Fringe Festival Web Report #5
Monday, July 9th

By JON KAPLAN

There’s probably not a sadder feeling than opening a Fringe show out of town and being a complete artistic stranger to reviewers and theatre-goers. Who’s gonna come and see your work? Who cares what you’re doing?

The tragic lot of many producing companies was brought home to writer/performer T.J. Dawe in 1998, when he toured his show Tired Cliches across the country. I didn’t get to see it until near the end of the run – too late for a useful review during the Toronto festival, even though it was a great show – but I wrote something after the Fringe and sent it to him on the road. It was useful for publicity at later stops, and Dawe learned that a first-year Fringe tour is part of the education for a theatre artist at the school of hard knocks. He even wrote a magazine-length article about the vicissitudes of that first tour.

And, I’m happy to say, he came back last year to the Toronto Fringe with Labrador, another one-man show that was as good as the first. And this time, happily, he had a following whose core was viewers who’d seen that first show.

So here I am on the opening night of the Fringe, about to enter Tuesdays & Sundays, a show written and performed by two young Albertans, Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn, unknown to me and many others. No word of mouth, only a press release and some photos, and a few days before they arrive in town, a hurriedly faxed additional release that they’d just won Sterling Awards – Edmonton’s version of the Doras – for writing and performing.

What’ll the show be like, I wonder. Will they have any house at all beyond a reviewer or two? Well, the theatre community that had some western roots came out in full force. I found myself on line with Araxi Arslanian, Matt Baram and Kerry Ann Doherty, three Edmontonians who’d gotten frantic phone calls to help fill the house. The trio have their own history with the Fringe, having played Edmonton with Reefer Madness…The Musical and then mounted it as a high-flying production in Toronto last April. They all looked forward to supporting the new guys in town.

Still, the house was only half occupied, but we got just what I hope for in a Fringe show – precise performances, strong emotions and a script that’s touched with theatrical magic. It’s one of the best pieces I’ve seen this year – can’t say the best, since I’m only four days and 21 shows into Fringe 2001 – but certainly a show I’m recommending to everyone I know. Including you.

Less successful? Choreographer Jackie Latendresse’s 3, a study of the three faces of woman, as virgin, mother and crone. She’s blended Jungian psychology, classical myth, mask work and shadow play in the piece, which focuses on the Demeter/Persephone story. Too bad the storytelling’s weak and her use of Tan Dun’s music too literal. Every time there’s a heavy beat in the melody, she responds with a heavy movement. How about playing with the rhythms more? Or working against our expectations? As it turns out, the music is more expressive than the choreography. Latendresse’s best moments are as the mourning Demeter, seeking her lost daughter, holding high an umbrella with scarves that billows like a jellyfish.

Keep catching sight of writer Sonja Mills, back as editor of the Fringe Harold, that daily report of what’s hot and happening around the festival. This year she’s added short plays by talents like Shoshana Sperling, Teresa Pavlinek, Erika Hennebury and Clinton Walker to the companies’ anecdotes about rehearsals, fundraisers and recalcitrant performers. Loved Walker’s piece, a monologue about an actor hired to pass out samples of free gum at the Fringe. Oh, the embarrassment of meeting fellow performers and potential employers! Reminds me – as Walker intends – of last year’s Fringe, when the people in action-figure suits passed out free mouthwash, courtesy of one of the festival’s national sponsors. An icky job for anyone, but how about putting performing skills to better use?

Back to Mills – not only does she spend half the night editing the Harold (and perhaps spending some of that time in the beer tent), she also delivers the paper the next day. Talk about overtime.