Thriving in a digital life

By Peter Paylor

Heading into last year, it seemed like Alexandra (Alex) Bell and Nathan Mahaffy were everywhere. Artists, musicians, improv comedians. Theatre creators both on stage and off. Co-producers, co-hosts, and performers with Night Kitchen Too, Belleville’s highly successful acoustic musical variety show.

The list of their accomplishments is long; their talents are vast; their momentum, it seemed, was unstoppable. The seventh year of Night Kitchen Too was chugging along nicely. They had opened for the Sadies in January with Bad Tractor, one of the region’s most popular live bands; Nathan on drums, Alex on keyboard. The band was gigging most weekends. Grievous Angels, NDP Member of Parliament Charlie Angus’s band, had released their new album, Summer Before the Storm, with Nathan on drums. There was talk of a tour in the summer. They were regularly performing improv with the Improvmonauts, keeping audiences throughout the Quinte Region in stitches. They were into rehearsals for Mamma Mia! at the Belleville Theatre Guild where they both had parts in the pit band. “The outlook on the calendar for 2020 was looking very, very good,” says Mahaffy.

“March 14, we played our last gig as Bad Tractor,” says Bell. “We played the Beaufort and it was eerie. We all showed up and we weren’t even sure we were going to play. That was on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon four of the five members of the band met because Billy MacInnis, Stompin’ Tom’s old fiddle player, was playing at the Old Church Theatre…the rest is literally history for the rest of the world. That was the day it all stopped…there were no more gigs, there haven’t been any gigs. And where are we now?”

Where they are now is online. “There was a good long time when we were disconnected from a lot of social media,” says Mahaffy. “That wasn’t our game. We were always well-rooted in nature….and just sort of out of necessity started more recently branching out into that world and now here we are in 2021 where technology is how we get together and how we communicate.”

By Greg Pinchin

As the technical director for the Belleville Theatre Guild, Bell has a great appreciation for the technical side of theatre. “You’re just this little elf hiding away,” she says. Since August of last year, she’s been heavily involved with the Guild’s one-act, online play reading series, first on Zoom and now YouTube. “Tech in theatre is sound and lights. When you are talking tech now, it’s computers and emails and Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. And so that became something that at first was a necessity, but then it became my outlet. I really have adored being part of these shows. What happened was all these creative minds kept collaborating and slowly but surely, we all learned the technology.” Mahaffy has spent the past year rediscovering his old love for 80’s-era video games, creating chiptunes which emulate the music from old video consoles. His album Songs for Baby Seals was released this year on Bandcamp through IdnitMedia under the moniker N8bit. “What I want to do is make people happy,” he says. “I put out an album that has a cute little seal on it that’s fifteen minutes of feel-good tunes.” In May he released his first music video, Orange Twilight, featuring Dreyfus the baby seal. “I guess my ultimate dream would be to have my music in video games and my art in video games,” he says.

When I spoke to them in May, Night Kitchen Too was about to go online as well. “It’s been a big change for us, adjusting to digital life,” says Bell. “We’re doing all of our art and music exclusively online now. It’s been an interesting year for us, a shift for us creatively.”

Joe Callahan

Bell talks about being part of a creative couple. “When you do create, not only do you get to do that, but there’s this beautiful thing where you get to watch the other person doing what they’re so good at and it’s awesome. I think we both really enjoy that, watching each other kind of find these pieces of ourselves.”

Bell was born into a musical family in Brampton, Ont., where she attended Mayfield Secondary School for the Arts, playing trumpet with the jazz band. She moved to Belleville in 2008. “I was not doing well when I moved to Belleville,” she says. “I had been going to the Organic Underground and there was a poster up for My Name is Rachel Corrie…I was new to town and thought, well, that may be a way to meet some people, so I auditioned, and that started a year-long journey.” Bell got the part in the one-woman, two-act show which eventually toured through Ontario and Quebec. “Rachel Corrie was an American activist who had been killed doing non-violent, direct human intervention in Palestine and Israel…That was it for me. I saw the power of what that art form could do and what the collective art making process could be and I was sold…getting involved in the magic of it, the collective of it, and the power of what the message of theatre can be.”

By Raul Rincon

Mahaffy was born in Belleville where his family supported his creativity right from the start, first as a visual artist and later as a musician. “Music being the steady backbeat pumping through,” he says. “Deep down in my heart I’m a drummer.” Mahaffy recalls the encouragement he received for a painting he once did as a child: “That was always something that I was motivated to do but also encouraged to do from the people around me who loved me. They saw that talent in me and nurtured it. It’s just always been present with me and I think, like many or any creative person, you go through waves of inspiration, and also things happen in life…when the stars align so that you can be a creative person…I always try to take advantage of those moments.”

By Nathan Mahaffy