>>PREVIEWS
CALGARY FRINGE FESTIVAL
Runs until August 20
Check listings for venues and times
THE GREAT PRETENORS
The PreTenors
If you need an opera fix, a good laugh or both, put The Great PreTenors on your Fringe schedule. Billing themselves as operatic comedy (a rare commodity) the three PreTenors, Michel Landry, Kieran Martin Murphy and Trent Worthington, accompanied by pianist Joachim Segger, have spent 12 years garnering accolades in front of corporate audiences. Members of those audiences encouraged them to enter the Edmonton Fringe, where they were a hit and held over for three shows.
Murphy, a professional actor and singer who last performed as Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar at Stage West, says, "The show is, first and foremost, a concert. The operatic music is live (no lip-synching) and is accompanied by Joachim Segger, who is a world-class classical pianist. It features all the big operatic hits that we all know to hear, but maybe not the titles – Nessun Dorma, La Donna e Mobile, O Sole Mio are just a few.
"The comedy comes from the fun we have playing with the larger-than-life personae of these three famous men. Pavarotti is of course a man of great appetite and ego and that is very much represented. Domingo not only believes he's the best, he believes he's the best looking, too. Then there's poor little Carreras, who just wants to be noticed, even just a little bit, by the other two." (TC)
MILO’S DREAM
Charming Puppet Productions
One of the few all ages Fringe shows comes from Calgarian Nadine Charman, who is directing and performing Milo’s Dream.
She describes the shadow-puppet show inspired by her dog Milo and using skills gained in a clown workshop as "a tongue-in-cheek spiritual quest. Milo is safe, warm and secure but he travels to all realms, meeting wacky characters and some scary creatures. You know the way dreams are with surreal landscapes."
Charman, her son Andrew Charman-Shea and two of his friends all act and provide the live music and soundscape. The band members interact with Milo. Charman says this gives the piece "a cheeky, youthful feeling." The black and strobe lights plus some violent storm elements might be scary for younger children, Charman cautions.
In addition to the four artists in the cast, two of Charman’s clown classmates, David van Belle and Val Campbell, and friend Laura Stang, have helped in the development of the story and its presentation. Charman is grateful for those "outside eyes" and excited about being in the fringe with an opportunity to find out how audiences feel about her "magical shadow puppet play." (TC)
DEATH: A COMEDY (IN FIVE STAGES))
Redhanded and Random Beings
Scanning show titles in Fringe festival programs usually reveals some of the best show-names in theatre. Playing alongside dozens of other shows and with only a small blurb to entice festivalgoers, Fringe theatre often resorts to imaginative and eye-catching titles to attract prospective audiences. Death: A Comedy in (Five Stages), has picked such a title, not only creating contrast but also indicating the dual nature of the show. While it has a humorous bent, this co-production between Calgary’s Random Beings Theatre and Redhanded of Toronto was inspired by the personal experiences of the performers.
"The artists involved all came face to face with death a year ago, right in the middle of last year’s Fringe Festival," writes director Rosanna Saracino, "by early fall, more than six of their friends, lovers or family members had passed away."
Death is based around two characters, Logi and Sprite, who explore death through the customs associated with it. Discussing both our and other cultures’ approach to grieving and death, they travel through time, looking at death and the various rituals associated with it across different cultures. Among other things, the show draws on the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, the idea that those who have experienced the death of someone close to them may go through stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance in order to deal with the death.
"At the end of this, we were desperate to find humour and to remember the love that drove this need to understand, release, accept and move forward with life," says Saracino. After playing overseas, Death: A Comedy comes to both the Calgary and Edmonton Fringes this month. Using humour to discuss a heavy subject, this collective creation looks dark and interesting beyond its snappy title. (AM)
EAT MY BRAIN
Pineapple Grenade Theatre
Imagine an epidemic of zombies has descended on Calgary. Naturally, you and four of your closest friends and enemies (because face it – that’s what they really are) hole up in a cabin to wait out the crisis, only to find the zombies have followed you. Trapped in a group-therapy-from-hell scenario, you must decide what is the greatest threat: the zombies, the other guy or yourself?
