Fresh Meat defines itself as “Ottawa’s playground for theatre makers.” The festival promises to provide a platform for local up-and-coming and established artists to showcase their ideas in front of an audience.  Fresh Meat plays must meet only one criteria – the plays must be new and never before seen – ‘fresh meat.’

Theatre is often fiction: voyaging into an imaginary world, with made up characters and places. However, this year Fresh Meat chose to go in the opposite direction – every single play tells a true story… or at least, a dramatic retelling of a true story (as far as I know, spin class doesn’t actually involve being indoctrinated into a cult).

Diary of a Black Best Friend, written by and starring Jinesea Lewis, recounts the story of her role as the black best friend in Hallmark movies… eight Hallmark movies. Dressed in a Christmas sweater and Santa-covered pants, Lewis starts the play with clips of her in these movies, in which she plays essentially the same role, every single time: a yes-man, helping white people in their romances with other white people. She then takes the audience on a journey of what it would be like if her character could say what she really feels. She splits the stage in half, with one side being the traditional Hallmark movie setting, and the other half a reality tv-style confessional booth. She flips back and forth between the two sides of the stage, code switching each time she walks through the doorway between Hallmark and reality. This show manages to stay funny the entire time, while at the same time touching on the very important issues of race and privilege.

If your house was burning down, what would you save? That’s the question Claire Biddiscombe had no choice but to face in 2023, when her apartment burnt down. Biddiscombe saved the clothes on her back, her cat, and her purse. However, Schedule of Loss is not so much about what you would save – moreso about what you would leave behind. A Schedule of Loss is an insurance document detailing every loss that the claimant has suffered. For Biddiscombe, this document contained over 400 things, and she has the name of every single item lost printed out on separate pieces of paper, and covering the walls of the room to come face to face with. Biddiscombe then invites the audience to share what they would have saved She then asks the audience to ask her questions about the objects named on the wall. Each item has a story attached, even though they were not saved from the blaze. This piece forces you to reckon with what is really important, what’s important but would be left behind, and what isn’t actually important at all.

Have you ever wished you could go back in time and have a do-over of an important conversation? AC/DC, written by Joshua P. Mayo and Flerida Ann Camille P. Mayo, does just that. In this play, Joshua, playing himself, goes back in time to the day he came out to his mother as bisexual, as a Filipino man. He watches his mother and his former self have this conversation, and then he steps in, and modifies it – trying to make it better, or easier, or simply just different. However, each time he re-dos the conversation, he is not satisfied with the result. Eventually, he comes to realize that no matter the way the subject is brought up, he’ll never get the outcome he wants. Mayo deals with the complex subject of coming out in a light-hearted way, yet still makes it evident that it is an important and serious topic.

Fresh Meat is an important festival – a space for up-and-coming and established artists to share a brand-new piece for the first time. From always being type-cast as the black best friend, to losing everything in a fire, to coming out as bisexual to your parents, to marriage as a hypochondriac, Fresh Meat provides a platform for people to share important stories – stories that need to be heard, and stories that may otherwise never have had the chance to be shared