I’ll always remember the sounds of Leonard Cohen travelling through my family’s bungalow growing up.

As an 8 year old though, I don’t think I understood the profound resonance Cohen’s lyrics have with so many people. I also don’t think I ever realized that not only is Cohen a musician, but his lyrics are pure poetry. Embraced as a Renaissance Man, his poetry explores religion, politics, loneliness, sexuality, and most notably, love.

Love—sometimes torturous, sometimes beautifully bittersweet—was the central theme of the Cohen-inspired theatre piece Chelsea Hotel at Firehall Arts.

Featuring a cast of six talented musicians, dancers, and actors, Chelsea Hotel delivers emotion, melodic dissonance, and the perfect amount of comic relief. Using Cohen’s lyrics to tell a story through  two halves, a simple set, costuming, and bold, effective theatrical choices, make the poetry come alive onstage, evoking emotion in the audience as well as the cast.

One of my favourite parts of the two hour show (don’t worry, there’s an intermission), was the choreography performed by the three female cast members. Calculated without being careful, the movements accompanied the lyrics perfectly. Raw and sexy without being over the top, these movements were contemporary without being too “dancey” thus not inhibiting people from enjoying the other elements of the show.

Alongside the dance, the musicality of all six cast members was definitely a highlight. Playing everything from drums, guitar, bass, and piano, to cello, violin, accordion, harmonica, and even kazoo, the cast is clearly extremely talented—a perfect match for the ever-celebrated Cohen. Playing all of the music live was the perfect fit for this Canadian musician and poet’s work. Adding to the purposeful drama, the music, along with the lyrics, carried the story, allowing the audience to be immersed in the experience with very few, very effectively placed and delivered lines.

Ultimately, the play was simple. With one set, very subtle costume changes, and scads and scads of balled up paper strewn about the stage to set the mood, nothing more was required to tell the story of Cohen’s many relationships—many of which we can see within ourselves.

Chelsea Hotel finally made me understand what my parent’s love about Cohen. The simplistic delivery of memorable lyrics allowed me to digest the meaning with the help of subtle choreography and amazing live music. I think I might just put on a Cohen record and hide from the rain for the rest of the weekend. You know where to find me.

Showing until March 29, head to the Firehall Arts to be inspired by the words of Cohen and the acting of a fabulously talented cast. Expect shivers, moments of awe, and even tears (if you’re the older lady in the back). More details about the show, cast, and ticketing can be found online. 

Two girls spreading rose petals lead the annual Women’s Memorial March this year. A group of elders proceeded behind them with their drums sounding. The march began with the intersection of East Hastings and Main Streets as the epicenter—overtaken with a women-led drum circle. Cable buses halted and marchers continued to gather. With the girls leading the march and the drum’s songs, a sense of togetherness and empowerment weaved through the hundreds of marchers. Something of this moment came back to me later that weekend, at Lauri Lyster’s The Drummer Girl.

Comprised of both live music and personal stories, The Drummer Girl showed at the Firehall Arts Center from February 12 to 22. It begins with Lyster starting percussion lessons as a tween and moves through her career as a female percussionist—from her music degree and to dive bars, to symphonies, abroad, and more. “Being a woman, that has informed everything about my career,” she told Burnaby Now about the show. “But it’s more generic than that. It’s about being a musician.”

While the show handles the issue of being a female musician and just being a musician in forthright and intelligent ways, it also has a propulsive sense of humour. In one of the storytelling interludes, she describes being a percussionist in an orchestra. She sits on a chair with a music stand before her and has the audience imagine that she is in the orchestra pit. She then reaches into her bag to retrieve a water bottle with a rope attached (as she fastens it to the music stand, she tells the audience this is a precaution since one got away from her on stage at symphony), several issues of People Magazine (for her forty-minute rests, she confesses), and her triangle.

The last thing an audience wants to do is make a sound during a symphony, but the audience laughed through Lyster’s entire reenactment of a percussionist’s role in an orchestra. It included about four triangle hits, two naps, a little celebrity gossip, and a deadpan conclusion from the percussionist after she silenced the triangle: “Yeah, I’m classically trained.”

Later in the show she reenacts another performance in which she forgot her cymbals and drumsticks and had to improvise with a wooden frame broken in two and a beer bucket. She literally brings out a beer bucket, snaps a stick in half on stage, and plays the song with her band as she had to that night.

She tells these stories—both the successful and the not so successful—with a combination of dignity and humour that is a pleasure to watch. As this was the third year she ran the show, we can hope that it will return to the stage again soon.

Check out other great shows coming up at Firehall Arts Centre.