OTTAWA – In a dire warning issued yesterday, Canada’s theatre students and their high school bullies joined together in pointing to Justin Trudeau as the single worst embodiment of what can happen when theater kids’ worst characteristics are not kept in check through light bullying or razzing.
“He’s like a textbook theatre kid who managed to go his whole adolescence without anyone ever telling him his idea for a one man show is maybe the dumbest thing they ever heard,” says musical theatre student Daniel Shaw.
“And now, he thinks every wet fart of a half-idea he has is the most original thing ever conceived,” Shaw added
“He’s clearly someone who grew up being able to routinely speak at length without ever once getting interrupted by someone yelling ‘LAMMMME!’ or ‘PENIS!’ at the top of their lungs,” says theatre major with a minor in buffon clown, Jess Martins. “Now he speaks in this overly-indulgent way with all sorts of dramatic pauses, over-emoting every word like everything he says is a soliloquy he’s delivering to a rapt audience of pretend-interested parents.”
“When we say Trudeau is what happens when theatre kids aren’t bullied enough, we’re not talking about beating anyone up” clarifies local high school bully Matt Atkins. “It’s more about creating an environment of healthy self-regulation. Trudeau is clearly someone who was allowed to freely sing the chorus of Cabaret down the hallway without ever once being lightly sacked in the nuts with a five-star binder. Now he thinks it’s OK to do whatever self-centred thing he wants and never gained that instinct to pause and think, ‘hey, maybe I just shouldn’t.’”
While some have pointed to media criticism and social media as a more than ample source of bullying / grounding for the Prime Minister, Canada’s theatre kids say that people like Trudeau learned long ago to ignore the critics.
“He’s what happens when you tell someone “great show” too many times when the show was actually total dog shit,” says frequently locker-stuffed theatre kid Jonathan Prince. “Eventually when faced with overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics but overwhelmingly positive but disingenuous feedback from friends and family, you choose the more comfortable false reality, and learn to permanently tune out any external criticism for the rest of your natural life.”
Some theatre kids who went on to become full-time actors stated that they too felt at least some of the blame for Trudeau turning out the way he did lies elsewhere.
“He’s the kind of guy who gets cast based on his headshot, and then when he shows up on the day he can’t act, but is convinced he’s nailing it,” says actor Catherine Yale.
“There’s a part of you that wants to blame him, but at the same time, if you cast him based on nothing more than a headshot and name, whose fault really is it?
