Way Off-Broadway Wednesdays isn’t pulling any punches in May.
The fringe performance series is continuing in the backroom at the Heritage Grill with a May 1st performance of Porn & Pinochet. The evening of storytelling features Andy Cañete, a Chilean Canadian comic and actor, who tells the story of coming of age as a child caught between two cultures.
As a press release notes, Cañete was “the only Latino in the whole damn school” when his family emigrated from Chile to the Canadian Prairies. A few years later, they moved back to the country of his birth – only for Cañete to discover that he was still the foreigner at school. But this time, the school was a conservative, right-wing Catholic institution that was sympathetic toward then-dictator Augusto Pinochet.
“Amidst themes of self-deprecation, the peccadilloes of a difficult family life, being an outsider and double cultural double-standards, Andy tackles both the risky (corporal punishment) and the risqué (“I wanted my first porn to be special”) with his knack for finding humour in rare places,” the release says.
Cañete will return to Way Off-Broadway Wednesdays for his sequel, The Cañete Chronicles, on June 5, which details his misadventures upon returning to Canada after he dropped out of university.
On May 8, audiences can enjoy Devon More’s Hits Like a Girl. More, who’s the creative producer of the Way Off-Broadway Wednesdays series, is offering up a glimpse of her latest musical storytelling showcase, which is bound for its Canadian festival premiere this spring.
“Imagine a week where you discover you scored the highest GPA of your university graduating class, AND your brain is seriously injured,” a press release notes. “Hits Like a Girl explores the neuroscience of memory amid moments of great impact while growing up with the cottonwood trees, along the Thompson River in Kamloops.”
The show features her signature musical set-up, with a live-looped multi-instrumental soundtrack, as she weaves together autobiography and songs.
Way Off-Broadway Wednesdays performances are at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. Admission is on a pay-what-you-want basis, and reservations are recommended at 604-759-0819.
See www.facebook.com/wayoffwed for all the details.
