Tag: Ottawa Fringe 2012

The Walk elicits differing views on this difficult subjet of women in the sex trade.

The Walk elicits differing views on this difficult subjet of women in the sex trade.

A subject matter that has attracted social workers and social scientists of all disciplines from around the world:  research into the world of the sex trade, the sexual slavery of women and the trafficking of women. The subject matter, which is not new, has been the object of plays, films and many studies. Yet, in spite of all the interest and the outrage, the practice continues.

Since that is the case, what is the aim of another play about the same subject? What does this team want to capture. What do they want us to feel or see or understand?  That is the real question here. Why this play?

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Mabel’s Last Performance : Beautiful Study of a Mind Losing Its Bearings.

Mabel’s Last Performance : Beautiful Study of a Mind Losing Its Bearings.

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A most beautifully written monologue by a surprisingly young and obviously talented Megan Piercey-Monafu.  Mabel, a “young sixty” and  former actress whom we meet in a nursing home,   is preparing to don a beautiful costume, walk past the nurses and disappear into the night!  Her final performance! “Heroes” comes to mind but it evolves in a different way.

Mabel, slowly floating away into Alzheimer’s, is caught in her own mind   where  beautiful memories, confused dreams,  theatrical characters and a shifting present  show us  that she is  drifting  somewhere in a complex in-between reality that recreates its own special links with the world.  She dialogues with her former lover, as easily as she does with Nina (the Seagull), Cleopatra (Shakespeare) Joan of Arc (Shaw) and Hedda Gabler (Ibsen) and with Susan in the Nursing home, who comes and goes but who’s “reality” is not any more obvious than that of the theatrical characters who have lived with Mabel her whole life.

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Dead Wrong is dead right.

Dead Wrong is dead right.

 

Dead Wrong is dead right in every aspect. The simplicity and clarity of both writing and presentation enhance the complexity of the issues under discussion. The straightforward, high quality performance by writer/performer Katherine Glover is simply riveting. The compelling storyline is a young woman’s recounting of a horrific rape and its aftermath. As she says, henceforth, her life is sharply divided—life before and after the assault. Then, some years later, she discovers that she may have misidentified her attacker and may, therefore, have ruined an innocent life and that of his family.

Just how can she ever put matters right, if she was, indeed, dead wrong?

Go — run, don’t walk — to this show to find out.