Scantily Glad Theatre from Victoria, BC, presented Pack Animals at this year’s Orlando Fringe. The premise it pretty straight forward. Two girl scouts get lost in the woods. One is a scout with plenty of merit badges (Holly Brinkman) who was confident she could navigate their way out with her trusty compass, while the other with just a few scattered badges had never camped in her life. The huge stage seemed cavernous for this intimate production.
When the inexperienced camper (S.E. Grummett) had to go to the bathroom she asked her fried for her guide book. She didn’t need the book to learn something new, but instead ripped out several pages to wipe. When done, she handed off the book and a trowel to a lucky audience member. The songs in the show were light-hearted, lyrical, and quite funny.
One guy in the front row of the audience kept interrupting the girls to let them know that they weren’t doing things right. After a few of these interruptions, it became clear that he was a plant. I think that during the run of the show they recruited various male Fringe artists to take on the role of the heckler. He became a focus for their searing and funny feminist sarcasm.
Puppetry was used to define the attributes of various forest creatures. The creatures all seemed to have the habits and attitudes of annoying guys. A much bigger forest creature, the bear, caused some chaos, but the campers survived. Overall this was a fun hour of wacky gay theater with just a dash of nudity.
