Something completely different is coming to the stage at Peterborough’s Market Hall on Thursday, March 24th when Public Energy Performing Arts presents Alexis O’Hara’s OUFF.
The Montreal transdisciplinary artist’s solo performance, which premiered in 2019 at La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines in Montreal, combines cabaret, spoken word, stand-up comedy, and electronic music — along with larger-than-life video projection and giant inflatable sculptures created by her collaborator Atom Cianfarani — to deliver a message that will make you both laugh and squirm in your seat.
Covering themes of white privilege, late-stage capitalism, and perimenopause, OUFF is described as “the heaviest of sighs … a spectacle of confrontation by a solitary but fragmented femme negotiating her own role, as victim and victor, pawn and princess in a commodity-crazed-brink-of-collapse world propped up by the violent dominance of whiteness.”
“Ouff” (or “ouf”), which is the French equivalent of the English interjection “phew”, also has another meaning in verlan, a common French form of slang that involves mixing the letters in a word to create a new word with a similar meaning — in this case, “fou”, the French word for “crazy.”
“O’Hara’s double-wigged blonde white woman is a high-camp familiar figure spewing emotional excuses and social-media hashtags,” writes Robyn Fadden in a review of the 2019 performance. “She’s an angry, complicated mess we can’t take our eyes off of, whether she’s stuffing her elasticized dress full of balloons or posing selfie-like in video projections. Her confounded rage triggers a full-blown noisy, fleshy outburst across and beyond the stage.”
O’Hara’s hard-hitting performance in OUFF follows the French theatre tradition of “bouffon”, a style of performance work whose main focus is the art of mockery — one which in part has inspired British actor and satirist Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm).
VIDEO: Digital remix of OUFF for CBC Arts featuring Alexis O’Hara
“Set in an unsafe place between satire, observational comedy and scathing social commentary, OUFF makes us laugh, contemplate and cringe a little as an audience, not quite sure we’re in
on the joke or even want to hear the kernels of truth that make it work,” Fadden writes.
Born in Ottawa, O’Hara has been a transdisciplinary artist for 25 years who has presented work in Scotland, Austria, Mexico, Germany, Belgium, France, England, Ireland, Slovenia, Australia, Finland, Denmark, Brazil, Monaco, Serbia, Switzerland, the U.S. and across Canada. O’Hara and her drag king alter ego, Guizo LaNuit, are pillars of the Montreal cabaret scene. O’Hara has also published a book of poetry, released a number of solo music albums, and exhibited sound and sculpture installations in North America, Europe, and Latin America.
“We haven’t seen an artist like Alexis O’Hara in Public Energy’s 27 years,” says Public Energy’s executive director Bill Kimball.
O’Hara will perform OUFF one night only, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 24th, at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte St, Peterborough). Curated by Patti Shaughnessy, the show runs for 75 minutes and includes a 15-minute question-and-answer session following the show. This performance is recommended for audience members 12 years and older due to mature content.
In recognition that this is a time of particular financial difficulty for many, and with a goal of eliminating cost as a barrier to attending the performing arts, Public Energy has instituted a pick-your-own-price policy for the show. Tickets are available online at tickets.markethall.org. If you’re not yet ready to attend an in-person performance, the show is also being livestreamed through Market Hall.
On the day after her performance, O’Hara will be leading a sound production workshop for female, female-identified, and non-binary artists. “Noise School for Feminists” runs from 2 to 6 p.m. on Friday, March 25th in the lecture hall at Sadleir House (751 George St. N., Peterborough).
At this workshop, designed to approach live and recorded sound production from a creative and collaborative standpoint, O’Hara will help demystify a basic technical set-up for live and recorded sound production in a series of collaborative exercises to unleash audio creativity.
Tickets for this pay-what-you-can workshop are available at www.eventbrite.ca/e/293960312207.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a long-time media sponsor of Public Energy Performing Arts.
