“There is a boundary that cannot be crossed in mainstream theatre,” said John Bent Jr., the head of sound at the Manitoba Theatre Centre Mainstage. “But at the Fringe ... anything goes.”

The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival has been challenging the limits of theatre for 23 years, offering plays that range from the poetic, the political and the downright perverted.

“What I love about the festival is the extraordinary amount of creativity,” Bent said.

The 2010 Fringe features 155 companies, performing in 25 venues between July 14-25.

The official theme of this year’s festival is Fringe and Beyond: Going Where No Fringe Has Gone Before. The theme not only refers to the festival’s 23rd year but also signifies that the Fringe continues to expand beyond the central Old Market Square.

“The festival is really growing,” said Deborah Axelrod, the festival’s coordinator.

Festival organizers successfully lobbied to close off Arthur and Albert streets between Bannantyne and McDermot this year, expanding the festivities into the adjacent cobblestone sidewalks, where fringers hang out, drink and eat between the dirt cheap shows that cost between $5 and $10 each.

“The Fringe will really have a street-festival feel this year,” Axelrod said.

Considering the variety and creativity of the shows and the vibrant social scene around the beer tents and food vendors, there is no doubt that the Fringe offers a unique summer experience in the heart of Winnipeg’s Exchange. But with over 150 shows, it can be hard to decide what to see.

For that purpose, we’ve assembled some of the most exciting offerings at this year’s festival. We’ve got something for everyone: the Shakespearean scholar, the music lover, the political junkie, the breast inspector and the smart ass!

For more information, pick up a program for $5 at the Manitoba Theatre Centre box office at 174 Market Avenue as well as any Fringe venues, Liquor Mart, or Safeway stores throughout the city. To purchase advance tickets go to www.winnipegfringe.com or call the box office at 942-6537.

Breast Friends

This vaudeville, revue-style show brings together several individual performances (and a couple group numbers!) on one great subject in our chest-obsessed sexual culture.

“This show is all about having breasts,” said Celeste Sansregret, one of several veteran Fringe performers starring in this subversive comedy.

Among the many vibrant individual performances are Alison Field with “The Breastaurant is Always Open,” a piece about breast-feeding her two children; Kim Zeglinski (Kimbo the Clown) with “A small breasted woman in a large breasted woman’s body,” about voluntary breast reduction surgery; Miss La Muse with a show about celebrating breasts through burlesque; and stand-up comedienne Heather Witherdon, with “Why bad clothes happen to good women.”

For her part, Sansregret describes desperately wanting large breasts throughout adolescence, getting them in high school, and being sexually harassed forever after in a piece titled, “Beware of what you pray for, it will surely be yours.”

When asked what distinguishes Breast Friends from other comedies at this year’s festival, Sansregret answered simply:

“Flying coconuts.”

Fucking Stephen Harper: How I Sexually Assaulted the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada and Saved Democracy

Journalist and performer Rob Salerno returns to Winnipeg after the 2008 hit show Balls! (a poignant comedy about testicular cancer) with a play that has been described by Maclean’s as “An hilarious take on Canadian politics, the media, the gay community, and what Stephen Harper’s balls feel like.”

Salerno has been sporting a beef with the prime minister and the federal government. And for good reason, he says.

Over the last four years as a professional journalist for gay and lesbian newspaper Xtra, he has attempted in vain to speak with someone, anyone, from the Conservative Party of Canada about issues relating to the LGBT community.

“This is a government that very much controls its message,” Salerno said.

In restless pursuit of the prime minister while covering the 2008 federal election campaign, Salerno began to lose his composure. One night in September 2008, he allegedly sexually assaulted Stephen Harper.

“The details on what happened that fateful night are a matter of dispute between myself and the prime minister,” said Salerno. “This show is for anyone who has been watching politics with concern throughout the last four years of Conservative government in Canada.”

The Shadowy Waters

When initially asked about The Shadowy Waters, John Bent Jr. (a producer and actor in the play) gave a tongue-in-cheek answer:
“It’s by a little-known playwright named Yeats.”

