I saw Fatuma Adar’s one woman show She’s Not Special presented by Nightwood Theatre and Tarragon at Tarragon Theatre last night. It’s an interesting blend of stand up, confessional and very loud music in a sort of rap meets rock vein. The comedy and the confessional element turn on the vagaries of growing up as a black Muslim woman in Canada who aspires to be a writer. Some of this stuff is familiar to anyone “in the arts”; the tick box nature of grant applications. “Tick, tick, tick… that’s sound of ticking the boxes… doesn’t work so well at the airport”. Some of t, like the throw away line there is much more about specific cultural experience. Also lots of jokes about “intersectionality”.
“An absurdist erotic lesbian love letter to the ocean” is how the programme describes Sara Porter’s show which opened last night at The Theatre Centre. It sums it up pretty well. Geographically it takes from a cow pond in Albertas to the Bay of Fundy and temporally from the creation of the Earth and the Moon to the present. And there’s lots of water. 
operaramblings 