THEATRE: FEATURE INTERVIEW
15 FEB/11

Thankfully Sandra Shamas is at her Wit's End

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

Sandra Shamas wants you to know she’s a changed woman. In fact, that’s the subject of her latest one-woman show, WIT'S END III; LOVE LIFE, slated to open at the Elgin Theatre on Wednesday.

For the uninitiated, it will be Shamas’ sixth highly personal one-woman show — a cycle that started almost a quarter century ago with an Edmonton Fringe show titled MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK AND THERE'S GOING TO BE LAUNDRY. That one show has since morphed into the story of her entire adult life, spanning marriage, divorce and the ongoing tale of her attempts to shake the smog of the city from her skirts in favour of a more bucolic rural life.

WIT'S END is not merely the title of the last three shows in her sextet. It is also the name of the farm she purchased just before her marriage melted down and disappeared to the place where she still makes her home. Not surprisingly, in the years — eight of ’em, to be precise — since Shamas checked in with WIT'S END II; HEART'S DESIRE, there have been some changes. Shamas has become a farmer, raising a few chickens and committing an entire hectare of her farm to the cultivation of organic garlic — a crop that started small and continued to thrive when the heirloom tomatoes that were to have been her cash crop withered on the vine, victims of a late-season blight.

“When you’re in congress with the land, you obey it,” she offers philosophically. “It doesn’t obey you.”

But the biggest change of all in Shamas’ life since her audience last met with her has been The Change — better known as menopause — an event known to rock the lives of women of a certain age. And for those wondering where Shamas has been and why there’s been such a long stretch between shows, she answers with typical candour.

“I was morphing,” she says. “I was going through the change. That’s what this is all about and I wanted to report from a place of authority, rather than ‘What the f---?’

“It starts small,” she says simply. “You don’t feel right in your skin. (But) it’s tectonic,” Shamas confides. “It shifts your plates. It’s not a destination you would choose — if you knew.” But happily, she’s made it through to the other side — and partly because when she was at her wit’s end, she was also at Wit’s End. Or, as she puts it: “I had space — 123 acres to run around and occasionally strip naked and lie in the snow — just to cool off.”

The trip through the land of menopause proved to be less than pleasant in more than just the climate control department, of course, but in its wake, Shamas finds herself some place where she very much wants to be, both physically and emotionally — and it looks good on her. Her mass of Mediterranean curls is now touched with just a hint of silver and laugh-lines soften the angles of her classically chiseled face.

“My health is rocket science amazing,” she says. “I’m blessed. This,” she continues tapping her head, “is an idiot. It collates information and makes phone calls. “But this,” she continues, her hands sweeping down her still very lithe body, “is the magnificence. There isn’t a crack or a crevice I’m not in love with.”

As for her love life — hey, considering the title of the show, we had to ask — she’s on hiatus, she says, taking some time to examine the choices she’s made. “At 50, I have the emotional constitution to do that without rancour,” she says, adding she’s spotted a trend in her failed romances. “It turns out that the one thing they all have in common is me,” she says. “At present I am single, but I don’t think I will be for long, That’s my intuition.”

Meanwhile, my intuition suggests there just may be another show in the offing.