Yellowknife (Jan 21/05) - Andrea Menard owes a lot to Velvet Laurent, her alter ego in her one-woman show The Velvet Devil.

The singer/actress from Saskatchewan has performed the show on stage, on radio, on CDs and soon on film, and says each new format meant picking up a new set of skills.

Singer/actress Andrea Menard in costume as Velvet Laurent, the 1940s jazz singer she plays in The Velvet Devil. Her one-woman show comes to NACC next weekend. - photo courtesy of Andrea Menard

"Velvet's been my emancipator," she laughed. "Velvet forced me to learn."

When she was here last January, performing in Brilliant Traces with Keath Schooler, she expressed the desire to bring her one-woman musical to Yellowknife.

Exactly a year later she's back with the story of Velvet Laurent, a Metis jazz singer returning to her Saskatchewan hometown for the first time since she ran away to follow her dreams. Velvet returns for her mother's funeral and while in town performs a show in the local theatre, which is the backdrop for the play.

"It's uplifting and emotional," said Menard. "Bring your Kleenex."

The music in the show is a mixture of 1940s jazz, blues and roots.

In Yellowknife, Pat Braden and Norm Glowach will be her backing band. Menard said the character of Velvet Laurent came to her after she had decided to stop singing for a living.

"I didn't want to be the diva singer," she said.

"But the singer came back as a character to play."

The show has shapeshifted over the past seven years. Menard first performed it at the Globe Theatre in Regina. Then she adapted it for CBC radio. Then she adjusted it again for a CD.

Last year she took the script apart and created a screenplay, an experience she said was "absolutely exciting."

"The one-woman play was hard to write because I kept wanting the other people to talk," she said.

After creating her film adaptation, she put the stage version back together and thinks it's now stronger than ever.

"I think this one is the most fulfilling," she said of the current stage script. "It feels quite complete."

Menard was born into a musical Metis family in Flin Flon, Man., but has lived in Saskatoon for the past 15 years.

She appears on Moccasin Flats as Constable Strongeagle on APTN and Showcase and toured with Tom Jackson's Huron Carole last year.

The University of Saskatchewan theatre program graduate will be spending a lot of time in her home province in 2005. It's Saskatchewan's centennial year and the province will host this year's Aboriginal Achievement Awards, which Menard will emcee.

She'll sing at the Lieutenant-governor's Celebration of the Arts, and has also been invited to perform at this year's Canada Games in Regina.