PuShy Questions with Pearle Harbour from Agit-Pop!
January 28, 2020
Pearle Harbour is the creator and performer of Agit-Pop! happening at Central Studios on February 1st. Click here for tickets and more show information.
1) What motivates your work as an artist?
The opportunity to connect and play meaningfully with audiences around the country. Every show I create, I try to ask, specifically and literally, how is this show impossible without you, the audience? I try to make things as live as possible, actively incorporating the calamity that is happening out there in the world, and among us in the room. I believe what’s happening in the audience is often infinitely grander than anything we can contrive onstage.
2) What does being part of PuSh 2020 represent for you?
I’m gonna make it after alllll!
3) Is there anything you want audiences to keep in mind while experiencing your show?
Pearle Harbour will always keep me safe. This ain’t the same thing as ‘comfortable.’
4) How might we see PuSh 2020 themes of subversion or vulnerability reflected in the work?
I’ll subvert your expectations by refusing to be vulnerable. Didn’t see that comin’ didja?
5) What other PuSh show would you most like to see?
Gutted to be missing BERLIN: The Last Cabaret. But so excited for Anywhere But Here.
6) What qualities do you most admire in other artists?
Discipline. A regular practice. Lyric language. Stillness and silence onstage.
7) Any advice for emerging artists?
Make the work you want to see, don’t wait for the audition. Be kind to everyone, and buy your technicians coffee.
8) What do you do when you’re not working or making art?
To wear vintage is an act of constant conservation — mending, stitching, reinforcing. The ironing takes a lot of time too.
9) What about Vancouver most entices you?
There is a bowling alley somewhere on Commercial Drive that has my heart. Please scatter my ashes here.
10) What is your biggest art-making wish or fantasy (if money were no object)?
That my art will buy me housing. Name a bigger fantasy than THAT!
Pearle Harbour, TITULAR CHARACTER
Sweet-as-pie and tough-as-nails, drag tragicomedienne Pearle Harbour was born on [information withheld], when America was still Great. In the War, she served with [information withheld] during [information withheld], and even [information withheld]!
Her original works have been presented at the SummerWorks Performance Festival, Theatre Passe Muraille, The High Performance Rodeo, The Cultch, OUTstages, Why Not Theatre’s RISER Project, Rhubarb Festival, The Second City, the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, and countless other theatres, clubs, and cabarets across Canada. She is an artist-in-residence at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre. Accolades include the Audience Choice Award (SummerWorks), Outstanding Solo Performance (My Entertainment World), Favourite Lead Performance (Hart House), and Dora Mavor-Moore Award nominations for Outstanding Performance and Costume Design.
Upcoming performances by Pearle Harbour: Agit-Pop!: Yukon Arts Centre (Whitehorse), OUTstages (Victoria), Distant Early Warning: Buddies In Bad Times Open Studios (Toronto), Pearle Harbour’s Chautauqua: Green Light Arts (Kitchener-Waterloo), Stratford Shakespeare Festival