BARRHEAD - Michelle Martin is bringing her mother home.
On Jan. 13, Martin will perform her one-person show, I Carry Your Heart With Me, at the Barrhead Composite High School theatre.
The play is about Martin's journey of grief and loss, living with a mother, and ultimately learning to let go, and how she found peace, acceptance and joy by getting to know her mother all over again as an adult.
Tickets are $30 and are available at Comfort Corner. The curtain call is 7:30 p.m.
Martin, a former Barrhead resident, is an actor and producer currently based in Vancouver. She has several Canadian theatre and television credits to her resume, including Frequency, Dead of Summer, The Romeo Section, The Whispers, Supernatural, A Novel Romance, Accidental Obsession, CTV's Traders, and two seasons as a series lead on the CBC's evening drama, Riverdale. Michelle also completed the independent feature film Backroads, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival and the short film Sleepwalk, which won the Audience Choice Award at the New York City Short Horror Film Festival. She is also the founder of Egg Theatre Company.
The play, which Martin also penned, is a homage to her mother, Cecile, who was a fixture in Barrhead's Community Theatre, performing in many productions such as Blithe Spirit, the Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof and Irma la Douce, among others before her death from breast cancer in 1980 at age 36.
Cecile was also active in other areas of the community. She was one of the driving forces behind improving the amenities of then Barr Manor Park, most notably creating a children's playground, which was renamed Cecile Martin Park shortly after her death.
Brian Key saw her perform the show at the Edmonton Fringe Festival in August and suggested that she bring the show to Barrhead.
"Brian was a good friend of my mom's," she said, adding they were both active in Barrhead Community Theatre and often stared together in the same productions. "The one I remember best is Annie Get Your Gun. In my show, I use a lot of projections, with projections of pictures of my mother, [including a cast picture from the play], and Brian is in the picture."
Key then approached the Barrhead Arts Council, who contacted Martin and asked if she would bring the show to Barrhead.
The answer was a wholehearted yes.
"I am honoured. I believe it is the same stage I was on with my mom when I was 10 and 11," Martin said.
While the play is about Martin, her mother, their relationship, and the loss thereof, Barrhead figures prominently, so much so that she said it might be considered a character.
Martin premiered I Carry Your Heart With Me at the Toronto Fringe Festival in July.
"So there I am in Toronto, and I say, 'I'm on stage at the Barrhead Community Theatre, and my mom's the star'', she said, adding she repeated the same line during Fringe Festival performances in Edmonton and Vancouver. "And now I can say that line and talk about those things in Barrhead. It just fills my heart."
Martin said that she started working on the play about five years ago, but it was when she returned to Barrhead in 2021 to celebrate the 41st anniversary of the naming of Cecile Martin Park that she truly buckled down.
She added it was through writing the play that she truly learned who her mother was, saying Barrhead played a prominent role in forming who Cecile was.
"It is where she had her formative experiences as a young adult, as a mother. It was also where she found her true love: the theatre. It is also where I got my love for the theatre, with her, on the stage of the Barrhead Community Theatre. Those are my favourite memories," Martin said.
She also noted that people will get to hear Cecile's voice as Martin plays snippets from a 40-minute conversation with her oncologist.
"I had the speech for about 10 years, but I couldn't listen to it, so I kept it hidden away," she said, adding that when she decided to write the play, she knew she had to listen to the recording. "She knows she is dying and that she has five kids at home, and when I listened to it, I knew that I had to use her words of wisdom, and there are many, in the play."
