Chela Davison
I was in a small but mighty audience on October 3rd at the Sanctuary Arts Centre in Dartmouth for Chela Davison’s show A Little Bit Much, a one woman show about coming into your own in your forties, and realizing (gradually) that you don’t have to make yourself fit into the tiny parameters that the media shitstorm of a Xennial adolescence tricked us into believing was the only way to grow up to be both valuable and ‘fuckable.’
I met Chela in Vancouver when I was 22 years old in a memoir writing class that was audacious for both of us to be taking in the first place. Chela is three years older than me, and that gulf could not have been bigger when we met- I was flailing around in school, unsure whether I wanted to do creative writing or theatre, and Chela already owned a hair salon and wrote with the confidence and clarity of someone three times her age. When I was 22 I would have described her as someone with “incredibly cool big sister vibes.” She always seemed to be able to navigate through space with this sunny, affable disposition that drew people in, and a delicious/mischievous way with words. When she told me, all these years later, that she had started to perform a show that she wrote and was touring it across the country, I knew that she would be an excellent performer because she has that ease in connecting with people. I also knew the work would be well written- but my god- it is one of the most tightly constructed monologues I’ve ever heard, with so much thoughtful insight, Shakespearean level lewd and profane humour, and all of Chela’s “cool big sister vibes” dialled up to eleven. It was a really fun evening at the theatre.
As is so often the case all that I had seen and idolized in Davison when I was twenty three and she was twenty six were things that she had been criticized for. She was frequently told that she was “a lot,” or “too much.” Sometimes the messaging was overt from adults in her life, sometimes it was subliminal, like when she thought there must be something wrong with her as a child because she’d never owned a douche. In her quest to figure out how to best harness her “muchness” she found the self help and wellness movements and a wide range of communities therein that were both helpful for her and problematic. In both ways these experiences provided her with lots of funny and wild stories to share.
She also explores the idea of “having it all” through the lens of someone who started her first career directly out of High School, and got married, and had a child, but who then had to confront the reality that she didn’t feel fulfilled in a way that society suggested she should. She also talks about how we get attached to these certain identities that we create and we wear, but what happens when they need to change, we outgrow them, or sometimes when someone else challenges them? She has this hilarious spoken word poem that emerges out of a hilarious desperation to get her teenager to believe that she “used to be” legitimately cool. What happens to that wild person when the mundane reality of signing permission slips and doing kids’ laundry takes over more and more aspects of your life?
The audience at the Sanctuary Arts Centre, mostly women of various ages, audibly responded to things that Davison said with “mmhm” and other immediate words of affirmation. Folks stayed behind at the talk back afterwards and told the room full of strangers their intimate stories that resonated with something Davison had shared, because the things that Davison had shared had been so personal, so vulnerable, so relatable, but also told in such a funny and viscerally inviting way. Regardless of what her kid thinks, I’m glad Chela Davison is as cool as I remember her being, and that she’s found a new way of sharing all the ways that she is a whole lot of awesome with a wider audience.
I have a feeling that the next time she comes to Dartmouth she’s going to need a bigger venue.
Canadian Theatre Criticism is an essential part of a healthy and thriving theatre community. It helps theatre companies find new audiences for their shows, deepens audiences’ engagement with local artists and the work being created in their communities, and it is one of the best ways to preserve a snapshot of an ephemeral art form for future generations of theatre lovers. TWISI relies on support from its Subscribers, folks like you who care about the survival of local and independent arts coverage. Please consider becoming a Subscriber today, or click here for more information. Thank you so much for supporting TWISI.