William Butler Yeats, a giant of 20th century literature, is best known as a prolific and brilliant Irish poet. Few are familiar with his play from 1900, The Shadowy Waters, a beautifully dramatic reverie about a pirate captain sailing in search of love and immortality.

The play is highly autobiographical, touching on the yearning Yeats felt for a woman he loved for years but who never returned that love, and is a means of fulfilling his unrequited passion.

“It is about a man who can get whatever he wants, a dreamer who can make any dream come true,” said Leila Marston, a writer/performer and one of the five cast members.

This adaptation of Yeats’ original play contains “lost” material from early (1894-1906) manuscripts that Martson retrieved through the University of Winnipeg library.

Armed with this long-neglected material, Marston and Bent Jr. have crafted a new beginning and ending to the play and have brought back a character that has not been seen since 1905.

“Half of this was hashed out at Bailey’s (restaurant and bar), half at Starbucks,” Marston said.

Although the play is essentially a long dramatic poem and can be difficult to decipher at times, it is sure to be lyrically and aesthetically captivating.

Smartarse

Rob Gee, the brilliantly quick-witted English comedian, performer and poet, returns to Winnipeg after last year’s smash hit Fruitcake (a darkly hilarious memoir about his time spent as a psychiatric nurse) with Smartarse, a look into the universally common trials and travails of childhood.

“All my favourite stuff has lots of light and dark,” Gee said in an e-mail. “(I’ve always tried) to create something that lasts in the mind a little longer than most comedy.”

The play will explore his father’s childhood in a state-run school for war orphans that was dominated by “sadists, pedophiles and the hopelessly incompetent,” as well as Gee’s own school, which he describes as “pretty ordinary, but for the fact there were magic mushrooms growing in abundance on the playing fields.”

Gee returns to Venue 11, literally a small room at Red River College Princess St. campus and one of the most intimate venues at the Fringe. Be ready to both squirm in your seat and laugh uncontrollably after some dark and aptly delivered material.

Die Roten Punkte- KUNST ROCK (ART ROCK)

Watching the latest music video - for the song Bananenhaus (Banana House) - from Berlin’s whacked out, oddly incestuous punk rock duo demonstrates the key asset of this comedic powerhouse.

Over lyrics like “I saw you lying on the floor/Of the supermarket/You’d fallen/And nobody knew,” Otto Rot, the guitarist and creepy, straight-edge punk kid, looks at the camera with a manic stare as he shovels a banana into his mouth.

It is this farcical expression, as he sings the uncomfortably awkward “Straight Edge Girl” to his chosen audience sweetheart or strums on the guitar and pouts his lipstick-smeared lips, that causes tears of laughter from audiences around the world.

Astrid Rot (the hysterical and horny drummer) and Otto Rot return to Winnipeg with a batch of new songs after being sorely missed at last year’s festival. The two new tunes currently available online - the jumpy pop-punk Bananenhaus and upbeat Burgerstore Dinosaur - are alone worth the price of admission.

Juliet and Romeo

The University of Winnipeg Department of Theatre and Film, through a special study course taught by veteran stage director Tom Stroud, returns to the Fringe with a “lyrical and expressionistic” adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classic.

The play, which has been stripped down to 75 minutes from its original length of over two hours, focuses on the often overlooked transition that Juliet must make from a young girl in love to a woman that must sacrifice her life to end a brutal family war.

“Our version highlights the fact that Romeo and Juliet were sacrificial lambs for an ancient family grudge,” said Sarah Petty, one of two actresses playing Juliet.

Petty portrays the early Juliet; the young girl in the throes of a forbidden love. Theatre student Heather Russell plays the more decisive and hardened Juliet in the latter acts of the play.

Expect an elaborate stage, with two six-foot tall scaffolds used as expressionistic tools.

“The scaffolding is an interpretative way of expressing the feelings of the two characters (Romeo and Juliet),” Petty said.

There are nine student performers in the show and all ticket proceeds will go to the U of W theatre department.

Published in Volume 64, Number 27 of The Uniter (June 30, 2010)