PM to attend Margaret Trudeau's autobiographical show at Chicago’s Second City

PM to attend Margaret Trudeau's autobiographical show at Chicago’s Second City
Canadian Press
Published:
May 11, 2019
Updated:
May 11, 2019 10:49 AM EDT
Margaret Trudeau speaks at Northern College in Timmins, Ont., on Feb. 14, 2018.Emma Meldrum / Timmins Daily Press / Postmedia Network / Files
CHICAGO — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family are headed to Chicago this weekend to check out Margaret Trudeau’s autobiographical one-woman show.
A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office confirms the PM will attend his mother’s performance, titled “Certain Woman of an Age,” at the Second City’s UP Comedy Club.
Second City’s website describes the show as a “candid conversation” that sees Trudeau “tell her own unique story through her own words.”
The show is presented as part of the renowned theatre’s “Wellness Week,” which also includes workshops and seminars on the topic of mental health.
Trudeau has been candid about her own struggles with bi-polar disorder, as an author, speaker and now performer.
As of Saturday morning, the evening’s performance was sold out but there were still US$45 tickets available for Sunday’s matinee.
http://torontosun.com/news/national...autobiographical-show-at-chicagos-second-city

BONOKOSKI: Margaret Trudeau’s Chicago debut of Certain Woman of an Age
Mark Bonokoski
Published:
May 11, 2019
Updated:
May 11, 2019 3:52 PM EDT
Margaret Trudeau speaks to a crowd at Northern College’s Timmins campus on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018. (Emma Meldrum/Timmins Daily Press/Postmedia Network)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will zip off to Chicago this weekend and add even more to his increasingly heavy carbon footprint.
But who can blame him for wanting some “personal time” to spend Mother’s Day with his dear old mom?
In fact, he can be forgiven this time for his carbon footprint taking another hit, because his mom is apparently getting raves as a star of stage.
Margaret Trudeau, wife of a former PM and mother of today’s, has been in Chicago at the UP-Comedy Club at its Famous Second City doing test runs of her new autobiographical one-woman show, Certain Woman of an Age, written with the help of Alix Sobler and directed by Kimberly Senior.
Second City is a pretty heady venue for trial performances but, then again, Margaret Trudeau, now 70, is a pretty interesting feline.
Thanks to being in the business since manual typewriters were the norm, it enables me to revisit the day many years go when I was sent to New York City to track down Maggie Trudeau after she had famously grabbed up her kids and bolted from her marriage to the sitting prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
Margaret Trudeau and husband Pierre. (Sun files)
She was like an attractive pop-up doll, appearing suddenly all over the place and at any time of the day, with rock stars (the Rolling Stones) on one day, and celebrities (Andy Warhol) on another, and always at in-spots that drew in the in-crowd, as in Toronto’s El Mocambo and New York’s Studio 54.
I heard she was going to appear on Good Morning America television show, so I ordered a transcript of her appearance that was ready two hours.
More journalists should have done the same because they missed the real story and how Margaret Trudeau explained for the first time why she ran off to escape from a husband who was 30 years her senior.
It was a reason no one would have guessed.
BONOKOSKI: Justin Trudeau and Jason Kenney, no one would call them BFFs
GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau was Teflon, now he’s Velcro
KINSELLA: Trudeau government trying to cover its tracks
It was the sudden death in a helicopter crash, in February of 1977, of her friend Queen Alia of Jordan at the age of 28, and Margaret Trudeau’s realization right then and there that life was far too short.
The second reason would not come out for years, and that was her yet-to-be diagnosis for mental illness, and in particular bipolar disease which, back in the not-so enlightened Seventies, was called schizophrenia.
Back then it was scary and horribly misunderstood.
Margaret Trudeau, then estranged from her husband Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, does some solo swinging on the dance floor of New York’s Studio 54 discotheque on Jan. 17, 1978. (AP Laserphoto)
For more than 30 years now, however, Margaret Trudeau has been a huge advocate for mental-health wellness, and uses her disarming charm to put herself out there unselfishly to make sure the cause gets heard.
How candid will she be in Certain Woman of an Age? Well, as she told Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones, “I talk about little manic incidents,’ she said. “I talk about denial-I only denied for 25 years-and I talk about my times in the psychiatric hospitals and the horrors of all that.
“I talk about there was no living for me if I did not get the help I needed”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau participates in an armchair discussion with Director of Canadian Affairs for Canada’s Building Trade Unions (CBTU) Arlene Dunn at the 2019 CBTU Legislative Conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, April 30, 2019. Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press
Margaret Trudeau unusually took her script onto the stage with her when she performed the test runs of Certain Woman of an Age, and promised to bring the audience into play-which she did with some edge at Friday’s debut.
She had the entire audience, half of them women of Margaret Trudeau’s vintage, joining her in yelling F-k You! at the top of their lungs.
Leave it to Maggie
markbonokoski@gmail.com
http://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...eaus-chicago-debut-of-certain-woman-of-an-age