This week, I put my microphone in its case, my pencil on the table and my pride in my little pocket. This is the end of all the projects that accompanied me for several months, even years. After more than two years of touring all over Quebec with my second one woman show, I thank the audience and say: “See you next time. »
Then, as you read this, my second book is going to print and I can no longer change anything I have placed on its pages.
For many artists, the end of an important project represents a great loss which is followed by an emptiness which makes them question the rest of their career. But for me, the end of something is a new lease of life. Comfort doesn’t appeal to me. I’m even ready to say that he’s my worst enemy. My happiness lies mainly in creating things. I like to juggle pitfalls, questions and anything that can create discomfort for me. The moment I find the solution, the artistic process begins. So I often wish to be destabilized, surprised.
Touring is comfort. I have a schedule, like a civil servant who knows exactly when to punch in and punch out. I have my little routine during the day: my little coffee in the morning, my little gym and my little reading in the morning, my little nap in the afternoon and the opening of the lights to make hundreds of people who contribute go crazy to stroke my ego in the evening. I go home, catch up on TV, pet my dogs and go to bed.
That’s it, for two years. Said the same way, my life seems like a long flat poem, but it’s reassuring to always know what’s going to happen in the coming days. I am privileged to know that, every evening, I will pay for my house thanks to a profession that I master and that I cherish. I am lucky.
But this comfort that develops over time annoys me.
I like to dance with fear and waltz with stress. However, I am not that artist who likes to be in constant danger. But I like people to shake my certainties which become too strong at times.
Last week, I concluded my tour in New Brunswick. I flew 1 hour 30 minutes to get to Fredericton and, between each of the cities in which I went on stage, I had 3 hours 30 minutes to drive for 1 hour 30 minutes of show. I spent my days in the rental car with all-season tires that struggled to stay stable on the road that hosted a snowstorm, a freezing rainstorm, and heavy rain. That’s the tour. It’s normal.
Where everything got tricky was when I realized 20 minutes before the first show in Edmundston that I had gastro. I realized it quite quickly. It was pretty obvious. 20 minutes before my first show of the little Acadian tour, I wondered if I should cancel everything and postpone it.
I was sick every minute, dehydrated and vulnerable as ever. I asked my opening act, amazing apple singer King Melrose, to stay stand-by. I explained to him that if I ever had to leave the stage for an emergency, he would have to go up there and fill the time.
This is, in my 15 years in the business, the most vulnerable moment I have experienced. Having gastro, while I am on stage, miles from my comfort, from my house, from my mother, from my bearings, in front of an audience that has been waiting for me for months, at the end of a tour that is wants festive. Being sick between my friend’s improvised songs, with an audience on the edge of their seats wondering if I’ll be able to finish the show.
And yet, I must admit, it was the best show of my entire career. Being destabilized, vulnerable, in control of everything without really being so, in front of 800 people. What a moment of pure emotion! All this was obviously not planned. And all of this confirmed to me that sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.
Thank you to everyone who came.
See you again in a year.
Who is Mariana Mazza?
Born in Montreal North in 1990, Mariana Mazza is a comedian, actress and author. In humor, she notably won the Olivier of the year in 2017 and 2022. Regularly invited on television (Tower, good evening, LOL: who will laugh last?) in addition to playing regularly in series (The arena), we have also seen her on the big screen, notably in Creepage. She published the novel in 2022 Montreal North, which is inspired by the childhood of the woman who was born to a Lebanese mother and a Uruguayan father. She has just finished touring her second solo show, Rude – Forgive me if I love you.
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