Human digestion is all about breaking down food into base nutritional particles for the body to absorb energy, grow, and repair itself when it’s hurt.
Perhaps it’s the overwhelming beneficence of food that explains the reason why the stuff that’s left over from what nourishes us has traditionally been given such short shrift — that is until last night, when Team McVey Productions presented the world premiere of Shit Stories: The Best of Our Worst Moments.
Director and host Stephanie Garibaldi quickly gave assurances that the evening of six intimate first-person stories would not be filled with talk of some disgusting or weird fetish, but an intellectual exploration of the brown stuff.
What followed was Mike Baireuther’s recounting his years as an unruly Catholic schoolboy living for the ultimate prank — a Shanghai Cobra (Urban Dictionary it) — that leads to a pre-adolescent reckoning.
Andrea Jones lamented on her double life as a schoolteacher, always wary of what her students would think of the real her, until a poop accident in class forces her to come face to face with her biggest fear.
The show’s Chief Creative Mind Michael McVey told the amazingly true story of a sexual seduction gone terribly poo-awry.
Jillian Casey described the time her mother was forced to sift through her daughter’s waste searching for a purposefully-swallowed watch battery.
Shit Stories: The Best of Our Worst Moments
Conceived by Michael McVey
Directed by Stephanie Garibaldi
Details and tickets
Pierce McManus recounted taking a dump in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial midway through the Cherry Blossom ten mile run. His hilarious story was a standout for the realization that the ultimate humiliation can lead to an epiphany about an unhealthy relationship.
Em Morrison closed the show with the tale of her amazing adolescent provenance of moving from a “periphery person” to member of the popular clique until she got beat up by Nashua, New Hampshire townies defending her boyfriend which almost led to her losing her shit.
In Shit Stories, we learn more than we ever wanted to about the very human story of human waste. The storytellers’ honesty and vulnerability transcend the show from a potential trite barroom joke, to a true sharing of human failure and the recognition of the benefits of such failure.
The stories are also memorable for the tiny bits and bobs that collectively make up human memory — the teacher that eats pizza from a fanny pack, the mother that fashioned a poop bowl out of tin foil, a girl whose “passion for advocacy” keeps getting confused with being a back-talker.
Shit, in its essence, is that which we don’t need and must be released. You’ll never be more satisfied with these emotional evacuations.
Other shit-story tellers at future shows will include Regie Cabico, Mike Kane, Martha Whitty, and Mike Derrios. This show contains profanity and is recommended for adults only.
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