Fresh Meat is an opportunity for theatre artists to premiere entirely new works for an audience.
From Oct. 11-20, the festival aims to offer Ottawa theatre creators the chance to test out original 20-minute pieces in front of an audience for the first time. The works that are selected must innovate beyond traditional theater.
Olive is a storytelling and cooking show by Carleton student Sarah Haley. Haley’s piece centres around the life of her grandfather, a refugee who had started a new life in Canada. The show touches on themes of cultural ties that drift in and out of visibility and tangibility—all while Haley makes hummus, za’tar, and other dishes rooted in Middle Eastern culture.
“In my show, I use food as a way to access and understand my culture and my identity,” Haley said. “By exploring the concept on stage, I am able to use it as a tool to send a message, and to tell a story that is hard for me to tell.”
Actor Maryse Fernandes shared a story of the mental health system in her show Happy To Be Here with a full face of clown makeup and a number of jokes that had the audience laughing uncontrollably.
Husk, created by University of Ottawa student Montana Adams, weaved stories of Adams’ Indigenous roots throughout a series of speeches and dialogues on the difficulty of loving oneself. Each one of the shows took the concept of identity and deconstructed it in a unique way.
Outside of the main stage, what would usually be a storage closet became an ancillary performance space called the Little Black Box, which this weekend was home to Caterina Fiorindi’s interactive show [closeted].
“I came up with the concept of [closeted] because I wanted to confront my own notions of sexual identity and how it’s presented,” Fiorindi said. “I was a queer femme in the closet because I felt that the way I look doesn’t lineup with how a queer woman ‘should’ look like.”
Allowing audiences of only two at a time, the show involved helping Fiorindi choose an outfit and having a conversation on the relationship between image and sexuality.
“I don’t look queer to most people and there is a physical stereotype associated with how queer women look like,” Fiorindi said. “But this weekend also reaffirmed for me that it doesn’t matter, I’m still a queer woman and identity and how it’s presented is personal.”
Photo by Ming Wu
