Cameryn Moore, “muse,” Little Black Book Productions. Photo by Hassan Ghoncheh.

muse: an experiment in storytelling and life drawing (Stage 5, Acacia Hall)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

There’s a uniquely welcoming show at the Fringe that’s actually about audience participation, an experiment in experimenting … with yourself.

As a non-artist whose hands-on art experience is stick-persons on stickies, and the back row of Art History 201: the Renaissance, I was curious. As someone who’s never even held a piece of charcoal, much less been in a life-drawing class with a live nude model, I wondered what it would be like to draw someone.

So I borrowed a sketch book, and got offered a piece of charcoal (there are art supplies, while they last) at the door. The only introduction offered by the model, Cameryn Moore (a playwright/ actor in the theatre side of her life), was to list the number of poses she was going to do, some one-minute, some three-, some 10-.

If you ask her questions, which Moore invites you to do, you’ll find Muse a memoir, and a fascinating one, about a life spent since 2017 in Berlin as a theatre artist, a nude life-drawing model, and a Size X-large person in a judgmental culture. If there weren’t questions, presumably, Muse wouldn’t be a memoir and Moore would be fine with silence, after a couple of first-hand stories she offers at the outset, to make things not be weird for an audience used to coming to the Fringe for a “show.” But who wouldn’t want to ask a nude model some questions if they got the chance?

Ah, the questions. A funny, candid, and thoughtful sort, Moore  attended to the questions, and considered them before answering. Actually, my fellow draw-ers asked questions I wanted to hear the answers to. She considered them before answering. Nude models aren’t allowed to shrug, of course. But Moore was relaxed about conversing in this way, and so we relaxed too.

And gradually, both in questions and in the companionable silences, we get the idea that being a sculptural nude body has been validating, transcending, for someone the culture is very inclined to marginalize. I wouldn’t dream of using the f-word (fat, I mean). Moore does.

The 60 minutes went by in a flash. And at the end, in “the community gallery” of our drawings on the floor (if we felt like revealing them) for everyone to wander around and see, there was a kind of group ease and joyful spirit.

Incidentally, for what it’s worth, it turned out I don’t have a clue how to draw. There’s no transforming dénouement like that to my expedition. But it was a fun, easeful, and  experience. And I wouldn’t have missed it.