This is only a slice of what Pineapple Grenade Theatre has in store for audiences with their contribution to the Calgary Fringe Festival, Eat My Brain.
"We’ve got a full menu of undead-man-versus-man, man-versus-man, and man-versus-himself conflict," says director Brett Lemay.
"It’s a very character-driven piece, as opposed to plot driven as most horror movies tend to be. I don’t think people will be disappointed when they find out it’s not just about zombies," he adds.
Taking cues from William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, playwright Joel Crichton chose to delve into the idea of who we really are in the face of necessity rather than focus on the traditional blood and gore of zombie flicks.
"A good society put into a bad situation – I thought zombies would be an interesting vehicle to do that with. I find them really creepy. For one, they used to be human beings and secondly, they don’t just kill you, you become them. They change who you are," says Crichton.
Lemay agrees. "Zombies used to be and for the most part still are humans. A swarm of killer bees does not have the same effect," he says.
The characters, played by Darren Paul, Jeff Woodward, Teresa Campbell, Mari Chartier and Crichton must deal with the demons of their own nature while trying to survive the threat that lurks outside.
"Although they’ve (zombies) got them trapped in this tiny cabin, the characters treat them as this secondary threat. The zombies are at the door and it’s shuddering from them trying to get in, but I’m holding it closed so I can yell at you some more," says Crichton. (PM)
CABERLESQUE!
Bside Productions
Burlesque, a late 19th/early 20th century theatrical style with elements of humour, parody and erotica, is being revived by BSide Productions at the Calgary Fringe Festival. The show, Caberlesque!, was initially created by actor and director Jeffrey Pufahl and an ensemble of Saskatchewan singers, dancers and musicians.
"The music selection informed the time frame," says Pufahl. Starting with the music of Kurt Weill and the cabarets of 1930s Berlin, the show moves through three eras of modern burlesque, from Depression-era Germany to the red light district of 1960s Amsterdam to the burlesque revival in present-day New York City. While burlesque started as a form of satirical comedy, it has gained many different connotations and spans different performance mediums, ranging from sketch comedy to dance. In the 20th century, the form gained erotic overtones, with performers stripping onstage and bringing sexual subject matter into burlesque.
"Burlesque is the art of the tease, the dances in burlesque are story-oriented," he says, describing burlesque as a process of "peeling off layers" and celebrating female wit. "There are also elements of the grotesque."
Pufahl has himself taken a long interest in burlesque and vaudeville, starting as a theatre student, and has travelled to clubs in New York and San Francisco to study the contemporary burlesque revival. Over the past year, he assembled an ensemble of actors and dancers to put Caberlesque! together, starting with the music before adding a storyline and script. During the process, members of the ensemble added on to Pufahl’s original script and began rehearsing in earnest last June, before premiering the show to a hometown crowd in Regina. From there, the show toured to Winnipeg, where it won The Best of Festival at the Winnipeg fringe, before heading to Saskatoon and Calgary.
So far, says Pufahl, the show has been well received, appealing to a range of audiences, from younger viewers drawn in by Burlesque’s racy image, to "the more regular theatre-going crowd, who appreciate the intelligence of the script – they get a kick out of the naughtiness of it as well." (AM)
REARVIEW
Written and performed by Tyler Séguin
Tyler Séguin wants to keep the trip that will be Rearview on the mysterious side of the street. "It works really well when the audience isn’t quite sure what’s going on," he says. That feeling mirrors the whole point of the piece, which is, he says, about "not being in control... about being at the mercy of strangers."
He doesn’t just mean that metaphorically. Rearview is this year’s Bring
Your Own Venue play, and the venue in question is a moving vehicle driven, I assume, by Séguin. "All I can tell you is that it’s a 15-minute voyage into questions of morality and justice that asks, ‘Who is a victim?’ and,
‘When are you responsible?’"
Rearview is definitely a leap of faith for both audience and performer – Séguin has never been to Calgary, and he won’t know his actual route until the day before the first show.
