life with more cowbell

Getting your first period. Shaving your legs. Hair removal cream/bleach. Growing boobs. Boys. School dances. Kissing. Feeling funny “down there.”

All the female pubescent highlights are shouted out in Up your Nose and In your Toes (U.N.I.T.) Productions’ Morro and Jasp do Puberty, by Heather Marie Annis, Amy Lee and director Byron Laviolette, which opened to a packed house on the Tarragon Theatre mainspace on the first day of the Toronto Fringe Festival last night.

Clown sisters Morro (Annis) and Jasp (Lee) are tweens locked in the throes of puberty and all its accompanying changes, but couldn’t be more different. Morro is a rough and tumble, soccer baseball champ and badass tomboy who wants nothing to do with boys. Jasp is more cerebral, refined and girly, a diary-keeping daydreamer who longs for a date to the dance. And when it comes to the first onset of “that time of the month,” that “visit from Aunt Flo,” Morro is mortified and perplexed when she sees red while sitting on the toilet. Jasp has been anxiously, and happily, awaiting this rite of passage into womanhood since infancy.

It’s puberty for girls in all its awkward, tragic, baffling (and gross) glory – with all the feels. Brilliant, charming and poignant performances from Annis and Lee, accompanied by some big, bright, colourful costume and set design, and a bang-on soundtrack.

Morro and Jasp do Puberty pees your pants and warms your cockles. And you’ll never look at a tampon the same way again. I can’t wait till these guys do menopause.

Morro and Jasp do Puberty continues on the Tarragon mainspace until July 11 – see their Fringe page for exact dates/times. Advance booking strongly recommended.

After this, they’re taking the show to Edinburgh Fringe and have launched a crowdfunding campaign in support of their trip. Please consider donating to their Indiegogo campaign, open till July 15. You can also keep up with the Morro and Jasp shenanigans on Twitter.