In the Belly of the Carp melds gritty storytelling with a fantastical hero’s journey
Based on Rodney DeCroo’s body of work, Butcher Shop Collective show encompasses poetry, music, and shadow puppetry at the Shadbolt
In the Belly of the Carp. Photo by Blake Williams
The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts presents In the Belly of the Carp from November 28 to 30
ONE OF THE PERKS of being artist-in-residence at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts is the opportunity to live and work at the Dr. William and Ruth Baldwin House. A marvel of mid-20th-century West Coast modernism, the post-and-beam Baldwin House is a relatively early entry in the canon of iconic local architect Arthur Erickson. Its floor-to-ceiling-windows offer a gorgeous panoramic vista of Burnaby’s Deer Lake.
At least we can infer that the views are gorgeous based on photographic evidence; when Stir visits the Baldwin House to interview Rodney DeCroo and Jon Wood, however, it’s a dark and rainy evening in the middle of November, which has reduced visibility considerably.
This is possibly for the best. Gazing out at the shimmering water and reeds would only distract from the matter at hand, which is discussing In the Belly of the Carp, the debut production by the Butcher Shop Collective, which gets its premiere on the Shadbolt stage at the end of this month.
The show had its genesis during an earlier residency, at the Cultch in 2018, when DeCroo and the collective’s other members—David Bloom and Samantha Pawliuk—endeavoured to create a play centred around the multifaceted local artist’s body of work.
“At the beginning, we were just taking a bunch of my poems, a bunch of my songs, and a bunch of short stories I’d written, and sort of combing through them,” DeCroo recalls.
The idea was to find pieces that fit together in ways that made sense and connect them with a narrative throughline. The show’s initial train of development was derailed by a minor annoyance called COVID-19, but when it eventually got back on track, it expanded to include a full band (that’s where musical director Wood comes in) and projections and shadows by Mind of a Snail Puppet Co.
Although In the Belly of the Carp touches on deeply personal and often dark themes that followers of DeCroo’s artistic career will recognize from his past work—childhood trauma, poverty, addiction, and PTSD, to name a few—it’s not about the artist’s own life, per se.
Yes, the lead character, played by DeCroo himself, is named “Rodney”, but a number of fantastical elements lend a sheen of magic realism to what might otherwise be a thoroughly gritty story. There is also a show-within-a-show aspect, as the entire tale is predicated on a possibly ill-timed comeback on Rodney’s part.
“My character, Rodney, has not played a show in six months, since his sponsor died,” DeCroo reveals. “He’s hiding. He’s not doing any tours. His long-time manager, Samantha [Pawliuk], has convinced him to do this show at a venue that’s kind of the kick-off show to start a tour—but he has to get through this show, and it looks at times like he’s not gonna get through it.”
Running in parallel to this present-day story arc is another narrative that recalls Rodney’s hardscrabble childhood, including what DeCroo describes as a “brutal assault by the river”.
“I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, so it’s sort of connected to that, but it’s very stylized,” he says. “We don’t go into some horrible realistic scene. We capture it through the projections and through shadow puppetry and music and sound.”
This is where Mind of a Snail’s low-tech but highly impactful brand of visual effects comes into play.
“First it rains fish at the bus stop, and then I’m sucked into a giant carp, and then there’s a fight to the death with many weapons,” DeCroo says.”It’s crazy, but we had to learn how to integrate that method of storytelling into our method, so it’s taken a lot of discussion. It’s pretty seamless, though.”
DeCroo says In the Belly of the Carp—which is directed by TJ Dawe—is akin to a hero’s journey, albeit one undertaken by “a fucked-up hero who’s not really much of a hero”.
“But he has to get through this series of challenges, which is the show, and some of them include being swallowed by a giant carp, going to the underworld, being assaulted…”
“But also having trouble with the show in reality, right?” Wood interjects.
“Yeah, having a huge fight on-stage with the band, to the point where Jon’s character’s going to quit,” DeCroo confirms. “Just trying to get through a song. So you’ve got this mundane world of the concert, but then these fantasias break in on it, which is mostly the world of the projections.”
The on-stage friction between Rodney and his band echoes one of the more inglorious chapters in DeCroo’s own journey as an artist. A number of years ago, during an ultimately ill-fated road trip with Carolyn Mark, an impulsive DeCroo fired his backing musicians—a number that included Wood—which complicated things a little given that the tour would continue for another two weeks. (This prompted a now-legendary admonition from Mark: “You break up with the band after the tour is over, you idiot.”)
Wood acts in the show in addition to making his sonic contributions. He has only one scene, but it’s a pivotal one in which he forces Pawliuk’s character to confront what really lies beneath her show-must-go-on convictions.
“It’s a deeply codependent, unhealthy relationship,” says DeCroo of the connection between artist and manager. “ She’s like, ‘If I can protect him and take care of him, he’ll be all right, and that makes me a good person,’ but it’s killing her.”
“And the things she has to do to make that happen are defining her as maybe not as good a person as she thinks she is,” Wood adds. “She’s doing shitty things to keep it alive.”
As DeCroo notes, these “shitty things” are “all in the name of the show and helping Rodney.”
“So she gets a pass, in her mind, until in the scene with me she starts to wonder if she still gets that pass anymore,” Wood says.
No spoilers here, but by the end of the show Samantha must make a hard decision. The element of choice is a crucial consideration, in fact, and DeCroo notes that if audience members need to step out of the theatre during the more troubling scenes, he understands. (There will be a trauma counsellor available in the lobby for anyone who needs an active listener.)
In the Belly of the Carp tells a story that is ultimately uplifting; it is, at its heart, about the healing power of art. DeCroo makes no apologies for the fact that it probes some uncomfortable places along the way, but he does want to protect the psychological safety of his audience. This is in marked contrast to the modus operandi he followed earlier in his career, which he now characterizes as “trauma-dumping”.
DeCroo began to take a more considered approach while he was touring his more strictly autobiographical 2019 one-man show Didn’t Hurt (also directed by Dawe).
“I went and stood by the door as everybody left, and I said goodbye to every single person as they left,” he says. “My old impulse would be to get away from everybody; the show’s done. These people went through this harrowing story about all these things that happened to me as a kid and how I healed from it, and they held that space for me. I felt like they deserved a thank-you from me for sitting through that show with me and being so open that I could go to those places.” 
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