From on the fringe to starring in the Fringe, Salmon Arm’s Karen Wilson has taken her story full circle.
The author, professional speaker and founder of Creative Life in Motion is bringing her collection of deeply personal stories to the Kelowna Fringe Festival as one of 13 talented acts.
My Body is My Home, written, produced and directed by Wilson, shares her experiences as being labelled “the fat girl” and the challenges she faced, and explores the themes of “body acceptance, self-love and the quest for happiness.”
What started as a keynote speech for her book Be Weightless, morphed into something more after she collaborated with her musician niece Megan Abel for Shuswap Theatre’s Annual TotE Festival.
“I shared stories from the book and she just kept saying, ‘I have a song for that’,” Wilson recalled, which shaped the original performance format of music accompanying her anecdotal experiences that go from “battling bullies to finding love.”
For the Fringe, however, it’s evolved into more of a spoken word show as she’s not the singer of the family and “can’t carry my niece in my back pocket.” There have been other changes developed over the course of performances and audience interaction, though the main story and message remains constant.
“My Body is My Home isn’t just a weight loss story – it’s a tribute to anyone who’s ever felt pressured to meet external expectations at the expense of their own well-being,” Wilson explained. “It’s about reclaiming identity.”
That stems from her own experience of losing weight and being seen, getting flattering attention but being afraid that she’d just regain it and go back to “being worthless again.” She said she couldn’t keep it up and needed to find balance, coming to the realization that there’s only one home, the body she’s in, so she’d better start listening to it.
“I’m very passionate about this subject. I’m hoping this makes people look internally, because that’s the only place answers will be,” Wilson said, adding that despite the sensitive subject matter, there is humour as well. “The topics are not always light, but you know when someone is so ridiculously honest that it’s funny?”
Wilson hopes to eventually take the show into schools, saying that it has been categorized as “edutainment” in the past. In the meantime, she’ll be doing three Fringe performances at the Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna on Sunday, Jan. 28 and Wednesday, Jan. 31 at 7 p.m., as well as Sunday, Feb. 4 at 4:30 p.m.
For more information on Wilson’s story and her performances, visit www.karenwilson.online.
Read more: Folk-rockers Shred Kelly returning to Salmon Arm for spring concert
Read more: Extended cold enables opening of ice rinks in Columbia Shuswap