ON STAGE
What: It’ll Come to Me
Where: SKAM Satellite Studio, 849 Fort St.
When: Oct. 10-12
Tickets: $25 ($20 for students and seniors) from eventbrite.ca
Christian Martin travelled with a group of Theatre SKAM writers, actors and directors from Victoria to the New York Fringe Festival in 1998, a cross-continental bus journey now deemed a watershed moment for the tight-knit crew of theatrical upstarts.
But when it came time to depart for home, SKAM co-founder and artistic producer Matthew Payne noticed that Martin, who had arrived with luggage, was empty-handed. “He said: ‘I’m staying,’ ” Payne recalled with a laugh. “So we left him, with literally $1 in his pocket.”
The two friends kept in touch over the years as Martin, a Victoria native, made his way through the crowded New York theatre community.
Martin’s journey has been turned into It’ll Come to Me, a two-hour solo performance in which Martin plays 57 real-life characters. The play is in previews this week as Payne, who is directing, tinkers with what he expects will be a bravura piece of theatre when it is ready for wider consumption.
“It’s a lot for one man,” Martin said, following a rehearsal this week. “It’s a lot of words, therefore I have to hang onto the script. There is just so much going on.”
Martin, 59, is having a much harder time with the material than he ever expected, on account of his health.
He has white matter disease, a progressive condition that will wear away at his brain over time. “I’ll be honest, it is hard,” Martin said. “It’s a quickening of the destruction of the body. I’ve started to lose the full use of my legs, so I walk with a cane. It’s frightening.”
The incident when Martin was left at the bus station lit the fire that became It’ll Come to Me. Martin remembers the moment well, and the feeling that came over him as he walked away from the station — alone, but eager.
He spent 17 years in New York, before returning, his dreams dashed, to Victoria four years ago. The pursuit of professional success in the unofficial theatre capital of the world is the stuff of mythology, and Martin admits to falling for the bright lights of the big city.
He lived in Manhattan’s Upper West Side at first, before landing in a sketchy neighbourhood in pre-gentrification Harlem. “I got sucked into the life in New York,” he said.
“The dream didn’t happen. I fell into the trap of alcohol and drugs, and ended up hitting bottom. It wasn’t until I got out of New York and came back to Victoria and had no choice but to clean my act up.”
Now four years sober, Martin is calling It’ll Come to Me a personal and professional redemption. He’s managing an apartment building in Victoria while repairing the parts of himself that were lost in the haze of his time in New York.
“It’s quite a different life now, to say the least,” he said.
At his lowest point, Martin was homeless and living on the streets of Harlem. His theatrical experience in New York was mostly limited to dinner theatre and poetry readings in jazz clubs. Like others back in Victoria, Payne said he was unaware of the extent of Martin’s off-stage problems.
“He was battling his own challenges, but it wasn’t until he came back to Victoria that he said he was going to get clean. I didn’t know it was even an issue for him.”
Payne and Martin met every Friday for months to get the stories down on paper. At one point, Payne knew Martin’s tale needed to be heard, but he was running out of room in which to tell it. “I think the first version had 100 people in it,” Payne said. “But, at the same time, I loved the epic scope of it.”
He eventually turned the project over to dramaturge Andrew Templeton, who had recently moved back to Victoria from Toronto, and they spent a year distilling the characters in It’ll Come to Me down to a more manageable 57 characters, all of whom are played by Martin.
He will be backed by a jazz duo composed of music director Kelby MacNayr (drums) and Dave Flello (trumpet) during the performance, which will be presented in the round, with the audience on four sides of the stage where Martin will stand.
“He’s climbing into the ring with himself every night,” Payne said of Martin, who studied at the London branch of New York’s Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.
The performances take a toll on Martin, both mentally and physically. But he is happy to carry the burden. “It’s nothing I’m ashamed of,” Martin said.
“I’m ashamed of how I acted, of course. But getting sober and living a sober life is my living apology. I really wanted that to come across. I really hope it does.”
