Fringe play takes a light look at feminism

(This article was originally published in the Aug. 6, 2018, edition of the Saskatoon Express weekly newspaper.)

By Shannon Boklaschuk

What do campfire songs, gender roles, friendship and puppets have in common?

Audience members will find them all in Pack Animals, the latest production from Saskatoon-based Scantily Glad Theatre. Billed as a “raunchy feminist comedy,” Pack Animals is running until Aug. 11 as part of the annual Nutrien Fringe Theatre Festival.

“I think we want the audience to know that we’re playing – we’re playing with a lot of the concepts of gender and sort of trying to turn them on their head and make fun of them, but in a really light-hearted way,” said S.E. Grummett, a Saskatonian and University of Saskatchewan drama graduate who co-created Pack Animals with Holly Brinkman from Victoria, B.C.

“I think we say some really true and some really poignant things, but all couched in just the silliest, campiest, over-the-top sort of clowning humour – just this idea of something that can be really, really political and say something really important but not take itself too seriously at all,” Grummett added.

Scantily Glad Theatre was founded in 2014 to promote the work of female/woman/femme and queer artists in the community. The emerging independent theatre company is known for taking risks and challenging artists and audiences alike.

Grummett previously toured Canada and the U.S. with her hit feminist comedy SCUM: a manifesto. That production focused on American radical feminist Valeria Solanas, who is known for her attempt to assassinate renowned artist Andy Warhol in 1968. Another of Grummett’s recent co-creations, the horror play Girl in the Box, was nominated for Best English Production at the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival.

Brinkman is also no stranger to the Fringe circuit; she previously toured Canada with her one-woman show, A Woman’s Guide to Peeing Outside. It was actually at the Montreal Fringe Festival in June 2017 that Grummett and Brinkman first met. They hit it off, and were soon writing Pack Animals together at a cabin in Saskatchewan. That initial collaboration occurred in April 2018, with Brinkman returning to Saskatoon in July to join Grummett in rehearsing for the show and building sets, costumes and puppets.

When asked how the audience will respond to Pack Animals, Grummett said: “I guess we’ll find out.”

“I’ve done feminist shows in the past, and it can be really hit or miss, depending on who’s in the audience, what moments land and what sort of ideologies and preconceptions people come into the show with. But that’s always fun to break those pre-existing notions of gender and feminism,” said Grummett.

Brinkman said she wants audience members to initially see the show as fun, but then to think a little more deeply in the days that follow about some of the comments and jokes in the play.

“I think humour is a really great way of making politics and big identity politics – like feminism and the concept of gender binaries – more accessible to an audience and more accessible to a community,” said Brinkman.

“I think that it’s also just a really good reminder to people that it’s OK to use humour to diffuse tense situations or to protect yourself in tense situations – and I think that there’s a lot of material in here that people can use to kind of get themselves out of a conversation that they don’t want to be in or a situation that they don’t want to be in, and use humour to do that.”

Pack Animals is the latest in a string of creative endeavours for Grummett, who has been busy since graduating from the U of S in 2016. Recently she was hired through an emerging artist program to serve as assistant director on the Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan production of Titus A. puppet revenge, working alongside director Will Brooks. And, because of her past experience working with Wide Open Children’s Theatre, Grummett was also involved in building puppets for Titus.

“I learned a lot of good skills,” she said.

What Grummett enjoys most about theatre is telling stories. Performing in Fringe shows and creating her own work offers her the opportunity to “tell a story from its conception all the way through to putting it on stage and being in it – and building everything.”

“It’s really cracking the story and making it your own and sharing it with others,” she said.

Pack Animals will show at The Refinery, located at 609 Dufferin Ave., on Aug. 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11. Tickets are $15. For more information about the Nutrien Fringe Theatre Festival, including how to purchase tickets, go online to www.25thstreettheatre.org.

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