It’s a testament to both the fearlessness of Peterborough theatre artist Sarah McNeilly and the subject matter of her bold new solo work Titty Cakes: A Recipe for Radical Acceptance that all five performances at The Theatre On King in downtown Peterborough from October 19 to 23 are already sold out.

Created, written, and performed by McNeilly and presented by The Theatre On King and Public Energy Performing Arts, Titty Cakes sees McNeilly interweave deeply personal stories from her own life, as a two-time survivor of breast cancer and a survivor of sexual assault, with those of Agatha of Sicily, one of the most highly venerated virgin martyrs of Christian antiquity and patron saint of breast cancer patients, rape victims, wet nurses, bakers, and bellfounders.

Born to a rich and noble family in the third century, 15-year-old Agatha made a vow of virginity to demonstrate her Christian faith. After she rejected the persistent advances of a Roman prefect, he first imprisoned her in a brothel and, when she continued to refuse to break her vow, he sent her to prison where she was brutally tortured — including having her breasts torn off with pincers.

The “Titty Cakes” in the title of McNeilly’s work refers to “Minne di Sant’gata” (“Saint Agatha’s breasts”), a traditional breast-shaped pastry served during the Festival of Saint Agatha, an annual religious festival taking place during February in the city of Catania in Sicily.

While McNeilly is not Catholic, the story of Saint Agatha provides an allegory for her own experiences as a survivor of sexual assault and as a survivor of an aggressive form of cancer that claimed McNeilly’s own breasts in 2016.

“I’m certainly no saint but a lot of my life experiences are surprisingly similar to Saint Agatha’s,” McNeilly says. “Agatha’s passion is unique. It’s not like other Christian persecutions. It has little to do with religion and everything to do with personal vendetta.”

A veteran comedy and stage performer who most recently appeared this summer in The Great Shadow at Millbrook’s 4th Line Theatre, McNeilly draws on her dark sense of humour and an inner capacity for resilience, using the recipe to embody her storytelling.

That recipe will also sees McNeilly attempt to bake “Minne di Sant’Agata” live on stage. Apart from the live performance, McNeilly will also host an entertaining online cooking show directed and written by filmmaker Michael Morritt where viewers can learn the exact steps to make their own “titty cakes” at home.

“As far as the comedic style goes, look no further than the title,” McNeilly says. “I still laugh every time I read it or say it. It’s true what they say — laughter really is the best medicine.”

While the 75-minute performance contains mature themes, with multiple trigger warnings (as well as an allergy warning due to the processing of food allergens including pistachios and almonds on stage), McNeilly also serves up comedy and moments of levity to the audience — as well as some sweet treats supplied by local artisan chocolatier Naked Chocolate.

“The act of baking and eating together is a really important part of this show,” McNeilly says. “It’s my own version of communion — a 21st-century healing ritual of sorts. The stage has always been my church.”

According to Titty Cakes director and dramaturge Kate Story, McNeilly’s performance will provide “survivors hope and inspiration to find their own ways forward.”

VIDEO: “Titty Cakes – A Recipe for Radical Acceptance” trailer

“We have worked with Kawartha Sexual Assault Centre and there will be active listeners in every audience should people need to connect with trained counsellors,” Story explains. “The show deals with some complex and difficult themes. But it’s also a very funny show. Like many survivors, Sarah is one of the funniest people I know.”

Local performer Linda Kash says McNeilly “offers eloquence, honesty, fierceness, humour, and humanity.”

“She is absolutely fearless, even when she’s scared to death,” Kash says. “I just know that this show will be a must-see for anyone who understands the transformative power of theatre.”

Titty Cakes has received funding support from the Canada Council for the Arts’s Digital Now Fund, the Electric City Culture Council’s Arts Alive Fund, the Ontario Arts Council, Theatre Trent, and the Peterborough Downtown Business Improvement Area.

“This is, hands down, the bravest thing I’ve ever done — and I’ve done two tours of duty in Cancer-land,” McNeilly says.

McNeilly will perform Titty Cakes: A Recipe for Radical Acceptance at 8 p.m. from Wednesday, October 19th to Saturday, October 22nd, with a matinee performance at 2 p.m. on Sunday, October 23rd. Tickets are sold on a sliding, pay-what-you-can scale from $5 to $25, but all performances are already sold out.

