Shadowy Selves, Part 2

by Tricia Dower

I first saw David Roche late last year in Bonnie Sherr Klein’s Shameless: The ART of Disability. The 2006 film marked Klein’s return to filmmaking after a stroke in 1987. (And, yes, she’s Naomi’s mother.) Roche, a humourist and motivational speaker, is one of five artists featured in the plays. When he gave a performance in Victoria a week and a half ago, I was there. It was only three days after I had first learned of Jung’s Shadow. How serendipitous, then, that David opened his performance with words to this effect:

"We with facial deformities are children of the dark. Our shadow sides are on the outside. And we can see in the dark, see you turn away. But we understand you turn away not from our faces but from your own fears. From those things inside you that you think mark you as someone unlovable. My job is to carry the weight of your fears.”

David is funny —“How do you tell each other apart?” he asks us — and mischievous: When kids stare at him, he’s tempted to say, “My face is this way because, when I was your age, I touched my wee-wee.” Mostly, however, he’s moving. The power comes from his willingness to put his inner and outer selves on display and his sense of theatre.

The stage is dark as he walks out and stands before a chair. A spotlight goes on and he lets you have a good long look at him before he speaks. His face is disfigured from a tumour that developed when he was an infant and the subsequent surgery and radiation treatment. He tells of applying for the Catholic priesthood and being turned down because he was too ugly. “The priest saying that was like God saying it,” he said. His self-esteem was shattered for years. He was thirty before he talked openly about his face to anyone other than doctors. It’s hard to imagine spending thirty years remaining quiet about something so defining, but, then, many of us avoid discussing our alcoholism, our drug addiction, our obesity, our suicidal thoughts, choosing to bear our shame alone.

Because of his face, David had no difficulty believing in the dark, monster side of himself. A belief in his inner beauty was more hard won. He and his wife Marlena Blavin give a presentation to 11-13-year-olds called Love at Second Sight: how they met and how she fell in love with the inner man. With that age group, “it’s all about appearance,” he says, and giving them a different perspective makes him feel useful. Adults who hear him speak tell him he’s inspirational and that keeps him going, as well.

I couldn’t help recalling a young man I knew in the ‘70s when I worked for an insurance company. He was the spokesman for a fire safety campaign we developed and he toured around the country for us, warning people about the dangers of fire. It gave him a sense of mission. He had been horribly burned in a crib fire when he was two-years-old, in the days before fire-retardant pyjamas. It was hard to look at his face. He took his own life a few years after I met him.

David says he’s accepted his face and looks at it as a gift. I want to believe that.

Photo of David Roche by Kathleena Gorga.