Mrs Lear

by Laura Kalpakian

The theatre, they say, is a wretched, uncertain, impecunious life. Grim backstage, but gaudy on.Yes, but, as Audra Lear reminisces, a bright life, and much to be envied. A doyenne of Canadian theatre, Audra Lear looks back over her fifty year career. She was never one of those actresses whose inspiration comes first from being in the audience. She knew her calling from the wings. Audra served as unpaid teenaged assistant to Susan Butterfield, wardrobe mistress at Ottawa’s opulent Odéon theatre in the ’50s. Susan, second cousin to Audra’s mother, appears in their Ottawa flat one day Fresh Off the Boat from England, a penniless immigrant, part of the post-war tide of refugees flooding Canada’s shores. Despite Cousin Susan’s weird tics and grimaces, her lack of speech, despite her bizarre affectations and eerie rituals, young Audra allies herself with Susan, the two of them against Audra’s priggish, soulless parents. This pact is shattered the day that Audra’s youth is corrupted, and the dressing room door broken down with a fire axe, and she experiences first hand, what might have compelled Cousin Susan to such terrible secrecy.

38 pages

Published May 31, 2013