shaniqua in abstraction is a one woman show written and performed by bahia watson that deals with her search for identity as a (light skinned) Black woman in Canada.  It starts with a casting call and works outwards from there.  She sings, she dances, she runs on the spot, She interviews characters who aren’t there and gets caught up in banal daytime TV shows.  If you can have a kaleidoscope in black and white it’s a kaleidoscope of experiences.

It’s very funny, raunchy, highly sexualized and, in places, very uncomfortable.  It’s not like anything really awful happens.  There’s no rape and no-one cuts up his father with a saw in the basement so, as far as violence goes, it’s pretty mild by current Toronto theatre standards.  (Trigger warning for reference to facial realignment). The language isn’t though.  There’s stuff one might hear in a rugby club changing room and some that would raise eyebrows even there.

It deals with serious issues like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and what slavery meant for a young black woman but it also goes off on tangents about blackness and sexual attraction where “blackness: seems to be more to do with how much fat a woman has in her buttock area than skin colour.  Plus the fraught issue of why people date inter-racially.  Her explanations make more sense and are far funnier than any others I’ve heard though naturally as a polite white liberal it’s not a subject I talk about much!

Bottom line it’s super high energy and very funny and lots of fun.  It’s well crafted with a some really effective use of projections by Laura Warren and a sometimes startling sound design by Thomas Ryder Payne.  The direction and choreography by Sabryn Rock and Fairy J add quite a lot to the overall sense of energy but in the end this is bahia watson’s show.  She puts her soul and her booty on the line and creates 90 minutes of effervescent comedy with an edge.  And it’s in the Studio Theatre at Crow’s so it’s upfront and personal.  It’s not every show where I get high fived by a member of the cast.

shaniqua in abstraction runs until April 28th in the Studio Theatre at Crow’s Theatre..

Photos by Roya DelSol.