It takes Sarah Hayward eight original songs and seven circus acts to tell her truths about what she calls "the comic circus of life."

She's singing and spouting these truths in the second run of her cabaret, Stripes: The Mystery Circus, July 14 to 18.

Hayward's father died shortly after Stripes dazzled Fringe Festival audiences across Canada in 2006, so further touring was cut short. Now Hayward's mounting a more developed version of her one-woman show at the Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive in hopes that the artistic directors she's invited will ask her to bring the circus to their locales.

Hayward, who's been a professional actress for 25 years, had written political cabarets with Foolhouse Theatre Company, which she co-founded when she finished theatre school in Montreal. But she hadn't written her own show. A performance by an actor from Texas whom she saw in Montreal in the mid-1980s provided the impetus.