Circumference
by Amy Salloway
The Ghosts of Gym Teachers Past haunt the Obsession with Weight Loss Future in a show the St. Paul Pioneer-Press calls “*****A MUST-SEE: poignant, sensitive and hysterically funny ”. From multiple Best-of-Fest winner Amy Salloway (“So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz!”, “Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat?”) comes this mostly-true comedy about size, sweat…and exercising your demons.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Hi Everybody –
Feel free to read more about “Circumference” on either of these websites:
http://www.amysalloway.com
or
http://www.myspace.com/awkwardmomentproductions
Lots of review quotes there, and little excerpts of the show (text, not video — I am not skilled in the YouTube yet, unfortunately), and some info on where “Circumference” has been prior to this, and where it’s going next!
Thanks, and hope to see you at the Ottawa Fringe!
June 21st, 2008 at 10:36 am
Go see this show. You will love it. I promise. Amy Salloway ‘s shows (So Kiss Me Already Hershel Gertz and Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat) have been my (and that of many friends less inclined to post on this site) favourites for the past two years running. That said, as hard as this might be to believe, this could be her best one yet. Circumference is smart and poignant and heartbreaking and hilarious and Amy Salloway is an adorable, genuine, crazy-talented person.
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:09 am
I’m not sure that this is what René Descartes was thinking when he espoused mind/body dualism, but Amy Salloway wants to divorce her body. So much so, that she has applied for gastro-bypass surgery.
Um, Brian, René Descartes in a Fringe review? C’mon, it’s summer! The philosophy books are on the shelf.
Well, Amy Salloway is not your common “Juste pour Rire” comic. For one thing, “Just for Laughs” is mostly male comics. Secondly, Amy’s erudite use of language is one of the ways that she makes her audience laugh (a lot) in this comedy. Amy may not have had an A in Gym, but she clearly was top of the English class.
Brian, you’re spending too much time in the beer tent. A comedy about gastro-bypass surgery?
I swear; I saw “Circumference” stone cold sober. I caught a matinee, for Pete’s sake. Ask my wife!
OK, I’ll admit it, the topic freaked me out. But then Amy made me laugh. And laugh some more. And the rest of the audience as well. And the laughter built. The peak of the crescendo was a joke about low-esteem that had the audience laughing so hard and so long, Amy had to halt the show until the audience needed to breathe. (No spoiler from me, folks. You want the joke: you pay the money.) The last time I saw a comic have that effect was Sandra Shamus in “My Boyfriend’s Back, and There’s Going to Be Laundry”.
No question, though: “Circumference” is dark comedy. Very dark. Keir Cutler “Teaching As You Like It” dark. When the plot turns, it’s multiple car accident dark. I sat there holding my breath trying to imagine how Amy was going to pull it out of the depths.
Redemption comes.
But from an unexpected source.
I’ll leave it to you to find out how. Pay your money. See for yourself.
Good theatre is supposed to leave you wanting more. So did “Circumference”.
But I didn’t find the ending completely satisfying. Maybe I was just longing for the feel-good ending of “So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz”. This is a more adult play (and how!), so that’s not going to happen. Or maybe I didn’t find it completely convincing.
That said, I’m very glad to have put my bum in a Studio Leonard-Beaulne seat, and given Amy an hour of my time. A huge amount of laughter was my reward.
C’mon. Part with a few shekels. You can’t take it with you. Tell Amy: René Descartes sent you.
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Brian’s left such a great review that I hesitate to post and risk bumping it off the page. Can we review reviews? All I can add is my deep appreciation for Amy’s work. She’s got that brilliance for capturing what it means to be human. She walked away with the People’s Choice Award in Vancouver last year and well-deserved that was…. Go see Circumference.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
“Circumference” review from MelissaHK’s blog “DESTINATION: JOURNEY”:
http://melissahk.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/ottawa-fringe-reviews-dance-class-mirrors/
“Circumference” by Amy Salloway (Awkward Moment Productions, Minneapolis): Best. Show. So. Far. And the biggest mirror for me, too. This production was funny, endearing, and heart-wrenching all rolled into one. Amazing performance from Amy Salloway. And again, with these shows that open a window into the heart and soul of these actors, I am left amazed by their ability to get up on stage and bear it all. All I can say is thank you, Amy Salloway.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Review from Anita Hebert on the Ottawa Fringe Facebook application:
http://apps.facebook.com/ottawafringe/show/&id=27
CIRCUMFERENCE
June 21st:
I saw 4 performances on Friday night and this was my favorite. It was a touching, funny and very personal personal. It really hit home for me. If if only I had Claylians to rescue me from my Gym class!
