Alex Apostolidis and Charvel Rappos are the brains behind the idea – creative soulmates and kindred freaky Greeks from Ontario. Apostolidis being a video-maker (iWant2BeOnTV) and the lead screamer of Montreal’s best pantsless hardcore band, Durex, and Rappos a world-weaving illustrator with a history of music-making in Halifax. Call it performance art, call it a concert, or just call it just another weird and wonderful night at Suoni Per Il Popolo. Madeline Lines sat down to chat with the duo for a sneak peek of the “Bee.” 

Madeline Lines: So, how did you two meet? 

Alex Apostolidis: We were just reminiscing about this. Our mutual friend Lucas was hyping Charvel up a lot, and I guess he was hyping me up to Charvel too. 

Charvel Rappos: I knew Lucas from Halifax through the DIY music scene, and Alex’s band had toured through Halifax. He was a friend matchmaker, if you will. 

AA: Then we met and immediately clicked. 

ML: That’s beautiful. What were your first impressions of each other? 

CR: Honestly, Alex was exactly what I expected. I know that sounds strange.

ML: Expand on that.

CR: Lucas had a very accurate read on Alex. His description matched almost perfectly. I also thought, “Another Greek weirdo from the GTA.” There are only so many ways that can go. There was an immediate, almost instinctive understanding. It felt embedded deep in our bones somehow.

CR: More generally, my first impression was that Alex was an artist I genuinely wanted to work with. We shared similar backgrounds, ambitions, determination, and a desire to push things further.

AA: I’ll admit that I’m usually hesitant when people say, “You really need to meet my friend.” My reaction is always cautious. But when I met Charvel, I immediately thought, “Oh yeah, this makes sense.”

I thought Charvel was weird in the best way, funny, kind, and genuinely interesting to talk to. Like Charvel, I immediately wanted to work on creative projects together and spend more time hanging out.

I remember that pretty early in our friendship, I asked, “Do you want to go on tour with me? Do you want to drive to Newfoundland and spend three weeks on the road?” And Charvel just said yes.

AA: I had a really good feeling about Charvel. A lot of people have ideas, but one of the things I love about working with Charvel is that we actually make things happen. We’ll come up with an idea and then immediately start figuring out how to realize it.

ML: How do these ideas for performance projects come to be?

AA: The Pony Show (The pantomime horse competition/concert from last year’s Suoni festival) started because I saw an Instagram reel about pantomime horse competitions. I thought it was hilarious. I brought it up to Charvel and said, “What if we did this?”

CR: Yeah.

AA: And then we did it. Charvel and I share the same drive to see projects through from beginning to end and not give up on them halfway through.

CR: For me, my performance background came mostly through playing in bands. I’ve spent years organizing DIY events and collaborating on projects, but most of my creative work had been in illustration, comics, painting, and drawing.

Right before moving to Montreal, I had been trying to push my bands toward more performative and theatrical presentations. Then my band fell apart shortly before I moved.

Because of that, I already had a desire to explore performance in a broader sense. I wasn’t specifically thinking about television or performance art as the path forward, but that’s where our interests ended up intersecting.

AA: One thing I should add is that when we first started hanging out, Charvel already had a lot of theatrical energy.

You have these little mannerisms, sounds, and bits that you do naturally when you’re being funny. 

CR: Sometimes it feels like I have bugs inside me that need to get out.

ML: Looking across your past shows like the pantomime horse competition, food fight, the hot dog eating competition, and now the bee, is there a common thread running through all of these projects?

AA: Yes. Almost all of the performances are under the IWant2BeOnTV umbrella, a video project I started that’s morphed into these recorded spectacles that incorporate music, competition, and audience participation in different ways. 

 

 

ML: Why are they all competitions?

AA: Pressure. Participation. Excitement. Spectacle. Competition creates immediate stakes. It gives people a reason to care about what happens next.

There’s also a practical side. A lot of these projects begin with little or no budget. A competition creates a structure where people can participate and compete for something, even if resources are limited.

The audience never fully knows what’s going to happen, and neither do we.

ML: Tell me a bit about your relationship to Suoni as a festival.

AA: It’s a festival that really prioritizes musicians, and prioritizes connection between musicians. There’s a communal dinner everyday and you’re encouraged to check each other out, meet new musicians. It’s always something interesting, there’s really no flop nights. It’s real music by real people. It’s literally in the name.

ML: So where did the seed of the spelling bee idea come from?

CR: The seed came from Alex pulling up with the Space Jam theme song playing and saying, “Picture this for the next project.” Then they yelled like: “Spelling bee!”

AA: That really was the pitch.

CR: My immediate reaction was, “No.” I couldn’t see what it would become, but Alex kept saying, “Trust me.”

