MONTREAL August 2007 – Being a Diva can be murder… C’est Cheese Productions is excited to announce the premiere run of Saving Céline at the start of this Autumn’s theatre season. The legendary Mado makes her English stage debut leading a cast of 6 actors playing 25 roles in this darkly comic thriller about an obsessive Céline Dion impersonator (and namesake) who uncovers a sinister conspiracy.


Playwright Mark Watty sums up his take on today’s celebrity worship, “In the age of YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, if everyone can have Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes then what really matters? Here, Mado’s character Céline doesn't emulate Céline Dion because she wants her acclaim, but rather everything else that she thinks comes with the package - acceptance, security and a sense of purpose. Director David Pelligrini concurs, “I would like audience members to recognize the degree to which they too might be star-struck; that there is a general overemphasis on popular culture rather than on other important issues which face us today.” However Watty stresses that Saving Céline is also, “a wink and a smile to the wonderfully eccentric characters that make Montreal unique”.


Pelligrini was also fascinated by another facet of the show - the drag element - having never worked in this arena before. “I was aware of the very specific traditions and techniques associated with this form. For example, the greater part of the history of western theatre involved drag performance, as women were not allowed on the stage until the 17th Century.” Working with Mado, talking to the performers backstage at her cabaret and viewing the tremendous variety of approaches to drag performance has been a revelation to him.


Mado is enthusiastic about being part of this cast, "It's a big challenge for me to do my first major role in a play, especially in English and even more so, having to impersonate someone who worships Céline Dion. It’s no secret that Mado has been poking fun at Céline for many years!”


The creative and production credits include: Scenic Design by Greg Thompson; Costume Design by Mado’s personal costume designer, Daniel Serrurier; Lighting Design by Cara De Grandpre, Multimedia Design by Stuart Wheeler; Original Video Sequences by Tristan Brand; Sound Design by Patrick de Moss. The Production Stage Manager is Katharine Childs; the Assistant Stage Manager/Props Master is Victoria ‘Torie’ Martin Mackay. The Production Manager/Technical Director is Nanette Soucy.

"I think there’s a little Céline in all of us and if we just let ourselves reach for it, even the most ordinary person can do the most extraordinary things.”

Mark Watty is a writer-producer for the stage and screen with over 40 production credits to his name in a career that has spanned two decades and continents. While still at City University in London England, Mark worked in his first production role on the legendary UK premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s The Frogs, directed by John Gardyne. Since then, Mark has worked on numerous productions in the UK and North America including Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, The King and I, Grand Hotel, Buddy–The Buddy Holly Story, Defending the Caveman, Blast!, Disney on Ice, Pageant, West Side Story, Camelot, Twelfth Night, Barry Manilow’s Copacabana, Fame, Great Balls of Fire, James Bond’s License To Thrill, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial By Jury, Misery starring Sharon Gless, Dames at Sea and the BBC Pictures feature film Caught in the Act on which he was Executive Producer. Mark has also served as a consultant to Walt Disney Theatrical Productions and as Music Theatre Director for The Covent Garden Festival, under the patronage of the late Diana, Princess of Wales. For the last few years Watty has focused on writing projects- studying with the Emmy award winning television sitcom writer Mort Scharfman in New York and former Cheers staffer Jeff Clinkenbeard in LA. Watty’s next project, the stage musical adaptation of Paramount Picture’s iconic 80’s film Flashdance, is scheduled for a July 2008 opening in the UK.

David Pelligrini has directed numerous productions including Blood on a Cat's Neck (Fassbinder), Kasper (Handke), Enrico IV (Pirandello), and A Dream Play and After the Fire (Strindberg). A founding member of Unseam'd Shakespeare Co., he directed acclaimed productions of Shakespeare's King Lear, an original adaptation of Henry IV (parts I & II) and Antony & Cleopatra, as well as John Ford's The Broken Heart, which toured to Edinburgh, Scotland. He was named Best Director for two years in a row by The Pittsburgh Post Gazette and his production of Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore was named Production of the Year by In Pittsburgh Magazine. In San Francisco he founded Scenes In Public and worked for such theatre companies as Theatre Rhinoceros and the Magic Theatre while working on degrees from Santa Clara University and San Francisco State University. He received a Ph.D. in Theatre History from the University of Pittsburgh and is Associate Professor of Theatre at Eastern Connecticut State University, where his recent production of Stephen Adly Guirgis's Our Lady of 121st Street was selected to be re-mounted for the prestigious American College Theatre Festival. He has published articles on Documentary and Japanese Avant-Garde Theatre and has coordinated artist, faculty and student exchange programs in Japan and China.

Mado is a major contributor to the annual Divers/Cité pride festival, organising and hosting Mascara : La nuit des drags for the past 10 years. This immense, free open-air drag show is the high point of Divers/Cité's entertainment and is one of the largest drag shows in the world, in the running with New York City's Wigstock. She also produces her famous Bingo à Mado around the province and every year at the Just for Laughs Festival. Montreal’s most colorful high-camp drag queen and famous diva for the past 20 years, Mado heads up some of the city’s craziest events as Queen of Kitsch. Inspired by the world of Michel Tremblay, she is renowned for her extravagance, vicious tongue, exuberance and wild, but always charming, ways. Her self-named Cabaret has been open since 2002. Mado is also an author, writing a monthly article for Fugues as well as having written a weekly column for Ici. In 2000, she published a collection of those columns entitled Tu vois ben qu'est folle (She's Obviously Crazy). She has also released a record album, had a cameo appearance in the film Saved by the Belles and was in the Musimax reality show, Des Gens pas Ordinaires. Luc Provost, Mado’s quiet alter ego, attended UQAM’s Theatre department.