{"id":223099,"date":"2019-07-16T02:13:55","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T06:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=223099"},"modified":"2019-07-16T02:13:55","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T06:13:55","slug":"bad-choices-make-good-stories-margaret-trudeau-brings-her-show-to-just-for-laughs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/07\/16\/bad-choices-make-good-stories-margaret-trudeau-brings-her-show-to-just-for-laughs\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Bad choices make good stories’: Margaret Trudeau brings her show to Just for Laughs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Trudeau says she may even bring her script on stage to read off of, when she takes \u201cCertain Woman of an Age\u201d to Montreal’s Just For Laughs comedy festival for its three-night run at the end of the month. (File Photo<\/a>: Simon Fraser University – Communications & Marketing\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MONTREAL \u2014 Margaret Trudeau says one of the goals of her one-woman show is to kill the conventional wisdom around what is, and isn’t, a play.<\/p>\n

Trudeau says she may even bring her script on stage to read off of, when she takes \u201cCertain Woman of an Age\u201d to Montreal’s Just For Laughs comedy festival for its three-night run at the end of the month.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things our team wanted to do with this show was, kind of, murder the pretence of ‘the play,\u201d’ Trudeau explained during a recent interview in Montreal. \u201cBecause I’m not here to fool you. I’m not acting. This is the truth I’m talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her truth has been fascinating people for decades, from the time she secretly married then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1971 at age 22, to her unabashed tales of partying with famous people while living with untreated bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n

Trudeau’s show is funny, tragic, and interactive, she said. \u201cPeople cry. People laugh \u2014 a lot,\u201d added Trudeau, referring to the audience who attended the first series of performances last May at Chicago’s Second City club. Her son, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, came to one of the shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertain Woman of an Age\u201d is partly in the mould of a 2017 documentary featuring American comedian, Chris Gethard. Trudeau said she was impressed with the entertainer, \u201cwho stood on the stage for an hour-and-a-half and talked very funnily about his attempted suicide and his attempts to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trudeau’s play and that film, \u201cChris Gethard: Career Suicide,\u201d share a director: Kimberly Senior. \u201c(That show) was so poignant,\u201d Trudeau said, \u201cthat when I was offered this, and Kimberly Senior to be my director and follow that path, I said: ‘Yes, of course.\u201d’<\/p>\n

Trudeau says over the decades she has been suicidal, manic, depressed, and at times, absent from the people she loved. \u201cCertain Woman of an Age\u201d discusses all of those difficult moments.<\/p>\n

Her mental illness \u201creally came on when I was deep in my marriage with Pierre,\u201d she said, when the unfamiliar, lonely and isolating life of a young prime minister’s wife began to take its toll.<\/p>\n

When her marriage began falling apart in the second half of the 1970s, Trudeau took off to travel the world \u2014 \u201chobnobbing\u201d as she describes it \u2014 with the rich and famous. The manic highs offered by her illness were wonderfully exciting, she said, followed by deep lows that \u201csteal away your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201cCertain Woman of an Age\u201d isn’t all about bipolar disorder, she said. \u201cNo, no. It’s just my reality. I’m talking about my life. My experiences. It’s fun. It’s different.\u201d<\/p>\n

The audience is treated to stories about her encounters, including how Trudeau felt insulted and patronized by Pope John Paul II. The pontiff reportedly spoke in detail to Pierre Trudeau about politics and then turned to pat her on the head, congratulating her for having children.<\/p>\n

The show also mentions her partying with rebel rocker Mick Jagger, with whom she posed with in a photo when the Rolling Stones came to Toronto in 1977, which became news at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cBad choices make good stories,\u201d Trudeau said with a smile.<\/p>\n

And if she regrets any of her decisions she doesn’t seem to spend time ruminating over them. \u201cI love the life I’ve had,\u201d she said. \u201cI have five of the most beautiful children. I have nine grandchildren.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her pride in the traditional female role of mother is juxtaposed with a drive to be free of the conventions others have attempted to impose on her. She is a feminist, and credits her mother with instilling in her a desire to be independent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the first generation of women who looked at our mothers, and our mothers looked at us and said: ‘This isn’t the way you’re going to live. You’re going to have a life.\u201d’<\/p>\n

Her mother told her to get a job and to be independent before choosing a partner. \u201cBecause we couldn’t just serve a man for the rest of our lives like our mothers always did \u2014 unflinchingly, unfailingly, and well \u2014 but there is another role for women that had been denied to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her force of character ran up against tradition, and it conflicted with the way the former prime minister saw her role as his wife, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think Pierre Trudeau knew how to be a husband,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn’t stay in that marriage. What woman can \u2014 when you’re so young \u2014 to be told you have to change into something you’ve fought all your life not to be.\u201d After years of being estranged from one another they officially divorced in 1984.<\/p>\n

Sitting on a balcony overlooking Montreal’s cultural and arts district, Trudeau’s eyes grew wide she began talking about the positive reviews of her show from Conservative-leaning publications in Canada that haven’t historically been kind to her \u2014 or to some of the men in her famous family.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is kindness,\u201d Trudeau said. \u201cWhat I’m talking about is beyond politics and beyond division and beyond judgement. What I’m talking about is the pain that one lives in with mental illness if one doesn’t seek treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCertain Woman of an Age\u201d runs July 25-27 at Montreal’s Gesu theatre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2014 Margaret Trudeau says one of the goals of her one-woman show is to kill the conventional wisdom around …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":223100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","mauthors-giuseppe-valiante","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223101,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223099\/revisions\/223101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}