Mother knows best

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This article was published 02/04/2025 (511 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In his new autobiographical play Raised by Women — which closes Prairie Theatre Exchange’s 2024-25 season — Keith Barker worked hard to avoid patting himself on the back, so he was compelled to include the only time his mother slapped him right across the face.

He was 11, and in retrospect, the playwright-actor says younger Keith deserved it.

Asked to clean his room before earning outside play privileges on a Saturday afternoon in London, Ont., “Young Keith, naive Keith, guilty Keith, not yet wise to the world,” instead shoved his plastic bricks and army men into his closet as a half-measure.

But his 911 operator mother saw right through the ruse long before the toys spilled out onto the bedroom floor, asking her son yet again to do as she asked and tidy up.

That rather innocent childhood fib isn’t why Barker was punished; it was what he said next that made him red in the face then, and pink in the cheeks today with embarrassment: “You’re the woman. You do it.”

“(Standup comic) Mike Birbiglia says that the most uncomfortable truths are the ones we find most compelling, and in The Moth, they say that if you’re the hero of all your stories, they’re boring. It’s when you make mistakes that people find the most connection,” says Barker, who heard his mother’s message loud and clear.

For his first foray into solo performance theatre, Barker, the former artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts, wasn’t interested in airbrushing his personal history, which began with the heartache of an invisible father who abdicated any parental duty.

In his earlier works, including The Hours That Remain and This Is How We Got Here, Barker dealt with the weighty drama of imaginary families; it took him until he reached his 40s to consider opening the vault to his own.

“I think younger Keith would have a hard time (with a show) like this, but older Keith? He’s locked and loaded and feeling good about exploring it,” he says.

But reapproaching his upbringing — which includes sub-characters such as stoic Keith and stubborn Keith — wasn’t a solo trek.

“When I was a boy, I’d be hanging out with other boys and when I came home, my mom and my sisters would correct me,” he says.

That pattern of editing continued during the writing of Raised by Women, a process that lasted four years and nearly 100 drafts, he estimates.

“The first people I always thought about when writing it were my sisters and my mom,” says Barker.

But while those influential figures in Barker’s circle were on hand to help keep the work honest, Barker looked to another circle of women to ensure the story remained engaging, including playwrights Yvette Nolan, Micheline Chevrier, Donna Michele St. Bernard and Colleen Murphy, whose The December Man inspired Barker to write his first play.

He also worked closely with former PTE artistic director Thomas Morgan Jones as his dramaturge.

“I told them I don’t want to preach anything, I don’t want to teach anybody and I don’t want to humblebrag or pat myself on the back, and they called me out on everything. Colleen Murphy sent me a whole draft just covered in yellow highlighter — little changes that helped me tell the story in a way that’s authentic, open and also honours the women’s voices I’m talking about,” he says.

Barker says he was raised around a dinner table where storytellers ruled.

“As a kid I’d watch the volley go around, and I was and am always trying to entertain that family, to be worthy of the storytellers,” he says.

That means leaving in both the slap and what made the hand move.

All performances of Raised By Women at PTE will be followed by an audience talk-back session.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com