| On August 11, 36 theatre productions, 59 films and eight mainstage musical acts will take to venues on and in the Epcor Centre, the rehearsal hall of the Calgary Opera, and 17th Avenue. After three years in absentia, the Fringe has returned to Calgary.
In 2003, Loose Moose Theatre lost their home in Inglewood’s Gary Theatre and, along with it, the ability to produce the Calgary Fringe Festival. After two often-tumultuous years of producing the brainchild of former-vice-president of student life at the University of Calgary’s Students’ Union, Miki Stricker (currently the Edmonton Fringe Festival’s artistic director), the company was forced to allow the rights to Calgary’s Fringe to revert to the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (CAFF).
By the time Blair Gallant and the cast of Broadway West’s production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show found themselves sitting around a fire in the summer of 2004 at the Edmonton Fringe Festival, Calgary’s Fringe counterpart had already been dormant for two years. It was here that Gallant, convinced Calgary could accommodate another festival, began thinking seriously about mounting another attempt at a Calgary Fringe.
Slightly over a year later, in November of 2005, Gallant and the festival’s artistic director, playwright Jason Rothery, had emerged from a three-day CAFF conference having submitted a successful application for a new Calgary Fringe Festival ("We got to go to Disneyworld," notes Rothery enthusiastically). After three years, the wheels were once again in motion for Calgary’s own Fringe.
"We’re taking some big steps the first year," says Gallant, who serves as the festival’s producer. "We didn’t take the approach that we were going to start small and let it grow. We thought we’d start in the place we wanted to see it in three to five years, and work like a bugger to make it happen the first year. Is it a concern that we might have too many options, too many things on the go? It’s always going to be a concern.
"We’re trying to build a model that’s self-sustainable," he says, noting that he plans to remain as the festival’s producer until its third year, when a successor will be chosen.
Certainly, the festival is taking an ambitious stride forward, straight out of the gates. In addition to the festival’s 36 theatre productions (Edmonton, the largest Fringe in North America, has 100), entertainment will also include a film festival at Melrose Café and Bar, inspired by the same uncensored, egalitarian flavour of the Fringe’s theatre events, live music in Tomkin’s Park and a host of outdoor entertainers such as mural painters, body artists and even acrobats.
In addition, Central Memorial High School students will be performing their drama festival show, titled Down Came the Rain, in the first of what is intended to be a yearly educational experience in practical theatre production. It’s a mix Gallant sees as part of the kind of creative engagement that is at the heart of Fringe festivals, even if the range of a festival’s offerings can seem daunting at times.
"If it wasn’t for Jason (Rothery) there would be 112 other things," he laughs.
Naturally, the lead-up to the festival has entailed a series of difficult logistical and artistic decisions. The festival’s location on 17th Avenue, for one, was chosen from a list of potential sites including Olympic Plaza, Eau Claire, the Stampede grounds, the Pumphouse Theatres, Kensington and Inglewood. Even with the decision to base the festival principally around an area that sees 83,000 pedestrians every week, attendant problems remained in trying to stage a festival as large as the Fringe.
"I made the mistake of using the term Red Mile when we first applied for a number of different things, referring to it as a place rather than an event. (I was) naive in terms of people’s perceptions of the Red Mile," says Gallant, noting the apprehension associated with Calgary’s infamous playoff fever.
As Rothery points out, however, the atmosphere of a Fringe festival is entirely different than the Red Mile’s hedonistic abandon. While fringe-goers are known for many things, any nudity tends to remain inside the venues and on stage. In fact, while the festival encountered some inevitable initial resistance, Rothery says that, on balance, support has been more common than conflict.
"There’re always people that do not want certain events to happen, that’s the nature of our society," he says. "It’s important to recognize that the sizable majority have been behind us."
Even Western Canada High School, after withdrawing as the festival’s prime venue over concerns around impending renovations and the potential content of Fringe shows, remains the festival’s largest source of parking and is hosting its visual arts display. And applications to the festival received enormous support from Edmonton’s Fringe, with Edmonton organizers enclosing a Calgary Fringe flyer in the letters sent to all 300 applicants, including 100 shows on its waiting list and the additional 100 rejections.
In fact, though this year’s Fringe was not able to participate in CAFF’s national touring circuit, which begins in Halifax and concludes in Cowichan, BC, filling its schedule has not been an issue. Since its January application deadline, the Calgary Fringe has been able to accommodate its entire waiting list and fill two vacant slots with the late additions of Kairos Devine and Ella Simon’s Cowboy Cabaret.
Ironically, Gallant and Rothery note that local applications were actually some of the last to arrive, after shows from as far away as New York and Florida. However, as the 18 Calgary-based companies represented in the festival’s lineup show, local support has been essential.
"You’ve got to hit your homies up your first year out the gate," says Rothery, himself a veteran of five Fringe festivals.
Now, with more than 200 Fringe volunteers primed to descend on the festival’s eight venues in its three principal locations, the Calgary Fringe Festival is set to begin again. Gallant has set three key measures of success for the festival, namely ticket sales, accommodating the communities the festival operates in, and the creation of a viable financial model. Indications are already positive for the inaugural year of the revived festival and for its continued existence.
"Financially, logistically – it’s already a go-ahead," says Gallant of 2007’s Fringe festival. "We’ve already passed that hurdle."
From here, he says, the festival will be taking gradual steps, aiming to become a sustainable, permanent part of Calgary’s theatre scene. However, for this year, with its phoenix-style revival, the Calgary Fringe will be making a spectacular return.
Just what is the Fringe?
In 1947, after eight uninvited theatre companies arrived at the Edinburgh International Festival and set up their own impromptu venues, Robert Kemp of the Evening News coined the term "Fringe" when he wrote, "Round the fringe of the official Festival drama there seems to be more private enterprise than before."
Since then, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – still the largest fringe festival in the world – has become a model for festivals designed to allow absolutely any theatre company, from the amateur to the seasoned, to produce shows for a ready audience.
In Canada, the terms "Fringe" and "Fringe Festival" are trademarks of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (CAFF). This has allowed CAFF to ensure that all festivals hoping to follow the Fringe model will adhere to four key principles:
1. Participants will be selected on a non-juried basis, through a first-come, first-served process, a lottery or other method approved by the Association.
2. In order to ensure the above, the audiences must have the option to pay a ticket price, 100 per cent of which goes directly to the artists.
3. Fringe Festival producers have no control over the artistic content of each performance. The artistic freedom of the participants is unrestrained.
4. Festivals must provide an easily accessible opportunity for all audiences and all artists to participate in Fringe festivals.
The result is an eclectic mix of everything theatre has to offer, from surprising gems to the masturbatory and inept. Because of the complete freedom afforded to its artists, fringe theatre has become associated with work that pushes boundaries, often beyond what some consider offensive. It’s wild and unrestrained, just the way international audiences have liked it since 1947 (and Canadian audiences since 1982, with the creation of Canada’s first fringe festival in Edmonton).
"Just because it’s unjuried and uncensored does not mean that it has to defy common sense or good taste – it just means it can," says Calgary Fringe artistic director, Jason Rothery. "It’s a great place to see the artist’s Id – what lives within you when you have no check. And I guess it’s a bit comforting to know that not everyone is a crazy psychopath for wanting to strip naked and paint on themselves.
"But if they want to, they can," he adds. |
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