This narrative performance is like listening to an audiobook of an Alaskan explorer.
Just like rural Alaska, the set and props are minimal. Two jackets, a stick, and an obviously makeshift toilet (just the seat and a curtain!) With a set this barren it puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of the performer, which she carries well.
Kona Morris, the protagonist of this very detailed memoir, starts from the beginning of her story when she first met her future husband Benny at university before moving with him to Northern Alaska. Here, she uses her stage presence and exaggerated expression to talk about the struggles of rural life.
Some of the issues are what you would expect. Lack of running water, no doctors, and it being so very cold are all easy enough to guess, but some of them hit closer to home such as a crazy mother-in-law and trying to fit in somewhere where you are so young and so naïve.
However, throughout the story she learns to adapt and works through the struggles independently, including the life changing decision to keep her baby which she unexpectedly fell pregnant with.
Throughout the show there are tips about, literally, how to poop in an outhouse at -58°C, and the story of her son, the baby she had and brought up in the Alaskan wilderness.
This storytelling is extremely heart-warming and at times kind of unbelievable, if this was an audiobook I’d keep listening to it over and over again
How To Poop in an Outhouse at -58°C, Ivy Studio at Greenside, 12:45, until August 29
