The Talking Shit Show is a live interactive “late-night style” comedy-meets-dance interview format performance. The show is built around current issues, concerns and realities of being an artist and art making through a satiric comedic critique. 3-4 "celebrity" guests from the arts community will be ‘interviewed’ on the show. The Talking Shit Show came about as I was reflecting on the incredible personalities, bodies of work, and deep knowledge of the dance artists in our community. Having produced a podcast interviewing femme and non-binary artists for over 7 years I have come to profoundly appreciate the lives and thoughts of artists in all disciplines (dance, theatre, music, visual art, etc). I want everyone to hear their incredible stories, paradigm bending ideas and life changing advice. The podcast (Talking Shit with Tara Cheyenne) is a labor of love without funding or profit.

The Talking Shit Show is live! We acknowledge the audience, sometimes asking them questions, asking for laughter, asking for their voices and their presence. The guests, who are predominantly dance artists, are the celebrities in this world. Dance artists are typically under-valued, under paid, often silent and/or viewed as less-intellectual than artists in other forms, and too often not identified in credits materials. It serves to point out that 80% of dance artists identify as female or non-binary while 80% of the ‘leaders’ in Canadian dance are male (this statistic goes back to 2018 but I don’t see evidence of a necessary shift). Through the late-night talk-show format; male-dominated, capitalist, commercial, pop-celebrity culture, we can use the power of that format while subverting it. The Talking Shit Show uplifts these artists, brings audiences/community into the bold importance of the performance artist, while revealing the humanity and relatability of these people, and uses humour and satire to recalibrate how we participate in, and situate ourselves in performance.