WAH WAH WAH by Celia Green (In partnership with Paprika Festival/SummerWorks). At the Theatre Centre BMO Incubator. Aug 10 at 4 pm, Aug 11 at 3:15 pm, Aug 17 at 5:15 pm, Aug 18 at 3:30 pm. See listing. Rating: NNNN
Right from her unconventional entrance it’s clear that solo performer Celia Green has forged a fresh, inventive take on questions around harassment in the post #MeToo era.
For this highly physical show, Green combines movement, sound and text to offer up a very personal response to feeling threatened by men while growing up in Toronto and travelling abroad as a young queer woman.
By turns raw, fearful and even funny, Green bravely displays her own anxiety and neurosis. This is not easy work to create or watch, and director Bilal Baig often plays up the discomfort by inserting extended pauses in the action.
Green forces us to confront feelings and questions we ask ourselves in the aftermath of disturbing interactions. The audiences reaction is profound: laughing and crying with a deep sense of recognition, and on opening night, on its feet in gratitude at the end.
