The Strangest Open Mic Night on Earth
Duncan B.C. reinterprets the meaning of a 'public reading'
“New blood!”
We were greeted like royalty by the handful of people inside the Duncan Showroom like we were the first newbies to come in years. Turns out we were.
In an effort try new things in our town (pop. 5002, after we came), Stephanie and I walked over to the monthly Island Storytellers open mic night at Duncan’s only live venue. And what a venue it is! The Duncan Showroom is part curio museum, part tiny-theatre, and part your-grandma’s-terrifying-basement.
We arrived armed with our personal readings, hoping to “workshop” our writing to a group of local authors, likeminded peers, and passionate writers. That was our hope, at least.
We got something very different—and in a way much better—for what was our funkiest date night in a decade.
At 7:30, we readers assembled into our second-hand theatre seats. Stephie and I were by far the youngest attendees, and we are not young. The regulars looked like CBC Radio listeners dressed up like cartoon CBC Radio listeners.
After a pleasant three-line poem from a woman in a bucket hat, the MC called me up, and I read from a script I’m developing with some Toronto filmmakers. As with every open mic, I was surprised to see which lines landed and which lines meandered. I sat back down, scribbled notes, and waited for the others to try out their fresh writerly ideas.
What followed were readings, yes. On paper.
But the interpretation of giving a reading at the Duncan Showroom turned out to be quite open-ended. The core gang of regulars had been coming for over fifteen years, so either they’d run out of original work, or we had just joined the most bizarre book club this side of wackadoodleville.
The readers that took the stage included: a sleepy man who silently read a novel from his audience seat, then got on up to continue reading it for us; some guy who “grabbed the first self-help book” off his shelf and treated us to a long section; and a jolly old fella who read from The Penguin Book of Canadian Jokes, the 1983 edition, no doubt borrowed from the back of his home toilet.
“Why did the Newfie plant Cheerios?
To grow donuts.”
It was clear that a reading at the Duncan Showroom meant reading anything within arm’s reach. I made note of the Please Shake The Handle sign in the nearby bathroom for next time.
The star of the evening was Richard Dwyer, Duncan’s number one colourful character. (You can read newspaper reports of his barefoot dancing exploits here).
Richard took the stage, with the air of an old time prospector in pajama bottoms, and read us poems from a weathered pamphlet that looked like an Indiana Jones map. At first, Stephanie and I were a bit bewildered and giggly at the crooked pioneer trail this open mic night was taking, but we quickly leaned right into it.
The poems—straight out of the 20s and 30s—rang more authentic than a Deadwood episode and just as dusty. Richard is a native Duncanite and former logger from the area, and he suddenly brought tales of clanging camp suppers and hissing steam trains to life.
“Twenty cars of hemlock and twenty cars of fir / Ten loads of cedar waiting on the spur
Ease the throttle open listen to her moan / Chugging up the switchback one engine on its own
The shay and the climax with the firebox aglow / I was here to see their passing I was sad to them go”
Now that was good stuff.
Now we got it.
It took choo-choo train rhymes to turn us from gobsmacked to grateful for the rest of the little, left-field event. This was something singular and special.
Because every open mic has the exact same scene anywhere you go. Your continuing-ed memoir writer. The hopeful hip hop kid. The acoustic guitar stylings of of kill-me-now.
With the Duncan Showroom Island Storytellers, we had something so unique, I couldn’t even script the stuff without being accused of overwriting too madcap. It may have taken us a few “readings” to see that this was one-of-a-kind, but once immersed, we knew it was the real deal.
Stephanie ended up reading a poem that knocked the crowd’s (mismatched) socks off. They invited us out for a drink afterward, but we politely declined. We had just the right amount of Deep Dive Duncan for one evening, thank you. We hit the DQ instead, and kept asking each other the same lively question: What the hell did we just see and do?
The two of us will be back, I guarantee it. Maybe in a couple more years, we’ll have run out of our own material, and will read from Duncan takeout menus to thunderous applause. And we too will shout when the next new couple wanders in, clueless to the weird warp inside.
“New blood!”
sounds like fun. I am envious!!
Great stuff, Jordan. I love a good ol' strange evening out, complete with characters and bizarro readings. These special nights are what bond us writers- no matter what we read or do. ;)