A Life In 60 Minutes

Dwayne Morgan—Planetarium Auditorium

Poet and public speaker Dwayne Morgan gives a master class on oration and poetry, weaving together poems, stories from his life, and his insights on politics and social struggles from his position as a black child of immigrants and father to a daughter of his own. From how that blackness is treated within Canadian society, the gender politics of broken men failing to raise the children their emotional issues helped bring into the world, to the struggles of aging and human decline, each topic is met with deep care and wit.

As poetry, the recitations are worth seeing all on their own, award winning talent on full display with flawless rhythm, intonation and diction, and the writing itself being extremely sharp and well suited to his delivery. Structurally, there are some stumbling blocks putting everything together into a 60 minute show, shifts in time and place that didn’t necessarily follow naturally and caused a bit of confusion. But at the end of the day, that’s only comparing this show with other shows focused directly on telling one story instead of weaving together many different poems and anecdotes. For any fans of poetry this hits it out of the park, with only a few quibbles for fans of the more common Fringe storytelling show

Josh Fidelak