You can join a waitlist via Eventbrite in case tickets for a performance become available but, if you can’t get tickets, a free digital screening will also be made available in the near future.

For updates about Titty Cakes: A Recipe for Radical Acceptance, visit publicenergy.ca.

kawarthaNOW is proud to be a long-time media sponsor of Public Energy Performing Arts.

The Peterborough Theatre Guild’s first full production of its 2022-23 season sees the one-act play Our Place come to the stage at the Guild hall in October.

Written by Terry Gabbard, the comedic drama consists of five unrelated scenes featuring different characters — a group of teenagers, a middle-aged woman and her elderly father, a middle-aged man and his family, a couple in their 20s, and a teenage boy and his young sister — who all visit the same wooden dock that extends out onto a lake.

The motivations for each character’s visit to the dock are different but, in the final scene, the entire ensemble gathers on the dock together where, in a poetic epilogue, they all learn what it means to experience joy and sorrow, love and heartbreak and, ultimately, life and death.

Our Place was originally performed at the 2014 North Carolina Theatre Conference, where it was selected as “Distinguished Play.” It went on to be performed at the Southeastern Theatre
Conference, where it was named “Best New Play.”

The Peterborough Theatre Guild’s production of Our Place, directed by Tami Whitley and produced by Amy Willshaw, runs for seven performances from Friday, October 14th to Sunday, October 23rd at the Guild hall (364 Rogers Street, Peterborough), with evening performances at 7:30 p.m. on October 14 and 15 and October 20 to 22, and matinee performances at 2 p.m. on October 16 and 23.

Tickets are $15 for assigned seating and are available by calling the box office anytime at 705-745-4211 (leave a message if the box office is not open) or online at peterboroughtheatreguild.com.

kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2022-23 season.

It’s not lost on poet PJ Thomas that she is doubly blessed. In fact, it’s a most comforting circumstance she celebrates daily — and well she should.

Home finds Thomas near the Otonabee River. It’s where she does what she was she truly loves to do: daily put pen to paper. That’s blessing number one.

“I so love this town and the people in it,” says Thomas, providing a not-so-subtle hint about blessing number two. “The landscape and the geography, the heart, the connectedness, the arts scene, the encouragement that I could be an independent artist … I don’t have to pretend to be a mathematician or a scientist. I can be who I really am.”

Who PJ Thomas really is has touched a lot of hearts and minds.

Her newest collection of poems, entitled Waves, is a soothing, warm and self reflection-inducing lifeboat in a stormy sea of real world and social media ugliness that Peterborough playwright and novelist Frank Flynn describes as “A self-ignited three alarm fire at the corner of romanticism and magical realism.”

On Sunday, November 6th at the Gordon Best Theatre on Hunter Street West, Thomas’ poetry will briefly depart the virtual universe where it most often resides for the launch of Waves, her second book of poetry published by PAJE Press.

The 2 to 4 p.m. celebration of her work will feature readings by local champion poets Justin Million, Ziysah, and Jon Hedderwick with Dennis O’Toole gifting his musical talent. And maybe — just maybe — Thomas will read one or two of her own poems.

“I hope to have my anxiety under control and maybe read a few poems at my launch,” says Thomas, a veiled reference to mental health challenges she has wrestled with for many years now.

“I tend to write a lot of depressing poetry. I write about mental health and everyone’s issues with it, including my own. During COVID, I thought ‘Everyone is so sad right now. People are dropping like flies. We’re losing our loved ones.’ So I let the depressing poetry sit on the back burner for a while and tried to write some very uplifting poems. I like to think I achieved that.”

Mission accomplished, according to Flynn, who wrote the foreword for Waves, noting that Thomas’ ‘capacity to illuminate the subtlest corners of the heart will make you re-think what you thought you knew about poetry.’

Flynn met Thomas in person for the first time back in May when they were both involved with a reading event at The Theatre On King in downtown Peterborough.

“He tooted his own horn a bit, as we were all asked to do, but then he starts tooting my horn,” recalls Thomas of that encounter.

