Puppeteer Ronnie Burkett’s Wonderful Joe asks us to suspend disbelief
The master storyteller’s latest play opens with Joe and his dog facing ejection from their longtime home, with seemingly nowhere to go
Wonderful Joe. Photo by Ian Jackson
The Cultch presents Wonderful Joe from February 4 to 23 at the Historic Theatre (now sold out)
PART SHARP SOCIAL commentary, part sky-high fantasy, part virtuosic display of craft, and part caustic yet loving camp, Wonderful Joe is also 100 percent Ronnie Burkett. But is his new show, which he’ll bring to the Cultch from February 4 to 23, also 100 percent autobiographical?
That’s a question it might not be prudent to ask.
“I will tell you a little personal thing,” Burkett begins, on the line from his downtown Toronto studio.
“I’ve been doing Wonderful Joe all year, but of course I had to stop and do Little Dickens, the Christmas show, in December, because that gets booked every December. So I had to do that. And right before I left, in late November, our beloved little dog, Robbie, died. Robbie had been with me through the whole pandemic, in the studio every day, and I was so grateful I didn’t have to go do a show about an old man and his dog right after that. The show is not about that at all, because it was created before that happened, but I do realize that there’s a lot of that relationship in there. I think that what we do with our pets is magical: we give them back stories and names, and there is that thing of a connection to magical creatures who are with us, observe us, and tolerate just because of who we are.
“So a lot of Robbie went into this show,” Burkett adds. “But a few people have said to me ‘Oh, so this is a show about you and your dog?’ And I went ‘Hey, bitch, I’m not that old!’”
The master puppeteer and storyteller cackles, and it seems probable that his incautious interlocutors were friends. He’d never be that rude to a stranger, or even some random journalist. He might, however, have harsh words for real-estate speculators, especially as the real jumping-off point for Wonderful Joe is something that Vancouverites are all too familiar with: renoviction.
Burkett’s latest puppet play opens with Joe and his canine companion facing ejection from their longtime home, with nowhere to go. Or seemingly nowhere: there are streets to traverse and parks to explore and a friendly gay bar in which to seek shelter.
Wonderful Joe, its creator says, is “about a lot of things”, including the growing inhumanity of the world we live in. “But it really is about what I’ve noticed, living in a city and touring the cities,” he continues. “You know, when you tour, it’s kind of ideal because you live, so to speak, in a hotel, but you live in the city centre really. To the point where over the years I’ve thought ‘Oh, I’m going to move to Melbourne. I’m going to move to this city or that.’ And then I realize ‘No, Ronnie: if you moved here you’d be living way out of the city centre, where you could afford to live.’
Mother Nature in Wonderful Joe by Ronnie Burkett. Photo by Ian Jackson
“So I’ve seen urban centres for many, many years, and they are all experiencing the thing that’s going on in my neighbourhood, in my city, which is gentrification. Which is not necessarily bad, but the cost of living has made it unsustainable for a lot of people to exist in the city, and that’s where I started.”
Joe’s eviction could be the cause of much hand-wringing and heart-bleeding, but in the end, as far as we can tell—Burkett cannily avoids giving a full plot summary—he survives by putting his faith in magic. And yes, that’s a sure link to Burkett’s use of his theatrical imagination to survive as a queer kid growing up in 1970s Alberta.
“One other thing that I knew long ago, when I first started thinking about Joe himself, is that Joe has survived things: his childhood, and his teen life—without ever calling himself a survivor,” Burkett says. “Rather than being victimized or sentimentalized, what Joe has is the ability to see things that no one else does. He invests in make-believe so heavily that there’s a scene, near the end of the show, where he drops by a gay bar and encounters Jesus, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus. He believes in them so they are all there. And it’s that simple: he believes in them. And I love that.
“It’s funny,” he adds with another cackle. “I don’t know if I’m really smart or dumb as a post—and that’s not for me to decide—but I just thought ‘Well, that makes sense to me.’ Right? So, in a weird way—and we’re getting very meta here now—the fact that Joe sees these characters who are not alive but whom are alive to him is exactly what I have been always asking audiences to do. ‘Let’s suspend our disbelief, and, please, would you believe that Joe is alive for the 90 minutes I’m performing him?’
“The preposterous conceit I’m putting forth—that Joe actually sees these characters and they’re alive to him—is not that preposterous when you’re watching them as puppets, and you’ve invested in Joe being a real character. So there is magic in the world.
“I’m trying to think of a word here, and I think the word is ‘brightness’,” Burkett concludes. “I wanted to give a brightness to this show, rather than turning it into a sad piece about people who are unhoused. Sadness is inherent in their stories, but this is not the most horrible day for these two people. This is just their day that you’re seeing, and it doesn’t ask for pity.”
Mission accomplished, and beautifully.
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