By Helen Musa

Imagine a ballerina who smokes too much, tells dirty jokes, and sometimes sprouts feathers. 

That’s the strange world of SWAN?, a one-person theatre show created and performed by Canadian artist Lauren Brady.

Part parody, part dark romantic comedy, the show twists the famous ballet Swan Lake into something altogether wilder. 

Brady plays a chain-smoking half swan, half ballerina who retells the tragic tale while wrestling with the big questions.

For anyone rusty on the plot, the original story goes like this. Odette and her companions have been transformed into swans by the sorcerer Von Rothbart. They can only become human at night. When Prince Siegfried falls in love with Odette in her human form, the villain intervenes, disguising his daughter Odile (The Black Swan) as Odette. The prince is fooled and tragedy ensues.

When I catch up with Brady by WhatsApp to Edmonton, Alberta, it quickly becomes clear that ballet was her first love.

She began training as a ballerina in Calgary and continued in jazz, contemporary dance and ballet. Ballet remained her main focus until something unexpected happened. She took a few acting classes and discovered theatre.

That discovery changed everything.

“I started learning about the Canadian clowning style of performance,” she tells me.

Driven by movement and imagination, the form gave her a new way to create. Instead of simply performing choreography, she could invent her own physical language and use movement as a tool for storytelling while devising her own shows.

Canadian clowning, she explains, is a little different from the better-known European traditions.

Most clowning styles can be traced back to famous teachers in France or the UK. One well-known figure is Philippe Gaulier, whose work focuses on technique and training. Canada developed its own approach through the pioneering work of Richard Pochinko.

Deeply emotional and often tragicomic, it encourages performers to draw on their own feelings and imagination.

“It’s 100 per cent imagination based,” Brady says. “In Europe the acting can be more technical. Canadian clowning is more about connection with the audience.”

That approach shapes SWAN?. Brady often breaks the invisible barrier between performer and audience, sharing the space with them rather than performing at a distance.

“What’s meaningful is that you’re sharing the stage with an audience that understands you’re holding that space together,” she says. “Every show is different. It’s a 100 per cent unique experience each time.”

The source material also carries a special weight. For dancers, Swan Lake is a cornerstone of the ballet world, famous not only for its choreography but for its dual central character. Odette is the White Swan, delicate and tragic, while Odile, the Black Swan, is seductive and dangerous.

Brady later noticed echoes of another interpretation of that duality when she saw the film Black Swan starring Natalie Portman. Although she only watched it after creating her own work, she recognised a similar idea. Both explore the tension between two identities inside one ballerina.

“I go back and forth,” she says. “At one moment I’m the young romantic excited about the art. At another, I’m a woman with experience. The show really comes from those two contrasting sides.”

Despite all the comedy and storytelling, ballet remains front and centre. In fact, Brady says the show could not be performed by someone who was not a trained dancer.

“The whole time I’m literally going on and off pointe,” she explains, referring to the trademark technique where ballerinas dance on the tips of their toes. “I use pointe almost like punctuation, a way to get attention.”

Throughout the show she breaks into several wordless dance sequences, reminding the audience that beneath the feathers and satire is a professional ballerina.

One thing viewers will not see, however, is the famous series of turns known as fouettés, the dazzling whipping spins that Odile performs in traditional productions.

“They’re so hard to do and then talk afterwards,” Brady tells me.

Brady is no stranger to Australian audiences. She performed at the Adelaide Fringe in 2024 and again in 2025. There the show caught the attention of Jordan Best, director of The Q, who invited her to bring it to Queanbeyan.

Australian audiences, she says, have been wonderfully curious.

“They were so excited and so keen to talk after the show,” she says. “Many told me they’d never seen a style of clowning like this before.”

SWAN? is at The B, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, March 25.