Review: (Montreal) I Think My Heart Needs Glasses (Fringe)

Tragedy in a Comic Nutshell
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois
@gcharlebois

I will first tell you this: I Think My Heart Needs Glasses by and with Yana Kesala is astonishing.

Now I will tell you why.

When I saw Kesala's delightful work - The Ukrainian Dentist's Daughter - last year, I was charmed. But this year, folks, in a blistering, honest confessional she shows her acting chops, balancing on the high-wire between humour and her very personal tragedy and never falling off. Any actor will tell you that laughter through tears - one of theatre's great leitmotifs - is a difficult thing. The fact that you start by making your audience laugh and then brutalizing them with profound sadness can cause resistance in the house. Where we might have joined in on if it was pure sadness, after laughter we can so easily see as mawkish.

Sunday Feature: Yana Kesala on I Think My Heart Needs Glasses (Fringe: Montreal, Winnipeg)

Listening to the Nag Inside my Soul
by Yana Kesala

I Think My Heart Needs Glasses is my second solo play—my sophomore effort at writing, directing, producing, and performing. If you've heard anything about sophomore efforts, you know that oftentimes they... well... slump. Especially when the freshman effort rocked. Which mine did.

The Ukrainian Dentist's Daughter is an awesome solo show. It's charming and sweet, so sweet that you might even get a toothache and need a dentist (Get it? Get it?). That show, which I call TUDD in my head and amongst good friends, is based on my mother's life. I was inspired to write about her after making the decision that I was going to create a solo show for myself to star in and tour around the world. It seemed logical: one person to feed, house, pay—scheduling rehearsal was a breeze and golly, wasn't I just the ideal actress for the role! I had bounced around a lot of ideas in a little notebook about what I wanted my play to be about (An American gal's adventures in Australia? An actress's life on the road?) but settled on the stories that I always ended up telling people once they asked about my ethnic name, my peasant physique, and my uncanny ability to speak with a Slavic accent. Plus it didn't hurt that my parents' love story is so awesome that it almost seems made up.