Big Stuff – a must see! – and watching the joyful Swifties
Saw a fabulous play this afternoon: Big Stuff. It’s a partly improvised audience participation show at Crow’s Theatre by married comedian couple Matt Baram and Naomi Sniekus. The set is fabulous‚ a wall of cardboard boxes with stuff on them — many toasters, which is a recurring joke in the play, bronzed baby shoes, teddy bears.
The show is about the stuff we accumulate through life but especially that we inherit after the death of loved ones, and illuminates their marriage, because he’s in favour of throwing things out and she wants to keep everything. It’s very funny and also deeply moving, as they bring their four parents to life and say goodbye to them; I and many others had a few tears at the end.
They asked the audience to fill out cards listing one special bit of memorabilia, that they read aloud during the show, but they also asked us questions. They asked, Who has a collection, put up your hand, and when I did, Matt asked me, What is it? “Fiestaware,” I said (though there are others), and explained I’d inherited it from Great-aunt Helen and that some of it is radioactive because of the uranium in the orange colour. Uranium became a recurring joke throughout.
When I got home, I looked again at the contents of this house, overloaded with the big stuff from my parents and grandparents and even Great-aunt Helen. There’s so much of it, and I love each and every bit. My poor kids.
They asked the audience to email them pictures of their special big stuff, so I sent them this.
What matters far more than the Fiestaware is the artwork by Sam, Eli, and Ben.
On Friday afternoon, Monique and I went down to Front Street to watch the Swifties. Taylor Swift’s concert was starting at 6.45 but the crowds gathered much earlier. So many sparkles, dresses, coats, sequin-encrusted boots on little girls – a lot of money going to sequins – pink cowboy hats, heart-shaped sunglasses. So many dressed to the nines, including a few in ballgowns or princess dresses, and many in skimpy clothes despite the chill. What was notable was the giddy happiness in the air, and for me, best of all, the dads gamely accompanying their girls, including some in costume themselves. We went after for a drink in a hotel bar, and there was a family getting ready to go — Dad and his wife and daughters in bright shiny sequins. Now that’s something you don’t see every day. 
Tonight Monique and I watched some of Taylor’s film The Eras Tour. She’s phenomenal, with unaffected chat to the audience, an incredible spectacle behind her, and the body of – of a dancing, singing Barbie. One old woman apparently said to her granddaughter, Why does she only wear bathing costumes?
She’s the good news in this regressive, anti-woman time, an empowered self-reliant feminist superstar billionaire, and a childless cat lady to boot. The bad news is how expensive it all is, the tickets, the costumes. But still, an audience exploding with joy. Light in the darkness. I said to myself, as I watched the gleefully raucous girls and women pouring in to watch her, This is one reason Trump won — because men voted overwhelmingly for him. They’re terrified as they feel their eons-old power slipping away, and women growing ever stronger and taking over.
It can’t happen too soon.
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