The greatest show on Earth

Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival set to be a perfect storm of entertainment

Local sketch comedy group Hot Thespian Action is participating in this year’s Fringe Festival.
Local sketch comedy group Outside Joke is participating in this year’s Fringe Festival.

“A few years ago, it was closing night of the festival, and there was a thunder storm the likes of which I’ve never seen,” says veteran Fringe performer TJ Dawe when asked to recount his favourite memory of the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival.

“Lightning was striking from cloud to cloud across the entire sky ... and no one I knew in Winnipeg remarked on it as being unusual the next day,” he adds.

“This wasn’t a once in a century kind of storm – that, in Winnipeg, is called a thunderstorm.”

For Dawe and many of the hundreds of Fringe performers who will journey to the city in mid-July, this is an apt metaphor.

While the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival set an in-door paid ticket attendance record of over 86,000 last year and is among the largest in the country, Winnipeggers still consider the festivities that engulf the Exchange District from July 13-24 as simply another summer activity.

“The notion of anywhere in Canada, anywhere in North America, or anywhere in the world where there is a popular audience for new, unpublished, experimental, and often local theatre ... it’s so unlikely,” says Dawe, who returns to Winnipeg this year with the autobiographical Lucky 9, a show that examines three forces that came into his life, and brought his family together, in 2009.

We’re still finding new patrons every year. We’re trying to help artists get bigger audiences.

Chuck McEwan, executive producer, Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival

“And yet it’s real and it’s thriving and it doesn’t happen anywhere else.”

Chuck McEwan, the festival’s executive producer, fervently believes that the Fringe can only continue to grow in Winnipeg.

“We’re still finding new patrons every year,” he says.

While the Fringe will remain extended to Albert and Arther streets in the absence of the old vendor court, still inaccessible due to construction on the Union Bank Tower, McEwan believes that in 2012 (the festival’s 25th year), the Fringe will take up both areas with outdoor activities.

“It just shows you how educated and confident our theatre-going public is ... they’re out there in the thousands seeing new plays, just having fun and trying to discover the next big name on the Fringe circuit.”

This year, the Fringe will be facilitating audience growth with two new features: allowing companies to charge a special rate (two for $10) for any show they choose as well as permitting Fringe pass holders to book up to half their tickets in advance before the start of the festival.

“We’re trying to help artists get bigger audiences,” says McEwan, adding that there are 150 productions at this year’s Fringe with companies from around the world.

Tickets for individual plays range from $5-$10 and can be purchased in cash at the venue. Advance tickets and Frequent Fringer passes can be purchased at the Manitoba Theatre Centre box office at 174 Market Avenue or online at www.winnipegfringe.com.


Frequent fringer

The Uniter’s resident Fringe fanatic picks five shows you should see

This is Cancer
Venue 16: PTE Mainstage (393 Portage Ave.)

After losing 90 per cent of his vision to cancer of the eye and after the death of both his father and grandfather, Canadian actor/writer/musician Bruce Horak decided to personify the disease for a laugh at its expense. It all began with spontaneous open mic performances whereby Horak, after being introduced as Cancer, would state simply to the audience: “I’ve been told you have something to say to me.” It has since evolved into a full-scale, critically acclaimed 90-minute dark comedy about Cancer’s slow realization that the entire world hates him.

Law and Order: Nursery Rhyme Unit
Kids Venue: School of Contemporary Dancers (211 Bannatyne Ave.)

The Inspector and the Punnish Sir (“he’s always scrambling for egg puns!”) are called on to investigate Humpty Dumpty’s crime scene in a satire of television’s Law and Order and a fun nursery rhyme farce. From the director of the 2009 Kid’s Venue Best of Fest Cinderella! Cinderella! comes a smart comedy that incorporates word play and adult references designed to make parents (and children) howl with laughter.

Happy Slap
Venue 10: Planetarium Auditorium (190 Rupert Ave.)

The rough definition of “happy slap,” a popular if short-lived fad in the United Kingdom, is a spontaneous assault caught on camera. The performance poet and quick-witted English comedian Rob Gee, who mastered his twisted brand of theatre with the dark comedy Fruitcake and celebration of childhood SmartArse at the 2009 and 2010 festivals, returns to Winnipeg with a brand new “celebration of impropriety.”

jem rolls IS PISSED OFF, The Same Joke Twice by jem rolls
Venue 14: King’s Head Pub (120 King St.)

The beloved English performance poet jem rolls returns yet again. However, the Fringe veteran will not only wow audiences with his visceral and politically-charged poetry on the second floor of the King’s Head pub (Venue 16, jem rolls IS PISSED OFF); he will also perform a one-man play (The Same Joke Twice, Venue 9) about “a couple stuck in a hotel room (that) struggle valiantly for true love and real life.”

The Sucker Punch
Venue 7: Cinematheque (100 Arthur St.)

Fringe powerhouse Brent Hirose returns to the Winnipeg Fringe with a one-man, multifaceted sci-fi drama that uses time travel as a plot element to weave four characters together. He seamlessly portrays a businessman, a socially inept slam poet, an unsuspecting test subject and a factory labourer with relationship woes. The content has been described by critics as darkly introspective, dealing with alienation and the limitations of modern technology.

Published in Volume 65, Number 27 of The Uniter (June 29, 2011)

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