Photo: Stage lit in dim blue light is covered with a big garbage can and a lot of scattered garbage.

The S.P.O.T.T. is the title of Meegan Sweet’s solo show at Sugar Swing upstairs. It’s also the aspirational title of Meegan Sweet’s character in the show, a raccoon who aspires to be the Shiniest Piece Of Trailer Trash anywhere. The playful, endearing, and sometimes crude narrator explains to the audience that their overall aspiration is to be reincarnated as a yooman bean (human being). There is a lot of entertaining audience engagement and a lot of clever use of the prop garbage on the stage, while the character works on the steps needed to reincarnate as human – learn all the skills of being human, arrange to die, get divine help. The raccoon’s gender was not indicated and that didn’t seem relevant.

On the night I went, the audience was totally sympathetic to the character, whose balance of adorable and confrontational was just right.

And then — some of the narrative breadcrumbs dropped earlier fell into place, an opportunity for reincarnation occurred (with a few gruesome effects), and the transformation of the raccoon into a strongly-gendered human left me painfully aware of some of the ways that being human is not all it’s cracked up to be. The raccoon’s opening monologue landed very differently when delivered by the incarnation on stage at the end. Which was brilliant. Meegan Sweet uses they/them pronouns, and their two portrayals have had me thinking about some consequences of gender in human society ever since.

That’s all I watched yesterday – oh, that and Late Night Cabaret, which is now on a break til Wednesday except for a promised takeover/visit to Vivianna Vardot’s Sex Party variety show at Rapid Fire on Tuesday night. Today, Monday, Regression has a dark day so I’m volunteering and then watching four shows on the main festival site. I’m packing a sunhat and a water bottle for my Glass of the Sask!