Slug Meal, part of Summerworks, is a one woman show presented by Camille Huang at Theatre Passe Muraille.  It’s a sort of dance X performance art piece inspired by unfortunate childhood memories of her mother’s eggplant dish, Western ideas of immigrant food and the idea of “dirt” as “matter out of place”

The highly athletic Huang performs an hour long routine, occasionally talking to herself in (I guess) Chinese and accompanied by a soundtrack that ranges from body noises to a kind of Chinese muzak.  Along the way she:

• Rearranges herself and three microphone stands in various patterns
• Takes her top off and dry humps a white screen
• Paints the white screens with more white paint
• Wanders around the stage muttering and throwing spoons
• Sloshes water over the stage and does water slides etc
• Now sopping wet she humps the screens again with their wet paint and gets very messy
• Simulates vomiting
• Cleans up with more water slides
• Energetically mops the stage with multiple towels and throws them around
• Replaces the microphone stands and herself where they were at the start

It just didn’t work for me.  I understood the concept I think but it didn’t make me care about it.  I wasn’t shocked or amused or titillated or enlightened.  I was just bored.  I think I would rather have eaten a slug.

Photo by Phil Latour.