ON STAGE
What: Intrepid Theatre’s OUTstages Festival
When: Through Sunday, Feb. 16
Where: Intrepid Theatre Club (1609 Blanshard St.) and the Metro Studio (1411 Quadra St.)
Tickets: $10-$25 at ticketrocket.co or the Ticket Rocket box office (1050 Meares St.)
Information: 250-383-2663 or intrepidtheatre.com
Intrepid Theatre’s OUTstages Festival has more fun during its two-week run than most festivals of its ilk. Guaranteed.
Drag, burlesque and musical theatre are among the offerings on tap at the hugely popular sixth annual event, which got underway last week a with a series of sold-out shows. The festival continues tonight with a staged solo reading at the Intrepid Theatre Club of How To Build a Home by Victoria’s Emilee Nimetz, the first in another run of queer theatre performances that should add to the festival’s growing legacy of fun.
Nightclub-style cabaret — less narrative and more thematic than traditional theatre, and less formal than burlesque — is a theme in programming this year, according to OUTstages curator and Intrepid Theatre co-artistic and marketing director Sean Guist. “It’s having a resurgence, as a performance style. It’s not just a straight play. There’s music, there’s movement, there’s dance and theatre. Cabaret can drill down to the heart of something and the audience will listen to it and pay attention to it more than just a straight play.”
OUTstages has a star-in-waiting on its hands with Pearle Harbour, the drag persona of Guelph, Ont., artist Justin Miller. Harbour is bringing her new “kitchen-sink” performance, Agit-Pop!, to the Metro Studio Theatre on Thursday and Saturday as part of a tour that took the Dora Award nominee to Vancouver and Yukon. A trained bouffon clown who is known for re-shaping songs by David Bowie, Judy Garland and Tom Waits with flamboyant verve, Guist calls her “one of the country’s next hot artists,” which falls in line with the longstanding OUTstages philosophy, he said.
“We bring the work here when it’s early, when the artist is on an upward trajectory. This is one of those artists you want to see now, while you can.”
Harbour’s return (following her OUTstages hit from 2018, Chautauqua) is one of many highlight-reel performances set to entertain audiences through Sunday. Identity is a big theme this year, Guist said, and Nimetz’s reading at the Intrepid Theatre Club tonight dives deep into the idea with her in-progress version of what Guist expects will be a full-blown OUTstages hit in the near future.
Nimetz has worked on the show since 2014 (including a residency at the Banff Centre), but it will be presented in 60-minute form for the first time tonight.
“It’s about moving past coming from a broken home, and how that fits inside you and how you make amends with that and make amends with your queerness,” he said.
“It’s going to be really beautiful, but really hard-hitting. We’re hoping that will nurture and supports more queer work on that level from local artists.”
The high-energy eat your heART out Cabaret, set for Friday at the Metro Studio Theatre, is proof that local support can be a creative spark to a flame. OUTstages favourites Salty Broad Productions and Riot Grrrls Revue, who drew raves and sell-out crowds during their Victoria Fringe Festival performances last year, are back with a deconstruction of love and relationships — on Valentine’s Day, no less — with their politically oriented production. Fast becoming one of the best draws in town, Guist wants up-and-coming acts to use the success of these two troupes as motivation for projects of their own.
“Through festival programming curation I really want to showcase local queer artists, and give them a platform to create and be pushed a bit,” he said.
It isn’t always easy, especially when the material is raw. Many performances at OUTstages are for adults only, with nudity and talk of suicide delivered in frank but refreshingly real ways, Guist said.
“Queer artists have always had that underground performances style, but that is becoming a bit more mainstream. There’s something about it that is an act of defiance in a way. You’re defying the mainstream, defying the norm and you’re able to explore darker subject matter.”
