Haley McGee stages a surprise party, complete with vodka, at rEvolver Festival

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      Few shows arriving at this year’s rEvolver Festival come trailing as many rave reviews from around the world—or as much cake, vodka, and balloons—as Haley McGee’s I’m Doing This for You.

      Staged as a surprise party for a boyfriend, the funny yet awkwardly painful show has been called “cause for celebration” by Toronto’s NOW Magazine and “funny, strange, excruciating and affecting” by the Telegraph.

      Speaking to the Straight from her home in Toronto, the solo performer says she’s had five years to craft the production. Its conceit is that her character has hired the audience through Craigslist to be the surprise crowd for her aspiring-standup, commitment-iffy boyfriend. And she cops willingly to the fact the idea sprung from her own romantic life.

      “It is inspired by a relationship I had with a comedian,” says the actor over the phone. “We were breaking up and getting back together and breaking up and getting back together. He’d say, ‘I can’t commit,’ and then he’d make these big romantic gestures and we’d get back together.

      “I thought, ‘Isn’t it interesting when a man makes big romantic gestures, it’s great,’ ” she says, citing Andrew Lincoln’s cue-card-and-ghetto-blaster scene in Love, Actually and Ryan Gosling’s perilous Ferris-wheel stunt in The Notebook. “But when a woman does it, it often comes across as pathetic and crazy. I wanted to take that on.”

      When audience members arrive at the show—which runs from Wednesday (May 31) to June 3 at the Cultch’s Culture Lab—McGee will greet them and offer them a shot of vodka, “the spirit most likely to lift your spirits”, and a balloon. You won’t quite know what to make of her platinum-bob wig and bright-orange dress, but don’t worry: all will become clear as her story unfolds while you wait for her boyfriend to arrive.

      McGee joyfully mashes forms in the show, mixing storytelling, live art, and standup comedy, even tearing down the fourth wall to shout out her sound and lighting cues to the technicians.

      Flying solo is where it’s at for the actor. “It’s the most absorbed I feel,” she muses. “If your mind wanders a bit, you’re screwed. I like the high-wire demand of what it means to be on-stage alone. But I don’t like when people say, ‘It’s so bra-a-a-ve.’ There’s a vulnerability to it, but I think I really enjoy the adrenaline so much. Alone, I feel so free.”

      Taking the solo spotlight from Berlin to Edinburgh and Japan to Amsterdam, she’s come to see her offbeat, endearing little show as reflecting deeper themes. “I turned 30 when I was working on it, and I realized it’s about people getting to 30 and thinking, ‘Oh my god, I have to lock someone down!’ ” she says. “So it’s sort of about the contortions we’ll go to to not be alone—it’s about loneliness, comedy, and sex.”

      And what’s her view these days of those dramatic, movie-worthy acts to win back a former boyfriend or girlfriend? “I’ve become a lot less judgmental of people who do big romantic gestures,” she admits with a laugh. “But it’s made me bolder in my personal life. I mostly still think that big romantic gestures are more for the person doing them than the person receiving them, though.”

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