Katherine Glover wants to tell love stories with wisdom and humour

Minneapolis writer, comedian, and spoken word performer Katherine Glover makes her first foray into the Canadian Fringe circuit including a stop at the Vancouver International Fringe Festival with her one-woman show A Cynic Tells Love Stories.  We posed a number of questions to Katherine about her show in this q&a.

1. Tell us about your Fringe show - what can audiences expect?

It's a solo storytelling show about love, sex and relationships. The show is broken into chapters -- the Hopeless Romantic, the Cynic, the Slut, etc. Some of the stories are funny; some are serious; all of them are true.

Most of the stories are from my life, but some are stories I heard or witnessed that shaped my views as I was developing into an adult human. One of them, for example, is a story from a substitute Spanish teacher I had in sixth grade. I barely remember what she looked like, but her story stuck with me, and I tell it in my show.

2. Where did the idea of the show originate from?

I think there was this dissonance in my own brain about love. I roll my eyes at romantic comedies and I don't think of myself as a sappy person, but at the same time, if I'm honest with myself, love and sex are on my mind a huge chunk of the time. I'm lousy at sustaining relationships, but I get into them an awful lot, and I'm always trying to figure out, okay, how is this supposed to work? What is it I'm supposed to be looking for? Why do my emotions have such bad taste?

I wanted to tell love stories that I thought contained wisdom and humor, but I wanted to make it clear I was coming from a place of "why are we so flawed and ridiculous?" rather than, you know, a mushy, sappy, happily ever after and now everything's perfect sort of thing.

3. Bi-sexuality plays a role in your show and as you may know there is some within the gay/lesbian community that says it simply does not exist. How do you respond?

That's about as ridiculous as saying that you can be attracted to blondes or brunettes, but not both. That said, though, I understand why people have the impulse -- I think society strongly pushes us towards putting people in one box or the other, and I feel that same pressure, emotionally, even though logically I know it's ridiculous. It seems like every time I'm attracted to someone new, I wind up half convincing myself I've been attracted exclusively to that gender all along -- until I realize that would require me to erase entire chapters of my romantic history. I don't think there's anything intrinsically hard to accept about bisexuality, but in this society there's just no real space for it, so we don't know how to deal. I often think being straight or lesbian would be a lot easier, but I don't really have a choice in the matter.

4. As I understand your show also explores the word "slut" - where does the need to explore that theme come from?

I went to a liberal, artsy, anything-goes kind of college, and my female friends and I were all about proudly reclaiming that word, regardless of whether we were actually that slutty in reality. After I graduated, however, I dated someone who had a much more conservative attitude, and that became a problem, which is one of the stories I tell in my show.

I also play with the word "slut" -- I look at how the term can be relative, and how what's slutty in some circles would be considered tame in others. And I think there's a lot of hypocrisy and silliness over how the word is used. Even in liberal, artsy circles, a lot of people still have a double standard. Intellectually they might believe women and men shouldn't be judged differently for the same behavior, but in the real world, they react differently, just on a visceral level.

5. Why a solo show?

It's a lot cheaper to tour a solo show -- you only have to pay expenses for one person, and you don't have to divide the profits. I've done some collaborative projects, but I've never taken them outside Minnesota. Plus, I'm stubborn and bratty when it comes to having full artistic control.

6. What attracted you to doing a show in the Fringe in Vancouver?

I've been doing U.S. Fringes for a couple of years now, and this summer I wanted to try out the Canadian circuit. All my traveling Fringe friends told me Winnipeg and Edmonton had the biggest audiences, so I applied for those two, and then I picked Vancouver as my third spot because I'd never been here before and it sounded like a beautiful and fun city.

/p>

A Cynic Tells Love Stories
Origins Coffee, 1245 Cartwright Street, Granville Island

Thursday, Sept 9, 8:45pm
Saturday, Sept 11, 9:10pm
Sunday, Sept 12, 3:20pm
Sunday, Sept 12, 9:15pm
Monday, Sept 13, 7:15pm
Wednesday, Sept 15, 7:15pm
Saturday, Sept 18, 9:15pm
Sunday, Sept 19, 3:05pm

In A Cynic Tells Love Stories Minneapolis writer, comedian, and spoken word performer Katherine Glover looks at love through four different lenses: the hopeless romantic, the cynic, the slut, and the wife. The stories range from hilarious to heartbreaking as Glover fumbles along seducing porn stars, falling for straight girls, and trying to force her emotions to be logical. Along the way she explores the ironies of the word "slut" and gives a primer on what it means—and doesn't mean—to be bisexual.

Visit http://www.vancouverfringe.com or http://katherineglover.net for more information.