Saturday at OutFest

I spent the afternoon and evening at The Bus Stop Theatre today for OutFest, the Queer Performance Festival, which has been ongoing in venues throughout Halifax since April 21st. The last day is tomorrow, Sunday April 27th. 

Two of the shows I caught today are in very early stages of their development, so I will save more in-depth reviews for future productions down the road. 

The first show I saw was Cat: A Musical, written and performed by Cat McCluskey. If you thought one musical about Cats was sufficient… hold onto your tails because this charming little romp tells the story of Cat, a domestic cat, who yearns for a life of adventure outside. 

There is a lot that is already so fun about this little show. McCluskey has a beautiful singing voice, and the songs are jaunty and make you feel like bopping along. The cat oscillates between being standoffish and sweet, in classic cat fashion, and there is a lot of funny wordplay, especially in the song lyrics. In this iteration of the show McCluskey read the stage directions for the most part, but they all pose lots of hilarious and strange potential for an actor to really inhabit the physicality of a cat in a very self-aware and creative way. The cat’s bath song reminded me of something you might hear on a children’s television show. 

I was interested in seeing and hearing more about how Cat learns about their surroundings. How do they know so much about books and stories, for example? How do they know so much about the ritual the outdoor cats have with the moon? What makes them so sure they also have a relationship with the moon, despite being inside? 

Cat: A Musical feels like Cats meets Garfield and I’m here for it.

Cat: A Musical plays Sunday April 27th at 11:00Am at the Bus Stop Theatre.

Sara Porter begins onstage in Bad Poetry: Live in Halifax and talks directly to us about her relationship with what she calls “bad poetry,” which dates back to when she was a teenager in Halifax. She mentions Tristanne Connolly’s article “Falling In Love with Bad Poetry” from The New Quarterly, and how loving bad poetry can be pragmatic, it can be freeing, and it can be like being Queer. “What makes poetry bad?” someone asks from the audience, and we are suddenly submerged into the depths of the play. Porter begins to move. The way she moves in conjunction with the words that she speaks is fascinating, often unexpected, and absolutely mesmerizing. The audience gets used to the way Porter moves sometimes correlating with the various techniques of poetry she tells us about, and we begin to see how poetry might almost be translated into dance, or how a poem might be embodied by a performer. Then we see Jessie Garon rush backstage. Then we are aware that Jessie is onstage, unseen by Sara. Suddenly we are in a clown show. 

I found the dynamic between Sara and Jessie as Bad Poetry escalates more and more into a fun, physical romp with silly costumes and props, really interesting because the audience already has such a cemented relationship with non-clown Sara from the top of the show- and I have never experienced such an immediate imbalance of power between two clowning characters for this reason before. Together they continue to build, in a more creatively off the wall way, on Sara’s explorations of poetry and the ways in which our bodies can correlate with them to create something entirely new. Yet, like many clown duos, they are often at odds or in competition with one another. Sara seems more interested in the words, while Jessie is more interested in the movement. They find a lot of playfulness and humour in this tension. 

Bad Poetry is filled with evocative lines of dialogue and spellbinding moments of dance, but as cerebral as you may be tempted to delve in, the real joy is in the fun of it. It was one of those shows where I was leaning forward the entire time, as though Sara and Jessie were reeling me in by the heart. 

Bad Poetry: Live in Halifax plays April 27th at 12:15pm at the Bus Stop Theatre.

Lastly, I saw the staged reading of Peaches by Elio Zarrillo directed by Annie Valentina. I love the premise for this play so much. We meet Greg and his apprentice peach farmer. Something has gone terribly wrong with some of the peach trees, however; instead of growing peaches, Greg and his apprentice are harvesting a play? 

The play, we learn, is based on a story that Greg has been writing that is very personal to him. Greg and the apprentice begin to act out the play, which takes place in an elevator in a hospital, with Greg playing himself as a patient and the apprentice playing Prince, a nurse or orderly at the hospital. We begin to see parallels between Prince and the apprentice, and as the play progresses we understand that Greg is working through some repressed rage from a situation that has happened between him and his child. 

I wasn’t always sure, due to the meta-theatrical nature of the play, where the line was between the imaginative aspects of the story and reality. When Greg and Prince have their ideological debates I wondered whether Prince’s arguments would be so thoroughly accurate, given that they were actually written by Greg, and also whether he might play a bit more in his writing with the inherent boundaries that exist between a hospital worker and a patient, so we see their familiarity with one another weave into their conversations more gradually. 

Annie Valentina’s direction here in the ways that the characters create a set and props out of Post-It notes is both very funny and practical. Theofani Pitsiavas and Loren Baldwin both give passionate performances in this staged reading, and, especially at the beginning of the play, Zarrillo has some really excellent pacing of dialogue that sounds beautifully conversational between these two actors. 

I really look forward to seeing a future production of this play!      

Peaches has closed at OutFest.

For more information about these shows and more at the festival, and to book your tickets, please visit this website. There are shows tomorrow at the Bus Stop Theatre (2203 Gottingen) between 11:00AM and 5:00PM and then a show on the Music Stage at the Carleton (1685 Argyle Street) at 7:00pm.

The Bus Stop Theatre is wheel chair accessible and has gender neutral washrooms. The theatre also has an extensive accessibility page on its website for more detailed information.