‘A’ – Uptown Magazine

“Unabashed fun and full of life, but it’s also a pregnant pause that delivers a surprising amount of poignancy.”

FOUR STARS – Winnipeg Free Press

FOUR STARS – CBC

Meet Sammi Sam, a children’s performer whose life is perfect until one day she makes a big mistake. Find out what a sock puppet and condoms have in common as we playfully navigate The Big Oops.

Directed by TJ Dawe (The Slipknot), written by Canadian slam champ and Fugitive Brendan McLeod.

“Yeates is a revelation from beginning to end” – CBC

…
August 14 @ 2:30 pm
August 15 @ 10:00 pm
August 16 @ 8:00 pm
August 17 @ 4:15 pm
August 19 @ 12:30 pm
August 20 @ 6:00 pm

Venue # 2
Fringe Cabaret Lounge at the Transalta Arts Barns, 10330 84 Avenue (Northeast corner of Arts Barns)

Tickets: $12 780.409.1910 https://tickets.fringetheatre.ca/

UPTOWN MAGAZINE – ‘A’
Sammi Sam (Cara Yeates) is a cheery pigtailed kid’s entertainer, with a sock puppet boyfriend and a great life, who dreams of one day becoming the next Raffi. In Sam’s line of work everything is about lessons (“graffiti is for lower-class miscreants” and “hippies don’t pay taxes”) — and bouncy songs to go along. Even though Sam likes to play by the rules, she makes a mistake — and a pretty big one at that. While following the format of “lessons of the day” and “learning, yay!” Sam steers through her big oops and tackles grown up stuff in a way that’s educational (“Did you know that a condom can hold six litres of fluid? That’s a lot of semen!”). Yeates is funny, charming and a fine actor, too. – Julijana Capone

CBC Review – FOUR STARS!

Do children’s performers really act so peppy all the time? Sammi Sam does. In fact, her performing life is indistinguishable from life at home with her boyfriend Ben, who is very convincingly played by a sock puppet. Cara Yeates is bubbly perfection in Brendan McLeod’s play, which was directed by TJ Dawe. But all can’t stay happy in Sammi Sam’s world. As we go to the Destination of the Day, learn in Science Time and do Vocabulary words, her two lives start to clash. A message for kids about how stealing is wrong is juxtaposed with one that is more grown up – the importance of using condoms. Watching Yeates take her character through the evolution is both funny and touching, especially when her accompanying cheery soundtrack gets in the way of a tough decision.  -Anna Lazowski

The Winnipeg Free Press – FOUR STARS!

Children’s entertainer Sammi Sam could charm the birds out of the trees. Her singsong mantra is “Yay to life, yay to fun, yay to everything under the sun.”

But when a grown-up boo-boo pierces the façade of her perfect life, the pig-tailed people-pleaser is forced to put on her big-girl panties and finally learn how to put her own needs first. Vancouverite Cara Yeates is irresistible as the star of this not-so-innocent kiddies’ show, which uses Sesame Street conventions (live-in boyfriend, Ben, is portrayed by a sock puppet, and there’s a musical teaching moment about condoms) to tackle complex social mores.

Make no mistake about it: The Big Oops (directed by fringe superstar TJ Dawe) is unabashed fun and full of life, but it’s also a pregnant pause that delivers a surprising amount of poignancy. -Carolin Vesely

The Jenny Revue

Cara Yeates is back in town! She brought us the wonderful Knee Deep in Muck and Bye Bye Bombay, both of which I loved, especially Muck. This rapidly rising star in the theatre world has Fringe god T.J. Dawe directing this play written by the Fugitives’ Brendan McLeod.

As kids entertainer Sammi Sam, she uses her singing and dancing talents, and the audience joins in, too. The contrast between her squeaky-clean Sammi side, and her real life—kinky sex in the bathroom with her fertile, wannabe, filmmaker boyfriend, and real weighty adult dilemmas—is the crux of this play.  All this backed by quirky children’s repetitive soundtrack punctuations to all the meaty material. Go see it and keep an eye out for Cara in the future. – Lisa Campbell

The Big Oops is embarking on its first official run at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival this week.  Should be lots of fun!

Due to the amazing generosity of the Vancouver Fringe Festival, The Big Oops is going up for another night free of charge! And then TJ Dawe’s doing a first reading of his brand new monologue “Lucky 9″ at 8:30.

The Big Oops is at 7:00pm at the Havana Theatre. There will be a talkback to follow. Following that, “Lucky 9″. Again, all of this is for free. Holy cow!

Sam and Ben and the Big Oops

An original one woman/ one act play centered on upcoming children’s entertainer Sammi Sam, who lives to please and inspire everyone around her: the children she entertains, her long-term boyfriend Ben, and his affluent parents. When she accidentally becomes pregnant, she and Ben must choose whether or not to have a child during a financially and socially unstable time of their lives. The decision forces them to re-evaluate their life goals and their relationship to both their families and each other. Part naive children’s show, part interpersonal drama, Sam and Ben and the Big Oops takes on contemporary social mores with abnormal humour and pathos.

