Performance Works welcomed a live PuSh Festival audience for two nights of performances of How to Fail as a Popstar. Vivek Shraya’s one-person live memoir shares the trials and tribulations of an aspiring popstar who reaches for, but fails to get hold of stardom.
How to Fail as a Popstar, opening with Vivek appearing in on stage in a bathrobe to deliver a short prologue defining for the audience what she means by Fail. Leaving us just as quickly, only to reappear, in a dazzling bejewelled cape, performing an ode to Music. With slightly unsteady pitch and quirky lyrics, the performance sets the tone for the show ahead, that we likely won’t and shouldn’t be taking this too seriously. As the Cape is hung up on stage, it shimmers like a beacon of the stardom she aspires to reach.
Vivek Shraya shows plenty of imagination, aspiration and determination as she recounts her journey, starting from her upbringing in an South Asian Edmonton home and singing in Church, to school bullying, competing in local music competitions, then being helped or hindered by industry types, and plagued with self-doubt.
How to Fail as a Popstar is filled with laughter, eye-opening reality, a healthy dose of fantasy, honest reflection and of course, music. Beautifully sung traditional bhajans, leading to over-the-top pop-diva covers, to electo-dance tracks this production covers a lifetime of music, with music industry name-drops, and a behind the scenes look at the Canadian music scene of the early part of the millennium.
While Vivek Shraya may not have made it as a popstar, it’s not for a lack of storytelling ability (attested to by the dozen+ books she’s authored), and a perfect spoken voice to hold the audiences’ attention while conveying the hour+ long story of How to Fail as a Popstar.
How to Fail as a Popstar has wrapped its performances at PuSh Festival in Vancouver but the show moves across the water to Victoria for two shows at Intrepid Theatre’s Outstages Festival. Tickets for the February 4 & 5, 2022 performances at Metro Studio Theatre are available at intrepidtheatre.com.