Labrador: A One-Person Show

Ian C. Nelson, Librarian Emeritus, former Assistant Director of
Libraries (University of Saskatchewan) and dramaturge (Festival de la
Dramaturgie des Prairies).

T.J. Dawe has toured and triumphed on the International Fringe Festival
circuit throughout North America and Australia. His play Tired Clichés
received a Jessie Award in Vancouver and The Slip-Knot received the Just
for Laughs Comedy Award in Montreal.

In The Slip-Knot, Dawe winds a skein of three stories into alternating
narratives that sweep both audience and reader into a vortex of comic
mishaps. The setup is a series of work situations at different points in
the narrator’s life: finding a job and accommodation in Toronto;
working for Canada Post tracing lost mail; and driving a truck in
Vancouver while trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with a
girlfriend in Victoria. During each situation, Dawe launches into
observations of life around him, in classic standup-comedy style,
imbuing each situation with the reality of having lived it (e.g., the
euphemisms that are part of stocking the shelves of Shoppers Drug Mart,
or the bureaucracy and foibles of fellow employees at Tracemail). Even
when he goes on for several pages with side-splitting lists, his
situational engagement raises his comedy above the level of mere gags.
It is this part that sweeps us—laughing the whole time—into the
final sequence, which is the comic equivalent of a car chase toward the
resolution of each story.

In Labrador, Dawe grabs our attention from the very first line:
“People always lie at funerals.” Again he is wry and sharp with his
observations on such topics as geography, the invention of bread, and
film and screen credits, until he segues with adroit comic abruptness to
say, “So I went to Labrador.” In this piece Dawe is more laid-back
as a raconteur, but no less engaging. In fact the delight of this work
(again for both audience and reader) is in trying to discern where
personal history leaves off and a whacking great tall tale begins.

These are two superb monologue plays.