Rearview runs this Saturday through Monday only, after which Séguin will
make his way up to Edmonton. Audiences of three leave the Epcor Centre every twenty minutes. Don’t miss the ride. (ML)
PEEPSHOW
out of line theatre
Since the Fringe is the perfect place to put on a persona and try new tastes, PeepShow might be just the ticket. Promising to be both a ridiculous romp and psychosexual exploration, the show invites you to flirt with it by being "now a crowd, now a peeping tom, now a patron of a strip club, now a cinema-goer."
The performers, too, will be trying on roles. out of line theatre’s Ian
Mozdzen and Mia van Leeuwen play Hugo and Sabina, characters who spend the hour mining the queerest corners of their fantasies and acting them out. The role of the audience as voyeur is underlined by the presence of men with old-fashioned peepshow boxes. The action, too, is made to resemble the look of racy Kinescope shorts. PeepShow’s staging looks to be as polymorphous as its characters’ fantasies, employing music, film, slides and, by all accounts, killer choreography. Whether a genuine subversiveness emerges from all this is for you to decide. But hey, it’s the Fringe, a place where "mere" and "titillation" should never cohabit the same sentence. One blogger who has seen it confesses that watching it made him feel "naughty." What better recommendation can I give than that? (ML)
G-SPOT
Laughing Arts Festival
Sorry, boys. Unless you’re of the female persuasion, don’t bother trying to get into the Laughing Arts Festival’s saucy comedy show known as G-Spot. It’s got a women’s only line-up – and an intended audience to match.
"G-Spot actually stands for "Girls Spot," and the tag line is, "We’d invite the men but they couldn’t find it," explains Phay Wills, the artistic director of the festival, which is an offshoot of the Calgary Fringe.
"Then I thought all these men would show up bragging that they did find it! We’ve intended for this event to be a big girls’ night out with 300 women. The men can see all these women in our other shows."
Wills spoke to the Fringe Festival about doing a cabaret comedy night six weeks ago when it occurred to her that there was enough talent in Calgary to organize an entire festival. The idea tied in with other initiatives of the nonprofit organization she heads up, the Laughing Arts Society, which has a mandate to set up community outreach programs and bolster talent development.
The first time she launched a women-only comedy showcase was 10 years ago as part of a women in film and television international conference. "I got so many thank yous and calls, I vowed to do it again, and the festival presents the perfect opportunity."
The impressive lineup includes Shelley Marshall, a Toronto stand-up comic who is flying in at her own expense, Cory Mack, the top female headliner in Western Canada, Amy Trofimuk, Karen O'Keefe, Julia Stretch, Tippi Seagram and an open improv featuring Ksenia Thurgood and Ella Simon. Also featured as part of the evening is photographer Cate Cameron’s exhibition of women's portraits and fiddle player Liana Seidle.
One hundred per cent of the proceeds will go directly to G-spot performers. In the future, Wills plans to stage the performance as a fundraiser for a women’s charity.
"Dress up or come in pajamas, you'll have a blast," says Wills. "Why not, every woman wants a little G-spot stimulus, doesn't she?" (BB)
KNOLL
Go See A Play
Go See a Play’s name is a command, a call to people who might not otherwise consider theatre a viable entertainment option. A largely ad hoc company that grew out of an entry into Theatre Junction’s Random Acts Festival, its latest production, Knoll, takes aim at an event so infamous that, theatre-goer or not, there’s sure to be interest. Who hasn’t heard of the Kennedy assassination?
Written by Dan Gibbins (whose own Scorpio Theatre will also be producing a Fringe show titled The Very Long Night of Tyler and Selena), Knoll centres on the infamous others who stood behind the grassy knoll – Saul and Roscoe. From a dark room awaiting an interview, to the site of the grassy knoll itself and finally a safehouse, director Christopher Hunt will have to help audiences navigate the kind of paranoia and second-guessing that has driven conspiracy theorists wild since the assassination in 1963, if with a more comedic touch.
Even Jordan Schartner and C. Adam Leigh, playing Saul and Roscoe respectively, admit to their own obsessions with the conspiracy theories.
"I wouldn’t consider myself a nut, but something in my heart gets racing when talking about interesting facts," says Schartner. "When anything in the play comes up I get extremely excited."
