Edgar Oliver’s voice precedes him. The man who makes vowels sound like moss trailing from a gnarled oak tree, the man who sets a scene in such a way that his audiences sit up and shudder, is in Vancouver this week to christen the Cultch fall program with tales from his haunted, bohemian childhood in Savannah, Georgia.
And the show might be titled Helen & Edgar, after himself and his artist sister, but make no mistake – like almost all of Oliver’s stories, this one is entirely about his mother, a woman so mythical and omnipotent he refers to her almost exclusively as “Mother”.
“Mother was an ahhhtist,” the poet and playwright begins when reached by phone, drawing his Rs like a paddle swirling through the Chattahoochee. “For me, Helen & Edgar is a portrait of my mother [who passed away when he was 27]. To me, she’s a central character in the whole show. And I hope it’s a very lovinnnngg portrait, you know? Although it does touch on dark things now and then,” he pauses. “Perhaps rather a lot...”
In his adopted home of New York, Oliver is a cult figure, an East Village legend (colourfully described by some as “Steve Buscemi playing the role of John Waters” and “a Personality with a capital P”) who rose to fame on the wings of The Moth – a long-running story-sharing non-profit and podcast based in New York.
Despite being hailed as one of America's leading storytellers, though, Oliver admits that it didn’t come easily.
“Storytelling to me is always very difficult,” Oliver reveals. “I don’t feel like I truly have a natural flair for it. So those stories that I’ve told at The Moth have always required a lot of work. And in some ways I feel like I became a writer and a performer because I communicate so badly by speaking,” he chuckles, “that I have to try to make up for it somehow.”
Everything in Oliver’s life is fodder for his stories, from the oddball neighbours in his old tenement building on East 10th Street, which inspired his sweetly sinister one-man show East 10th Street: Self Portrait With Empty House, to his teenage escape with his sister to Paris (they learned French and then ran away, much to their mother’s dismay).
With Helen & Edgar, Oliver, who gained further notoriety with appearances on the Discovery Channel’s Oddities series, has brought together stories that have been percolating since his debut at The Moth in 1998, into one grand experiment in long-form storytelling. Brought to the stage by The Moth founder George Dawes Green and artistic director Catherine Burns, who developed and directs Helen & Edgar, the show contains all the rawness and spontaneity of a night at The Moth, coupled with the most Mother-ly moments from Oliver’s life.
But what would Mother think of this? Because if people are paying attention, for almost 20 years Oliver has been painting a portrait of a very private, reclusive woman.
“She might be horrified,” Oliver admits, the word “horror” looming like Dracula in a crypt. “I really don’t know. I think she might be horrified. I worry about that a great deal,” he pauses, thoughtfully. “But I just try to think that I’m trying to create as loving a portrait as I can.”