June 24th, 2008 at 10:02 am
[...] Circumference is a one-woman show, written and performed by Amy Solloway from Michigan. It’s about an ample woman who has struggled all her life with her body image, and who is now applying for gastro-bypass surgery. Her (American) health insurance will only cover the costs under certain conditions, including a documented six-month diet and exercise regime. As she embarks upon this regime, she reminisces about (and acts out) various incidents from her life, like being tormented and humiliated by a gym teacher in junior high. [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Interview by Andrew Alexander:
http://www.ottawafringe.com/interview-with-amy-salloway-325/
June 24th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I loved this show - it was really insightful while still being really really funny. My favourite joke was the one about transfats
June 26th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Review from Kaj Hasselriis, CBC Ottawa, “All In A Day”, June 23, 2008:
http://www.cbc.ca/allinaday/listenagain.html
“Let’s start with the Terrific”:
This was the last show I saw of the night, and I thought “I ended on a high note, I should go home”. This is a one-woman play by an American woman named Amy Salloway — I met her a couple days earlier at the Fringe beer tent, which is getting very boisterous as the days go on, as you can hear….
(Sound clip of Amy telling about show — “Circumference is about body image, weight, size, the horrors of seventh grade gym class, and most importantly, whether an internal self and external self can reunite in adulthood after years of bitter divorce.”)
I love her energy and enthusiasm. Amy’s very likeable, and I really liked that about her, and so did the rest of the audience. She’s a woman who’s been here at the Fringe before — she swears this is her favorite Fringe Festival on the circuit, and you can tell — she really drew in a big crowd last night, and everyone really loved her. She plays a woman — basically herself — who’s overweight, considering gastric bypass surgery; she recounts her experiences from junior high, like she says , she plays a number of different characters including her own stomach, which tells her what to do and what not to do, she plays a guy named Kevin, who’s a cute boy she meets at the gym, and…there’s a really good soundtrack in this too, which I really liked. Some one-person shows, especially when they’re doing more than one character, you kind of lose track of what’s going on and who’s playing who, but she never does — she gives us some musical breaks, and it’s a really good time.
June 27th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Goodness, what can be said about this fabulous woman and her shows that
hasn’t already been said by people who write reviews for a living?
http://www.myspace.com/awkwardmomentproductions
I can’t figure out why this woman is still single. Intelligence and
humour (sorry, I meant to spell that “humor”) are so damn attractive!
I hear that the printers screwed up the delivery of the flyers. Maybe as
a substitute, Amy could set up outside the theatres and offer audience
members one of her streetwise “The Advice People” consultations as
advertising:
http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=12451
I’d love that, and I think that would be totally in keeping with the
self-help theme of “Circumference”.
June 28th, 2008 at 9:34 am
I consider myself very fortunate for catching a performance of “Circumference” amongst all of this year’s great Fringe shows. Amy Salloway is completely endearing on stage and has wonderfully, comically and painfully woven together her life from adolescence to adulthood. Her story speaks of the haunting pain of other people’s cruelty, but Miss Salloway does not stand before us as a victim. She bravely and heroically lets us into her heart, her bedroom and opens up her soul. She moved me to tears and the show has stayed with me. Go. This is a DO NOT MISS.
June 28th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
There was a lot of buzz around this show, and rightly so. Amy Salloway is a talented performer who is terrifically engaging in this story about the life of a girl dealing with being overweight. While I did not personally relate to the subject matter, I still could not avoid being drawn in to the story. Definitely one of the better shows of the fringe, and one I can wholeheartedly recommend.