For Leigh, the obsession was slightly more impromptu.
"I went to a few websites thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll be on this site for 15 minutes,’" he recalls. "An hour and a half later I wanted to keep going." (JK)
IRAQ AND BACK
Dark Forest Theatre Company
You would think a local actor would be happy staying at home. Not so for Tyler Rive, whose longing for adventure landed him in one of the most political hot spots in the Middle East. In Iraq and Back, Rive describes his experiences the best way he could as an actor: on stage.
"This show chronicles some of the time I spent in 2003-04 in the Middle East, when I was working in Iraq and Kuwait," he says.
Rive landed a job building water filtration units for the U.S. army in 2003. "It was a company I’d worked for on and off, and I was working in their warehouse. They gave me a phone call and asked if I wanted to go work in the Middle East and I thought, ‘Why not?’ And a week later I was on a plane," he says.
The plane that would take Rive into Iraq was a C-130 Hercules that came under fire as it flew into Baghdad.
"It’s a very typical story of somebody going into an environment that they’re not really used to and all of the challenges that come with that. So there’s some moments and scenes and things that are pretty scary and unnerving but there are moments seeing things that are quite funny," says director and co-creator Aaron Coates.
Coates notes part of the challenge for this piece was trying to recreate the unique environment in the Middle East with minimal equipment.
"We have a sound designer who was able to create a lot of effects that helped us create the atmosphere," says Coates. "But really, the challenge was trying to physically create that sense of being in an army base, or being in a 2000-year-old city. You just have to try and create that with the way Tyler moves through space and the way he reacts to what he’s talking about."
Being situated in Iraq, one might think Iraq and Back could easily become a controversial political piece.
"I would definitely say it has political tones but I think it’s more of a social commentary," Rive says. "Ty, by his nature, I suppose, is not as much of a political guy. So really, it’s a behind the scenes sort of story where you get to see what it’s like for the soldiers living over there, and the people that are around all of that stuff – because for all the soldiers that are over there, there are all sorts of civilian contractors, people like Ty. And you get to see what life is like for them and how they react to the things that are going on."
Finishing a run at the Fringe Festival in Regina, Rive says the audience response thus far has been good.
"People have been laughing, but there’s some serious moments. So it’s kind of a bit of everything," he says, adding that audiences can expect to see "a first-hand account of what’s going on in the Middle East."
And would he go back?
"Not at all. I’m glad I went, but I would not go back. I went twice. I went there, came back, and then went once more, and that was enough." (JG)
MOXIE
Upintheair Theatre
When Vancouver’s Upintheair Theatre last produced Moxie, it was a site-specific installation in the basement of Best Cleaning Supplies’ warehouse and a fundraiser for the company’s Walking Fish Festival. While its latest production in the Fringe’s Sanctuary venue may not afford it the same dark, recessed quality of its original staging, the play itself is teeming with enough black, comic energy to complete the transformation by itself.
Centred in the cell of a futuristic jail in which convicts are imprisoned for life, graded during their term, and ground into the facility’s menu if their rating falls below a desirable level, Moxie follows cellmates Curt and Pill as the latter deals with a devastating two star rating. It’s an exchange heaped with physical abuse, co-dependency, paranoia and a variety of betrayals – all punctuated by the sound of the grinder, a holdover from the show’s first production.
"(There’s a) startup sound, and then it starts grinding, then it kicks out, and then it slows down," says Upintheair co-founder and cast member Dave Mott, describing the grinder’s sound. "And it’s always followed by the clanking of tin cups – presumably the prisoners are very hungry."
Upintheair had originally planned to stage Moxie in Vancouver, once again, but a felicitous opportunity presented itself when the Calgary Fringe’s artistic director, Jason Rothery, put out a call for submissions, allowing the company to add another location to the show’s tour. As Upintheair’s former playwright-in-residence and Moxie’s creator, it seems appropriate that Rothery’s work will now be showcased in his own festival. Though the venue will have changed, the sound of the grinder will be a difficult one to forget. (JK)
Watch next issue for more previews. For the full lineup, dates and times, check listings, or visit www.calgaryfringe.ca. |
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