For the love of the kid: meet Patricia Zentilli, star of The Pink Unicorn at Northern Light Theatre

The woman we meet in The Pink Unicorn is a small-town Texas widow, a very conservative very religious church-goer whose world suddenly hits major turbulence when her teenage daughter announces she’s gender-queer. Not only that, Trish’s 14-year-old kid wants to start a gay-straight alliance at school.

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The character is a test-case for bonding with the audience, says Patricia Zentilli who plays the unlikely activist Trish in the funny, poignant piece by the  Canadian-born American writer Elise Forier Edie that launches  Northern Light Theatre’s 50th anniversary season. “She’s very flawed. She can be judgmental. She can be racist. She can be able-ist. She says fat-phobic things…. And somehow you love her. Somehow you’re rooting for her;, you care about her….” Tricky, that, as Zentilli points out .

“She has to really negotiate her child’s coming out. It affects her relationship with her church, her community, her child’s school, her own mother….” Trish is caught between her own beliefs, the instant hostility of her entire social milieu, and her renegade daughter. This unlikely activist has a lot to lose by standing up for her kid.

Ten years ago Northern Light Theatre introduced us to Trish, in a Trevor Schmidt production that was a critical and popular hit. It was indisputably relevant then. And needless to say it hasn’t lost its currency a decade later. Au contraire. “It’s even more timely now,” says Zentilli, “with all that’s happening with this government.” The Alberta government’s strident anti-trans legislation agenda and their threatened use of the Notwithstanding clause, the escalating politicization of health care, not to mention the rise in homophobia, and the general drift right, have taken care of relevance.

The Pink Unicorn has been on Zentilli’s mind for a while. She auditioned for the role 10 years ago, and didn’t get it. “Then I went to see (Trevor Schmidt’s production). And Louise Lambert was terrific!” She laughs. “When you don’t get a role you really wanted and then you go to the show and you think ‘well, they made the right choice’….Louise was so beautiful in the role.”

“For me as the mother of a queer teenager, it means so much more to me now,” she says. “That was another reason I loved it last time…. I have become an activist because of my child and her rights. It’s even more poignant now. I’m so grateful to be able to do it.”

“This mother does not do everything perfectly,” she says of Trish. “In fact, she messes a lot of things up. She gets her kid’s pronouns wrong…. But she loves her kid. And she has a real transformation by the end of the show; she grows a lot.”

A theatre artist of startling versatility, Zentilli, who’s originally from Nova Scotia, is perhaps best known to Edmonton audiences for starring performances in musicals of every size and shape — 9 to 5 to Billy Elliot — and cabarets, often of her own device. We’ve seen her as Audrey, the bruised flower shop assistant in Little Shop of Horrors, Donna in Mamma Mia!. She’s played Mrs. Cratchit in the Citadel’s musical account of A Christmas Carol. Hers is a resumé with its

She arrives in this her first solo show, from the Citadel/ Theatre Calgary production of the Broadway musical Legally Blonde, and a funny performance as a hairdresser with a tarnished romantic past and a penchant for Irish guys. “It’s a big gear shift,” she laughs.

And in November we’ll be seeing Zentilli in the much anticipated new Citadel holiday musical Vinyl Cafe, as Morley, half the Toronto couple (with Dave) around whom the quintessentially Canadian story archive of the late Stuart McLean revolves.

Appearing onstage solo is something Zentilli has done, to be sure, as the seasoned creator and star of many cabarets. And she loves “the joyful connection with the audience” But even in a solo cabaret “there’s a piano player to keep me company.” This time she’s really alone onstage, “and I’m a character, not me.” She laughs. “I’m amazed that my brain can do this. Wow, a 21-page script. How is this going to happen?”

Meanwhile, Zentilli can’t help thinking of Trish’s daughter, trying to start a GSA in small-town fundamentalist Christian Texas. “The bravery that would take…. And it’s dangerous; people have guns. Every kid is so different. Most kids who are queer and trans just wanna be kids, left alone, treated like everyone else. Which is what they deserve.”

“Ultimately this is a story about a mother who loves her child even though that child turns out to be very different from her.” The play “acknowledges the world is a dark place,” says Zentilli. “But luckily it ends on a kind of hopeful note. It invites the audience to try and operate from a place of love, kindness, understanding.

“We think, we cry, we laugh. And we might have a conversation….” It’s that kind of play.

PREVIEW

The Pink Unicorn

Theatre: Northern Light Theatre

Written by: Elise Forier Edie

Directed and designed by: Trevor Schmidt

Starring: Patricia Zentilli

Where: Studio Theatre, Fringe Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.

Running: Friday through Oct. 11

Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com