In July 2021, Charles Pellerin’s beard hair began to desert him. In the fall, eyebrows and hair follow suit. “Last summer, I took a photo next to the Percé rock, with two holes in my mustache,” remembers the comedian, laughing.
Posted at 4:00 p.m.
Hair in the wind, such is the title of Charles Pellerin’s new show, even if Charles Pellerin no longer has any hair. Self-mockery? Yes, although the expression aptly describes, he insists, the state of freedom he is tasting this month, while touring Quebec aboard a school bus transformed into a tour vehicle, for a series of outdoor performances.
The show, drawing on a necessarily intimate raw material, quickly took shape at the end of last year, at a time when Charles Pellerin was still haunted by the fear of being henceforth “defined by that, and not by [s]are ideas”. Understandable fear, but unfounded, so much this mysterious disease that is alopecia will strip him not only of all his hair, but also, in a happier way, of all his masks.
In 2018, Charles Pellerin, a graduate of the National School of Humor just two years earlier, stood out at Just for Laughs thanks to a very effective number on the #metoo movement. Undeniable buzz.
“But when I look at my old material, I realize that I did everything not to talk about myself,” he observes. I had that fire, to say important things, but during the pandemic, I started to feel arrogant, thinking back to being just 24 when I spoke out on things like Bill 21 and our relation to First Nations. »
If he manages to interlace Hair in the wind many moments of lightness, this show first draws the portrait of a man forced to tame his vulnerability, because he no longer has the luxury of hiding under his puff or his goatee. Hair attributes that vanished without warning, for reasons that dermatologists are unable to explain.
I realized that we use hair a lot to camouflage what we don’t like about ourselves. Your haircut is going to be chosen to highlight your head, you are going to place your hair in such a way if you are not well. We use our body hair to hide what’s inside and now that I don’t have it, I really feel like I’m seen by people.
Charles Pellerin
After experiencing the daily shock that accompanies this abolition of the distance between oneself and the other that hairiness generally creates, he will have been forced, on stage, to talk about what really inhabits him.
“And it’s liberating because, for the first time, I feel like myself. Before, there was always a part of me that managed to please. I was in the overanalysis of the reaction. Now it’s like I’m creating a painting of how I feel, rather than just wanting to entertain people. »
He will say later, about this beautifully crafted trip that takes him, aboard his bus, to places where comedy shows are rarely presented (in the courtyard of a microbrewery or a vineyard, for example ): “In humor, the path is really traced. You make the internet, you make the network of small rooms, after that the big ones. That’s okay, but I feel like we think maybe more often about advancing our careers than advancing our material. »
A beautiful skull
If Charles Pellerin’s new hour of jokes focuses first on this experience, as singular as it is maddening, which turned his last year upside down, Hair in the wind speaks perhaps less in the end of the consequences of a hairiness that gets the hell off than of this obsession with appearance, which seems to spare very few people.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Comedian Charles Pellerin
In his 2018 show, he was surprised, almost presciently, that the participants in the Shaved Head Challenge were congratulated with so much commiseration, when their gesture should rather have the objective of normalizing hair loss. “And you see, today, even when I try to tell myself that it’s okay, what I’m going through, people bring me back to my appearance. People tell me things like: “You’re lucky, you have a beautiful skull!” Hey, thank you! It does me good to imagine that I could have lived it with an ugly skull. »
Did he fear that alopecia would mark the end of his career? “Everything that happens to me is potentially the end of my career for me,” replies a Charles, who is visibly gifted with anxiety, with a burst of laughter.
“When the little buzz of 2018 faded, I was afraid I had missed the train. But the older I get, the more I realize that there is no train. The goal is to create something you love, to love your life, not to sell tickets. In any case, I would rather understand myself than sell lots of tickets. »
Charles Pellerin will be on tour in Quebec until August 25th.