Lucky 9

This is the latest fast talkin’ monologue by fringe circuit star TJ Dawe. It’s about reaching out. It’s wait-listed for the Vancouver Fringe, so you might be able to see it then, but perhaps not. This could be your only chance.

We were all really happy with the workshop.   Brendan, TJ and myself have been developing the show in a vacuum since November.  To perform the piece with props, lights and sound in front of an audience was a truly exhilarating experience.  I think the best part was having people react.  What often happens during the rehearsal process is that I say the lines over and over and over again until they feel almost boring.  This part of why performing them in front of an audience is so invigorating.  Now that the first show is over, I look forward to developing more layered and complex characters through its next incarnations.

After the performance, we had almost an hour-long talk back with the audience about the show.  Once again, it was great to hear what people thought from an outside perspective.  Because it was a ‘workshop’ I think people were really open to providing their thoughts and constructive criticism.  Two of the biggest things that stood out from the feedback was that people didn’t quite get the main character’s transformation.  The other thing was the tone of the first half and the second half of the show are quite different.  As a team, I think we feel that we can work on making the bridge between these two acts smoother.  But through all the feedback, it was evident that people really enjoyed the piece which will really help inspire this next phase of development.

There will be a talkback following the play with the writer, director, and actress.

Tickets can be purchased online here: www.thecultch.com

Sam and Ben and the Big Oops

An original one woman/ one act play centred on upcoming children’s entertainer Sammi Sam, who lives to please and inspire everyone around her: the children she entertains, her long-term boyfriend Ben, and his affluent parents. When she accidentally becomes pregnant, she and Ben must choose whether or not to have a child during a financially and socially unstable time of their lives. The decision forces them to re-evaluate their life goals and their relationship to both their families and each other. Part naive children’s show, part interpersonal drama, Sam and Ben and the Big Oops takes on contemporary social mores with abnormal humour and pathos. The play will premiere on Sunday, February 28 at the Vancouver east cultural centre. It will be followed by performances at various summer festivals, including the Edmonton and Winnipeg fringe festivals.

Participant Bios:

The collaborative team for this project was born shortly after actress Cara Yeates (Some Reckless Abandon, Bye Bye Bombay) won the inaugural Joanna Maratta Award for outstanding contribution to the Vancouver theatre community. The prize was a mentorship with local writer/performer/director TJ Dawe (The Slipknot, Totem Figures) – an award currently being fulfilled as TJ directs Cara in the role of Samantha.

Brendan McLeod (writer, music):
Brendan is a former Canadian Slam poetry champion. He is a member of the acclaimed music group, The Fugitives. His first novel, The Convictions of Leonard McKinley, was nominated for the 2008 Re:Lit Award.
www,brendanmcleod.ca

Cara Yeates (performer):
The recent winner of the Joanna Maratta Award for contribution to the Vancouver theatre community, Cara has toured internationally with two previous one woman shows, “Some Reckless Abandon” and “Bye Bye Bombay”, which she wrote.
www.carayeates.com

TJ Dawe (director):
A Jessie and Just for Laughs Comedy Award winner, TJ has performed, written, and directed dozens of Canadian theatre productions over the past ten years, including “Maxim & Cosmo” , “Labrador”, and “The One Man Star Wars Trilogy” (director).
www.totemfigures.com

Ticket Price: $15

To purchase tickets or for ticketing queries call The Cultch Box Office at 604.251.1363. or purchase online at https://tickets.thecultch.com

Cutting is normal. One of the biggest mistakes a writer can make is to be precious about their writing. Just because you wrote it doesn’t mean it belongs in the final draft. Just because you worked on a given passage for a long time. Just because a given part actually happened to you. Just because something was the inspiration for the whole piece in the first place. Just because a line or a page is probably the best thing you’ve ever written. Nope. Good stuff has be cut. Always.

Buster Keaton cut the best gag he ever filmed. It got great laughs in the trailer, when the audience saw it out of context. As part of the overall film (The Navigator) it got no laugh at all, because it interrupted the story. He cut it. The Navigator was the biggest money maker of his career.

Cutting doesn’t mean the writer did something wrong. John Steinbeck told an interviewer that he cut about four fifths of everything he ever wrote in preparing his novels, the one exception being East of Eden, in which he cut far more than four fifths. East of Eden is one of my favourite books. Oprah recently got a lot of people reading it too.

Brendan and Cara and I met up and timed Cara reading the script, start to finish. It came in at 75 minutes. Add five minutes for the fact that she left out the physical action. We’ve got some cutting ahead of us.

Brendan’s on board with this. Good on him for being a sane collaborator.

Here is the first draft of the poster for our Cultch performance of the show.