said Meyers, explaining that he gets to perform shows at home and travel to even more rural areas in the Kootenays.
“People are so delighted I made the trip. I think most of the time I get bigger audiences in these little towns than I would in downtown Vancouver.”
Meyers will be performing Hello Baby! at 7:30 pm, Friday, January 21st at the Sacred Heart Parish Hall. Tickets are available at the Golden Dollar Store, the Moon River Gift Gallery and the Art Gallery of Golden.