AA: The idea itself is simple. With The Pony Show, people might not have known what a pantomime horse competition was, but once it was explained, they understood it immediately. 

CR: Exactly. People can latch onto those concepts very quickly. The audience comes in thinking, “I’m attending a spelling bee.” But once they’re there, you can take them somewhere much stranger and much more interesting.

AA: I do want to give credit where credit is due. A couple of years ago, my friend Fraser Place jokingly suggested that we should do an adult spelling bee. He had just been watching Letterkenny and thought the idea was funny.

ML: Shout out to Fraser.

AA: Absolutely. And the spelling bee gives us a framework for talking about consequence, authority, power, intelligence, and fairness. Those themes are embedded in the structure itself.

At the same time, the show remains entertaining, funny, visually engaging, and hopefully exciting to watch.

ML: This is a music magazine. If you had to explain the show to someone interested in the music part, what would you say?

CR: Imagine going to see your favourite band and discovering that there are fireworks, performers running through the audience, costumes everywhere, unexpected interactions, things falling from the ceiling.

AA: You’re still getting the experience of seeing a great band, but you’re also getting something much bigger. What interests me is everything that could happen before, after, and around the music. 

ML: So when you started bringing bands into this project, how did you explain what you were asking them to participate in?

AA: Some conversations were easier than others. I’d worked with Felix from Bastard Idol before, so they got it. Laughing had already been approached for previous projects, so they understood the general spirit of what we were trying to do.

From there, we started building the lineup around the atmosphere and narrative structure of the piece. We wanted different genres and different energies, while still creating a lineup where fans of one act would likely enjoy the others.

CR: These are all bands connected to our communities. They’re people we know personally, people who have played shows we’ve organized, or artists we’ve been following for years. Culvert Corpse, for example, comes from Halifax. I’ve known people involved in that scene for a long time.

AA: And Fraud Perry is actually acting in the spelling bee. It was a great opportunity to fully integrate the music into the performance rather than treating it as a separate component.

ML: So what I’m hearing is that some people could grasp the concept pretty easily because they already had a sense of the kind of work you do.

AA: Some people got it right away, but others definitely didn’t. In some cases it took paragraphs of explanation and a phone call or two.

ML: Let’s talk about the bands. Describe them in your own words.

CR: Maybe we should start with the house band.

AA: We haven’t even talked about the house band yet! The house band consists of saxophone, drums, and piano, and they’ll be performing throughout the evening. They’ll underscore scenes, react to what’s happening, and help shape the atmosphere in real time. Honestly, bringing them in was one of the best decisions we made.

The group is Goddard, Goodie and Hogan: local musicians James Goddard, Lucas Goodie, and Peggy Hogan. The funny thing is that they weren’t even a formal ensemble before this project. 

CR: They’re just incredibly talented musicians and improvisers. Watching them communicate musically was kind of mind-blowing.

ML: Tell me about Fraud Perry.

AA: Incredible energy. If someone hasn’t seen Fraud Perry before, I’d describe them as an exciting and energetic rapper. So smooth, and then it’s a bit like getting slapped in the face, but in a good way.

Then, Bastard Idol is disgusting, it’s music to peg to, like noisy. Felix is one of the best guitar players I know.

ML: Then that leaves Culvert Corpse and Laughing.

AA: Culvert Corpse is similar to Bastard Idol but if you like lived in the woods for a year. 

CR: Cody has been prolific for years. When I lived in Halifax, it felt like every year there were multiple new bands involving Cody, and every one of them was great. Across all sorts of styles too.

ML: And then there’s Laughing.

 

 

AA: It’s absolute smiling, driving a car around in the summer music. Your first bike ride of the season type vibe.

CR: It makes you want to jump from one foot to the other over and over again

AA: Charlie Brown-style.

ML: So why the spelling bee of the century, why not the decade? The millennium? 

AA: Well, I wanted to call it the “World’s Most Epic Spelling Bee” at first…

CR: I can’t with the epic anymore.

ML: So how would one prepare themselves for the Spelling Bee of the Century?

AA: Well, there will be a costume contest… We met someone at Conca D’Oro the other night who was saying they would dress up as nervous vomit, like they had alphabet soup for lunch and got nervous about going up on stage.

ML: So, will the bee sting?

CR: Oh yeah, it’s going to sting hard. People have not felt the sting. It’s almost like a wasp. It’s worse. 

AA: Don’t say like the hornet –

CR: It’s like the hornet. It’s like, you know how some people go to bee therapy? It’s like stinging yourself, on purpose, for your own good.

The Spelling Bee of the Century plays Friday June 26th at Sala Rossa, in Montreal as part of Suoni Per Il Popolo festival. Tickets are available online for $26.