Where can you hear some great music, poetry, see some art and have a few laughs – the FemFest cabarets of course! Featuring an exciting mix of artists from all disciplines, these smorgasbord evenings are the perfect way to start and end the festival. Now is your chance to learn about the full line-up of our opening event, but also to get some inside info on the amazing artists.
FemFest Opening Cabaret – September 12th 7pm
Hosted by the fabulous Susan Tymofichuk, CTV
- Opening Welcome with drummers and singers: Cheryl James, Lisa Strong and Justine James
- KC Adams – Perception
- RED – excerpt from the play by Rachel Smith
- Teresa-Lee Cooke – prose writing
- Is It My Turn – a film by Shelagh Carter
- katherena vermette – poetry reading
- music by Karenina
- plus teasers from FemFest shows
You’ll get their full bios at the festival, but here’s some tidbits from some of the artists:
Rachel Smith works in theatre as a performer and director. She is interested in creating her own work so that is what she tends to focus on. She loves to travel and hopes to be able to travel with her work. If she wasn’t working in theatre, she always thought it would be cool to be a lawyer or a cop. She sees Rachel Adams playing her in a movie. She would like to “roar” about the importance of following your dreams, despite what other people say.
If she wasn’t writing Teresa-Lee Cooke would be “doing what I love now and living my dreams. Retired from working for anyone else; so can focus on home, family, and writing, researching, workshops and the occasional lunch with good friends.” Either Kate Hudson or Meryl Streep should play her in a movie, depending on which phase of her life. Here is her roar: “published six pieces in various journals/anthology/ books now and still working at it. Like to roar about the great feeling when people accept something that comes from my heart; life; and out of my head – can’t begin to say how much the support is appreciated. And Roar: This is my third FemFest – very appreciative and also humbled by all the talent I have been surrounded by and experienced in the past three years of attending FemFest and Sarasvati productions.”
Shelagh Carter would describe herself to a stranger as dwelling in possibility. She is living part-time in Dhaka, Bangladesh where her husband is working on behalf of garment worker safety. She made a documentary short film on Rana Plaza to support his work. If she wasn’t working in theatre and film she would be an astronaut. Laura Linney is her choice to play her in a film. She wants to roar about great friends and fellow artists. In terms of animals, she’d choose to be: “A horse and in particular the TV Star Fury- Happy childhood memories of that Saturday morning program where I fell in love with horses.”
Katherena Vermette is a poet, storyteller, all around truth seeker. Her main occupation consists of mostly driving teenagers around and cleaning up after crazy dogs. She would like to roar about Indigenous issues, the big gapping space where Indigenous feminists should be, traffic, grammar.
Christy Taronno performs and writes under the name Karenina as a piano pop-rock act. She also sings lead vocals in the alt-rock band SETTLERS as well as co-founding a local theatre company called Peachy Keen Productions. Karenina has a single EP coming out in the fall of 2015 called the True Life EP. Keep in touch by following the page facebook.com/musicofkarenina. If she wasn’t performing, she would “move to Banff, learn to snowboard, tackle the Olympics. -Actually forget the Olympics. Maybe drop the snowboarding too… and let’s make that Hawaii instead. Yeah. Yeah I’d move to Hawaii and do nothing. That sounds good.” She’d like to see what Danny Trejo does with the challenge of playing her in a movie and if she could be an animal she would choose Snoop Dogg.
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