I Just Read About That…

[DID NOT ATTEND: May 21, 2022] Scott Thompson and Paul Bellini: An Evening with Mouth Congress

I love PhilaMOCA and can’t believe how many of their shows I’ve had to miss since they reopened.

Of course this one I wouldn’t have missed ina million years.  Except I didn’t even HEAR about it until it was long sold out.  [Plus, we went to Music Man on Broadway so I wasn’t around].

So what the hell was this?  And are you telling me that for an extra $15 I could have met a Kid in the Hall?

PhilaMOCA is excited to host The Kids in the Hall’s Scott Thompson and KITH writer Paul Bellini for a documentary screening and reunion performance of their 1980s gay punk band Mouth Congress! This is not a tour, this is a one-off just for Philly proudly organized in-house by PhilaMOCA!

The event will feature a screening of the pseudo-documentary MOUTH CONGRESS followed by a live performance, sketches, and a Q&A with Thompson and Bellini.

About Mouth Congress:
Mouth Congress was formed in a basement in November of 1984 when Paul Bellini rented a beatbox from an audio store. He wanted to experiment with sounds and try his hand at songwriting with his sister’s boyfriend, guitarist Rob Rowatt, and her high school buddy, bassist Gord Disley. Their cacophony immediately drew the attention of Scott Thompson, who at the time was on the cusp of joining a local comedy troupe called The Kids in the Hall. Since they only had the beatbox for a month, they recorded dozens of sketches for songs. Then, about ten months later, they made their stage debut with Brian Hiltz’s band I Want functioning as back-up. From start to finish, Bellini either tape-recorded or video-taped everything the band ever did, from jam sessions to costume fittings to lyric-writing sessions to live shows. This dragged on for about 4 years, so you can imagine how much media he accumulated. But by 1991, both Thompson and Bellini were so preoccupied with their work on The Kids in the Hall television series that they quietly put all the Mouth Congress media into a deep, dark hallway closet. They didn’t forget about it, though. For years, Bellini pondered the idea of making a film about the band. Then, in 2011, he dug all this stuff out of the closet, showed it to Thompson, and the two men set about trying to shape it all into something.

Synopsis:
It’s a cold, snowy night in Toronto. Melancholy, an 8-year old girl, is spending the night at her Uncle Kevin’s place. Uncle Kevin is Kevin McDonald of The Kids in the Hall. After a day of Josef von Sternberg cosplay (he dons an ape suit like Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus), Uncle Kevin sets Melancholy up in his den to watch a DVD of a movie he was in called Lilo & Stitch.

But Melancholy isn’t interested in Lilo & Stitch. Instead, she finds an old VHS tape labelled Mouth Congress and her curiosity gets the best of her. As she watches the first five minutes of this bizarre rock band on stage, she is captivated. Kevin catches her in the act and admonishes her for snooping, but she is hooked. For a bedtime story, she insists on being told the history of Mouth Congress.

NOTE: There will no longer be a 10:00 PM performance (no controversy, the performers just want to put their all into a single performance).
Admission is $40, Admission + post-show Meet & Greet is $55