by AMY BARRATT

There’s a reason they call it stand-up comedy.

“I can’t be funny sitting down,” claims deadpan comedian Derick Lengwenus. “In my experience, you don’t become funny until you stand up.”

So when Lengwenus wanted to create his one-man theatre piece

My German Father, he sat at his computer only long enough to sketch out a structure, then got up on his feet and, with Robin Henderson in the director’s chair, started improvising.

Anana Rydvald used a similar process to create her mask show, Section O. She had written a text some five years ago, but when she recently began working with director Stacey Christodoulou, they put the script aside.

“Stacey brought in a camera and basically let me play with masks again,” says Rydvald. This process allowed her to discover each character’s distinctive voice and physicality.

Both of these original, one-person shows are on the bill at the Théâtre Ste-Catherine this month. Lengwenus’s My German Father is subtitled “a comedy about a serious man.” It is indeed all about the comedian’s stern, yet humour-loving parent, and specifically, his relationship to his son.

Readers are going to want to know three things, I tell Lengwenus: Is your father aware of the show, has he seen it, and does he approve?

“The answer is yes, yes and yes,” says the son. “Doing jokes about my father does cause me a certain amount of angst, because I have immense respect for my subject. Comedy can often be misinterpreted as a slight, but I believe that imitation really is the highest form of flattery, and my father senses that too. I don’t try to denigrate his character. It really is the best case scenario. [My father] has embraced the material, and gave me encouragement to do this show.”

Anana Rydvald, who co-founded Mask On! in 1999, is back in our city after a stint performing and teaching in Denmark. Since graduating from John Abbott in 1995, she has crossed the pond a few times, often to work with Cantabile 2, an international, Denmark-based company devoted to a visual, movement-oriented theatre. Rydvald loves Montreal, a city she first came to at the age of 12 to study dance with les Grands Ballets.

“I came back hoping to meet people interested in doing the kind of work I want to do,” she says. “Meeting Stacey was a great stroke of luck.” Rydvald auditioned for and was cast in the Other Theatre’s Galapagos, directed by Christodoulou last fall at the Centaur. When she started thinking about Section O again, Rydvald knew she wanted Christodoulou to direct.

In Section O, Rydvald plays five women who are all patients in a psychiatric hospital. It was inspired by visiting a close friend who had had a breakdown and was hospitalized. “Section O” is the name of the ward.

“Mental illness is still such a taboo subject,” says Rydvald. “I’m hoping not to concentrate as much on the illness, and more on the person.”

Having seen her perform, I can attest that something magical happens when Rydvald puts on one of the often grotesque masks that she creates for herself.

“I really think masks are the perfect medium for this material. They give it a lightness, a playfulness, so that people don’t run away screaming. It allows you to laugh at the cruelty of the world.”

MY GERMAN FATHER RUNS MARCH 1–4 AND 8–11, $12–$17. SECTION O PREVIEWS MARCH 14, RUNS MARCH 15–25 (EXCEPT MONDAYS), $12–$15. BOTH PLAYS AT THÉÂTRE STE- CATHERINE (264 STE-CATHERINE W.).

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