Event

Charisma Furs - Katie Sly

A first time submitting to a dominatrix. A surprise win in a schoolyard soccer game. A barely-attended poetry reading that changes everything. A party that plays Ginuwine's Pony every hour, on the hour. Using Katie Sly's history of infatuation, abandonment, desperation, and ecstasy as source documents, Charisma Furs is a performative archive of Katie's difficult relationship with love. This show looks at growing up on social assistance as a woman in an oppressively patriarchal environment, coming out as queer, and exploring sexual masochism, with a few poetic pit-stops in between. It explores that an honest portrayal of an existence is not one narrative, but a collection of narratives, and as the collection grows, the portrait of an identity transforms. The truth of who a person is lies not in arrival at some end point, but in the constant process of transformation.

Katie Sly is a playwright, performer, and visual artist. Their performance and writing explores non-normative expressions of sexuality, gender, and the search for agency and authenticity. They have been in playwriting units at Tarragon Theatre, Nightwood Theatre, and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Katie's video art has been shown internationally, and their solo show Charisma Furs debuted at the 2015 SummerWorks Performance Festival and then toured to Vancouver's 2016 rEvolver Festival. Katie is the winner of Canada's 2016 Wildfire National Playwriting Competition, with their play Serenity Wild. Katie is the recipient of Buddies in Bad Times Theatres 2016 Queer Emerging Artist Award, which annually recognizes the achievements of queer artists who are founding careers in the theatre while engaging with the community.