Toronto Star - Apr. 9, 2002
Singing out with the voices of many women
Susan Walker ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER

"Visceral" is a word that comes to mind when the subject is Fides Krucker. So is "sensual." Reviewers of Krucker's singing performances have often noted her range of primal sounds and bizarre utterances, forms of expression that seem to have their source in parts of the body way beyond the voice box. Her first one-woman show, The Girl With No Door On Her Mouth, opening tomorrow night in Theatre Passe Muraille's Backspace, is designed as an intense experience in an intimate space.
Talking about her concept for the show, Krucker says it is an opportunity to cast herself in roles that seem to speak most personally about her, especially the title work, which she commissioned from composer Wende Bartley. The libretto comes from the work of Montreal poet Anne Carson, whom Krucker contacted six years ago, after identifying a kindred spirit. Carson's work, Krucker says, "spoke to me on an emotional level around the themes of women, voice, body, sex and relationship." Krucker mentions the association between a woman's two mouths, the one that sings and the one that's unmentionable, and the links between the historic suppression of women's voices and their sexuality.
One segment of the new work is inspired by ritual cries made by women, a kind of singing, Krucker says, "that could denote great pain or great pleasure." In Krucker's experience, female vocal expression was not something to be encouraged. Born in Montreal and raised there and in Northern Ontario, Krucker was the daughter of Swiss immigrants to Canada. Her family owned a bakery that she was later to manage before singing took continued her into another world at the age of 21.
One of her first realizations that she might have an unusually powerful voice came when she was in Brownies and received a reprimand from Brown Owl for singing "O Canada" too loudly. ()