Earlier this month, theatre performers Holly Brinkman and S.E. Grummett debuted their first collaborative production, Pack Animals: A Feminist Sketch Comedy, at the Saskatoon Fringe Festival to positive reviews, but one co-creator said they had second thoughts right up until opening night.
“I would talk to other local artists that have been rehearsing for months before the Fringe and they workshopped their stuff and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, my show partner doesn’t get in until 10 days before and we’re going to panic-rehearse and we’re going to build the whole thing and it’ll be fine,” said Grummett, who hails from Saskatoon.
“But I definitely had this moment of, ‘Is it going to be a huge dumpster fire?’ and I’m so, so excited that it’s not and we’re already talking about next year’s tour with it.”
Brinkman, who lives in Victoria, said they were excited and relieved by the encouraging reception.
“[We] both came out of that show feeling like, ‘Oh my God, we did it,'” she said.
Due to time constraints, the duo, who met and instantly bonded at last year’s Montreal Fringe Festival, didn’t have many opportunities to work together in person. This past April, Brinkman and Grummett spent four days in a cabin in the middle of Saskatchewan, working 18-hour days and taking breaks to go snowshoeing to clear their minds.
“[We] started toying around with this idea of how she was a Girl Guide and I was a Cub Scout when we were kids and how gendered those two organizations are and the sort of discrepancies between the different things that she and I learned in those organizations,” Brinkman said.
“It ended up being less about battle of the sexes or battle of the gender roles and turned into more of a show about female friendship,” Grummett added.
By the end of the four-day retreat the pair completed their script and music. They describe Pack Animals as a “feminist sketch comedy exploring summer camp, gender roles and awkward sexual discoveries.”
With about a month to go before Saskatoon Fringe, Brinkman joined her partner in the Prairies to put the finishing touches on Pack Animals in Grummett’s one-car garage/studio. Together they completed their costumes and built puppets and set pieces.
“We had basically built, rehearsed, memorized, choreographed, re-wrote the show in eight days,” Brinkman said.
“We would rehearse for eight hours a day and then build for another eight hours and then sleep for eight hours,” Grummett added.
With Pack Animals a Fringe success, Brinkman and Grummett are taking their show on the road across B.C., with stops in Nanaimo’s Kismet Theatre Academy on Aug. 30 and 31.
“It’s a silly, high-energy slapstick show where we sing goofy ukulele campfire songs and we run around and we do silly choreographed little numbers but we talk about things that are really, really important… ” Brinkman said. “And we do that with such heart and humour that I think our show has a great potential to spark a lot of conversations that need to happen.”
WHAT’S ON … Pack Animals: A Feminist Sketch Comedy comes to Kismet Theatre Academy, 112-55 Victoria Rd., on Thursday and Friday, Aug. 30 and 31 at 7 p.m. Admission $15 cash at the door.
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