The Story of Chubrub Cabaret!

 I'm Heather Witherden and this is my happy face!
  
Let me tell you why I`m so happy.

I met these women on the internet. We knew each other, well, knew of each other, anyway.  Ray E. and I had met at a Fringe event called the Smut Slam, where, doing stand-up and being MC, I was witness to her spoken word talent. What we had in common was threefold: being plus-sized, being theatrical and being proud! Our membership boiled down to:
Ray Eskritt, Melissa Granovsky, Johsa Manzanilla and Heather Witherden: the fat-tastic four* ( * maybe really 3, Johsa is an honourary chubbette) 
Eventually we grew to include Matt Gillies, who, with Ray, owns Bang Interactive, an interactive visual program used for parties and clubs.


Formed from this little coven of mutual admiration was 'Chubrub Productions', a body-positive cabaret performance troupe and not-so-secret society.

We started to meet, first in coffee shops, then in office space, and eventually in a big rehearsal space at The Purple Room.

Word got out that we were chubby superheros; we were booked to appear at Genderfest on Valentine's Day 2014, as the opening act for Courtney Trouble. Kate Sinclaire of Cherrystems thought we'd be a perfect complement to Courtney's message.
We put on our tutus and rocked that stage of the Gas Station Arts Centre!

Buoyed by our exciting experience, we put together plans to make Chubrub an even bigger and better name, so we put together a fundraiser, called the Fat Lovers Dance Party, just a month later. 


Fame Nightclub kindly allowed us to sell tickets to our event, where we performed, held a cupcake eating contest and generally glittered up the crowd into a frenzy! Now the word
was really out about Chubrub Productions, because we experienced a bit of 
backlash regarding the name and/or intent of our event. Was it to fetishize
fat women? Was it a safe venue for anyone of size or gender or orientation?
Would we somehow be construed as self-hating but yet also narcissistic?

What we learned from the event was that there will always be naysayers. Forging ahead, we earned enough money from the Fat Lovers Dance Party and gained enough publicity that we realized there was indeed goodwill and interest in doing even more performing, so we gathered up our dollars and put together a show for Winnipeg Fringe.

Of course, no summer in Winnipeg would be complete without a big Pride celebration, and Chubrub was there too! We put together a beautiful banner with the help of some good, handy sewers with an eye for detail, and did three Pride events back to back! First we were in the Dyke March, then we rode on a Winnipeg Transit float (so much fun!) and our Pride culminated in a performance Sunday night with QueerView at the Windsor Hotel. As our very first full show, whoa, it was fantastic.. and a big learning experience. 

We mainly learned we needed more help! Luckily, we soon met the world's most wonderful stage manager, Andrew Henderson, who polished us up and turned our Chubrub show into a 45 minute romp of body positivity and sass. He was freshly home from Toronto and ran the Scotiabank stage at Pride Winnipeg. He is truly our magical unicorn!

After an amazing photoshoot with Teri Hofford, we developed some terrific marketing material and started to sell, sell, sell our Fringe show, telling everyone we knew.
We opened our show July 16, had seven shows in ten days and had over 500 people come see it!

Reviewers were quick to hear the message of our show:

 "ChubRub.....have a blast celebrating themselves, challenging body-image ideals and conveying the message that “fat” doesn’t deserve to carry any stigma as an adjective." - Bartley Kives ,Winnipeg Free Press

'Bursting with intelligence and sexuality and positive messages about the body' - Michelle Palansky, CBC Manitoba 

Full disclosure, the reviews said we needed more polish, but we know in our hearts that we put together a show that really hit home for people, even with a limited time and budget. We know who we are, where we stand, and can't wait to continue to make Chubrub Productions the best it can be. We've already been contacted by Pilates Manitoba (who run Plus Size Fitness) and also the Women's Centre at the University of Manitoba, regarding body positivity events, and Boutique Erotica is also planning an all-body-type sexy event soon as well!

Seems like our group, and the ideas we're brewing are ironically, fitting right in. That makes our hearts feel extra-extra-large.

Chubrub Productions can be found on Facebook, and to enquire about performances or special events you think we should know about, send a message to chubrubproductions@gmail.com . We love to perform!