Fringe Festival Web Report #10
Saturday, July 14th

By JON KAPLAN

Ensemble companies are a rarity here in Toronto. Soulpepper manages it, but they have a large budget fed in part by corporate sponsorship, something that smaller groups can only dream about.

But the payoff of working as an ensemble is huge – artists know and trust each other, develop a shorthand for shaping the outlines of a show quickly, and ultimately mount a richer production than is usually possible for people who come together only for a single project.

In the alternative theatre, it’s up to the actors and directors to form their own associations and create the situations in which they can work together on a (semi-) ongoing basis. The Fringe usually offers a few groups that make these kind of artistic connections.

The prime example this year is The Company, which presents a trio of Vaclav Havel’s one-act plays – Audience, Unveiling, Protest – as a BYOV at the Victory Cafe on Markham. Their interconnectedness goes back earlier than the Fringe and extends beyond it. Formed by director Dean Gabourie and actor Adrian Griffin to do ongoing ensemble work, the group has members who have previously worked together for Shakespeare in the Rough, the fine outdoor company that performs in Withrow Park each summer.

Gabourie’s assistant director for the Havel trilogy, Alysa Golden – who’s also the artistic director of Avalonstorm Theatre – worked with him in the same capacity for Geoff Kavanagh’s The Water Crawlers a few years ago. Actors Heidi Weeks Brown and Michael Proudfoot are performing onstage together, but in an earlier Fringe she appeared in his play Forensic Tables. Designer Camellia Koo worked with Gabourie on an Equity Showcase production of The Bundle two years ago, as did actors Anthony Malarky and Richard Alan Campbell. And in a few weeks, Campbell, Malarky, Griffin and Proudfoot open Measure For Measure, this year’s Shakespeare in the Rough show, directed by Sue Miner and assistant directed by Golden.

The mention of the talented Miner brings up a satellite group of artists in another Fringe show who are linked to these people. Miner is the director of Cheryl McNamara and Jane Moffat’s The Dick’s A Dame, a fun piece that presents film noir with a lesbian twist. After sending up 40s detective films, McNamara and Moffat also move on to Measure, which opens July 27. It’s Shakespeare in the Rough’s eighth annual presentation.

At least one or two Fringe shows a year get remounts after the festival closes. It’s taken a year for the reappearance of Icara, one of the best of the productions from 2000, but that’s because author/director Ned Dickens has been looking for the perfect venue. The show is Dickens’ take on the Greek myth of Icarus, whose father Daedelus made them both wings so they could escape their island prison. Not heeding his father, Icarus flew too close to the sun, his waxen wings melted and he fell to his death in the sea.

In Dickens’ version, Icarus becomes Icara, and the title role is played by Dickens’ own daughter Risa. In fact, he wrote it as a birthday present for her, and the piece becomes not so much a cautionary tale about listening to your elders as about a parent’s giving freedom to a child who must, as it were, spread her own wings. Bruce Beaton returns as Daedelus.

The show – one of NOW’s top 10 productions of 2000 – was originally staged as an outdoor show on the grass behind Central Tech. Dickens couldn’t remount it until warm weather returned, then had to find a suitable place to present the show. He’s finally settled on the pier off the south side of Centre Island, presenting pwyc shows from July 19 to 29 – weather permitting – at 7:30 pm. Expect to get there walk through a maze suggestive of the one that Daedelus built to hide the monstrous Minotaur. Timed for sunset, the show will take full advantage of Icara’s leap for the sun.