They can!

>> With a series of musical plays and a new CD, mentally disabled Montrealers find their voices

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

ISitting with five mentally disabled people in a Concordia classroom, conducting a round-table chat about music, movies and the challenge of performing on stage, I’m struck by the fact that these folks are as lively, personable and articulate as most rock bands or DJs I’ve interviewed. Not that outshining rock musicians in the eloquence department is that great an achievement, but it does point to the success of the Centre for the Arts in Human Development in bringing these souls out of their shells and into the spotlight.
“The main thing is to develop the human potential of people with disabilities, mainly developmental disabilities,” explains CAHD director Stephen Snow. “Especially to develop their expressive capabilities and interpersonal communication skills, because the ultimate mission is to help them integrate better into society.”
The way that the centre (scandalously, unique in Canada) achieves this is through art therapy for its clients. Before leaving, they will have sung and performed in, and in fact helped create, a musical play that gives them a platform to express the frustrations and hopes of life in their world.
The latest group can now also boast a CD, I Can!, which features fun, poppy, cleverly written show tunes taken from the three plays the centre has produced. The first was Oh! That Aladdin…, back in ’95, which actually preceded and inspired the centre’s founding. That was followed by The Winds of Oz in ’98 and And Alice Dreams… in 2000. As you might guess from the titles, these are variations on childhood classics, invested with a thoughtful maturity and lyrical complexity. Alice, for instance, recasts its protagonist as a grown-up woman working in a playing-card factory, dreaming up the gumption to pursue a singing career.
“These are adults we’re working with, not children,” explains Shelley Snow, the centre’s music therapist and the CD’s composer/producer. “We’re not using fairy tales or stories like this because the clients have developmental disabilities, but because the stories themselves have very deep meanings, they’re rich and profound. The story of Alice is about someone going into the strange world of the unconscious and confronting those voices that say, ‘You can’t do this, you’re no good, you can’t get anywhere in life.’ We took Lisa Walsh, whose real dream in life is to be a singer, and made her the star of the show. When she went into that strange world, she had to confront those same voices. So the real meat of the story is her battle to get past those negative voices and find herself, to come out triumphant.”

The gang’s all here
The trophy for that triumph is clear as day with this bunch. The clients I spoke with don’t hesitate to make eye contact and pipe up with an opinion. Their individual personalities come through loud and clear.
There’s James Prudence, the cool kid of the gang with his wallet chain, goatee and taste for loud rock. He’s also the most comfortable behind the drawing board, having done the illustration for the Aladdin poster, which again pops up on the CD.
There’s Amadeo Melucci, the joker in the pack. To him, everything’s an opportunity to jump in with a snappy zinger. He was a cinch to cast as the wicked wizard Jafar in Aladdin, a role he played up for yuks—“It’s good to be evil, when it’s a bit funny. I like to make to people laugh.”
Chris Verrault is the gentle giant, the straight shooter with a definite sense of what’s right and wrong (when James big-ups Guns N’ Roses singer Axl, Chris poo-poos the bandana boy, saying, “I don’t like him—he swears.”). That’s his bluesy growl one hears on the I Can! track “Courage.”
At 60, Robert Chubb is the oldest of the clients, but he has the bright eyes and quiet, soft-spoken energy of someone a fraction his age. Dancing, particularly tap, is his true love. Get him started on Gene Kelly or The Sound of Music and he’ll give you an earful.
Finally, there’s Lisa Walsh. Her condition is Williams Syndrome, for which musical talent is a frequent genetic feature, so she’s the best singer of the bunch and the one most eager to take singing to the next level. Her battle cry isn’t “I can,” it’s “I already have”—she’s performed at the Mirage Hotel casino in Las Vegas (move over, Wayne Newton!). “I had to perform for about 1,600 people, so I was a little bit nervous. I had to get ready with makeup and everything—so now I know what the big stars go through.”

Stepping up to the mic
The performing arts—singing, dance and drama—are just part of the centre’s program. The visual arts are essential, bringing the productions to life. “When the theatre productions happen,” says Stephen Snow, “the lobby’s always filled with artwork by clients of the centre that relates to the theme of the play. When we did The Winds of Oz, there was a huge metal sculpture of the whirlwind. Each client created an object that was most important to them, which hung off this large cyclone. For the next production coming up, we’re hoping to take it even further and have the clients’ images go right into the set, so it becomes even more of an expression of their world vision, of how they see things.”
In the meantime, the focus is on the CD, an extension of the “public outreach” aspect of the centre’s productions and an irrefutable document of what the clients are capable of.
“The thing I was most impressed with, in doing the CD,” says Shelley Snow, “is that across the board, they worked so hard on rehearsing the songs, getting them to the highest level that they could. Then we went into the studio—I didn’t know how they would do, because it’s intimidating for most people who aren’t used to it. They had to get used to hearing themselves through headphones, which is so totally different from being on stage. I was blown away by how successfully they did that. I realized that I was really working with people who were not neophytes. They had a lot of singing and stage experience, and it showed.”
Looking down the road, the next production the centre is planning is based on Pinocchio. “We’re hoping to take the music a step further, so that more of the lyrical content comes from them. It’s about realizing that they have a unique point of view, which is hardly ever heard. There are so few opportunities for these people to let us know what they feel, what they’re going through and what they can do.” :

The centre’s clients perform excerpts from the CD at St. George’s Anglican Church (1101 Stanley) on Sunday, Jan. 6, 11:45am, free. For more info on the centre, call 848-8619