“I felt like making a joke, like ‘I’ll pass you a hundred (dollar bill) later on.’ I’m so highly complimented because he is a great writer. I say that about so few people. To read what he wrote about my poetry made me happier than a plum.”

Raised in Peterborough from a young age, Thomas’ resumé includes editorship of Arthur — Trent University and Peterborough-Nogojiwanong’s independent student press — and administrative involvement with Millbrook’s 4th Line Theatre early in its coming to be, as well as an associate membership with the League of Canadian Poets.

But writing has been her salvation and she has taken full advantage, penning two novels and publishing her aforementioned first book of poetry.

“Undertow was more heart wrenching whereas Waves is more beautiful,” she assesses, noting a planned third book, Drifting, will complete the trilogy, featuring “more love (themed) poems.”

“I’ve written so many love poems about so many people I know. Love is not all candy floss and sweetness. We need to look at the human condition as people with hearts and as human beings.”

“Undertow was basically (a collection of) my first poems. For Waves, I got to choose from a thousand poems. I hope it’s the crème de la crème, as they say.”

While the pandemic years provided no shortage of day-to-day challenges for Thomas, much the same as it did for everyone, she has emerged grateful.

“I didn’t lose anyone I know or love to COVID,” says Thomas, adding it was a productive period for her creatively,

“The creative spirit doesn’t go away during fear and darkness. Sometimes it can do some very healing things in those places. When we’re all going through a stressful time, we need to actively put forward good things.”

VIDEO: “Fundamental Nature” – PJ Thomas and Rick Fines

And then there was her collaboration with Peterborough singer and songwriter Rick Fines.

“Rick read a poem I posted online and wrote ‘PJ, that’s a song, I hear a rhythm in it,” recalls Thomas, noting Fines put three of her poems — “Live Forever,” “Fundamental Nature,” and “Scared To Dance” — to music, recorded each, and included them on his 2020 album Solar Powered Too, which was nominated for a 2021 Juno Award in the Blues Album of the Year category.

“He reached out to me and that got me writing lyrics with a couple of other musicians and songwriters,” says Thomas.

“It’s hard to describe the musicality of words. Not just the rhymes but all of the sounds (of words) — the phonics of it — and then to consider singing it. You don’t want a lot of hard consonants. You want the wide open vowel sounds. I look a little more at hooks and catchiness. When I’m writing poetry often it’s very emotional, but when I’m writing lyrics it’s a lot of fun.”

Of note, Fines’ 10-year-old daughter did the artwork for the cover of Waves.

“Her mother had kept all of her artwork, so I got to choose from bunch,” says Thomas. “She blew me out of the water with these abstracts, and the balance and the depth (of her art). We found an image for the cover that’s just phenomenal. It’s of the Aurora Borealis. She is so gifted.”

As her book launch nears, Thomas is as excited as she is anxious. Unlike the launch for Undertow, which was done virtually and has received more than 1,000 views, this launch is in person. That, says Thomas, injects “so much more emotion” into the event.

“A friend said ‘You can’t make showbiz out of poetry’ — what do you think Shakespeare did?” Thomas laughs.

“It’s very lonely being a page poet. There seems to be more community around the (poetry) slams and things like that. I’m older and more set in my ways of being a page poet. (Local poet) Charlie Petch launched a book and got me out to my first live reading in 10 years last October. I’ve done a couple more since.”

“These poets (at her launch) are just phenomenal. I’ve had the joy of working with one or two of them. Hopefully I’ll do a bit of a reading too but, to be honest, it makes me very nervous. We’ll see.”

Admission is free to the book launch for Waves, where copies will be for sale for $20 each, cash only. Autographs are available.

Ahead for Thomas is much more of the same: a daily writing regimen that sees her regularly post her poems on Facebook and receive feedback from her followers. As well, she’ll continue her work to complete Drifting for its publication.

Asked if she has written her best poem, Thomas gives the expected answer.

“How do you know? I think I’ve written it and then I top it. Hopefully I’m always improving and developing my work. To stay stuck in a rut is a certain death for artists. I want to keep challenging things — changing and learning and connecting.”

For more information about PJ Thomas, to read samples of her work, to order her books, and to support her by donating or becoming a Patreon patron, visit pjpoet.ca. You can also follow her on Facebook, where she debuts her work on a regular basis.