The 11th to the 21st of August marks the 30th annual Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival: Fringeopolis. The City of Festivals began hosting the Fringe event in 1980 as Chinook Touring Theatre. Today the Fringe Theatre Adventures (FTA) hosts year-round theatre events at their arts facility, the TransAlta Arts Barns, in addition to this world-renowned festival.

The Edmonton Fringe is one of the founding members of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (CAFF), which has established an outline that each participating festival in the country must abide by: 1) Participation in the festival is determined by a non-juried process, 2) Participants receive 100 per cent of the ticketed box office receipts for their performances, 3) Fringe festival producers have no control over the artistic content of performances, and 4) Fringes should provide accessible opportunities for audiences and artists to participate.

This year GayCalgary & Edmonton Magazine is proud to be standing behind an eclectic mix of shows that have dazzled their way into the 2011 program. From cabaret drag to a boy’s gripping journey into awakening, a grand 10 days of theatre is in store.

Inspired by the sexy and mysterious female-led film noir classics of the ‘30s and ‘40s, Pscychobabble is one of two shows by the Guys In Disguise cross-dressing comedy crew, highlighting this year’s Fringe.

Psychobabble is a psychological comedy thriller centered on a faded movie star who commits herself into the Ravenwood Asylum to research the role that will boost her back to the top of the industry. Unfortunately for the ex-diva, the chief nurse handling her file has other ideas in store.

"We...loved the idea of a silent movie star in an insane asylum," says Darrin Hagen, co-star and co-writer of the production alongside of Schmidt. "We also have a love for the movies in the waning years of a great actress’s career – when she begins playing crazy ladies and murderesses and fun stuff like that."

Hagen and producer Kevin Hendricks have been putting on shows with Guys In Disguise since 1987, performing at festivals and in theatres across the country and the United States. Hagen has written 25 plays including The Edmonton Queen, BitchSlap!, Toronto Magnet and With Bells On, and has taken home seven Sterling Awards for his work in theatre.

In 2002 Schmidt debuted with the group in the hit, Tranne of Green Gables. They are a returning treat in Edmonton.

"Guys In Disguise always puts on a fab show at the Fringe, with unique ideas and fabulous costumes and makeup," Hagen states. "We are still the only company in Western Canada to produce a new queer/drag comedy annually, and have been one of the top-selling shows at the Fringe for decades."

will be performed in the Varscona Theatre. Tickets to view "the wicked web of faux-insanity" that "becomes terrifyingly real" may be purchased at www.guysindisguise.com.

Show two of two for the Guys In Disguise, slated for Fringe, is the Dora-nominated cabaret drag revue Eyecons. Following 15 years of touring abroad and a critically-acclaimed run in Las Vegas, Christopher Peterson is making a triumphant return to Canada in a show that has been touted as having "set a new standard for the art of female impersonation".

Peterson will be bringing to the stage Judy, Liza, Barbra, Marilyn and more – live. This means no lip-sync; just a magic on-stage closet, impeccable comic timing, and a mastered ability to vocally and visually impersonate the female icons we know and love.

"The brass you come to expect from a female impersonator. The class may come as a surprise!" The Washington Post has extolled unto Peterson.

You may recognize the New Brunswick-born performer – he portrayed Lucy Ball in the film Rat Race by the side of Cuba Gooding Junior, appeared on the Dini Petty Show, Global Television, the Shirley Show and was featured on Fashion Television.

His performance resumé does not stop there. He has performed on various stages in Key West, Florida, the Stage for AIDS at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Arlington, New York State, for the Kansas City Men’s Chorus, the Washington Gay Men’s Chorus, and headlined at the Sands Casino in Atlantic City.

will be performed at Lucky 13 on Whyte Ave nightly from August 12th to 20th. Tickets may also be purchased on the Guys website after August 2nd.

"... to be free, one must give up a little part of oneself," states the show we all regard dearly. After a successful run at the Montreal St-Ambroise Fringe Festival in June, vi.Va?VOOM! Productions returns to the Edmonton International Fringe Festival with Hedwig and the Angry Inch – lyrics and libretto by John Cameron Mitchell and music by Stephen Trask.

Edmonton’s own Antonio Bavaro will be playing the iconic Hedwig, while Peggy Hogan of Victoria via Montreal will take on the role of Yitzahk, Hedwig’s sidekick. The show is produced by Brendan Halama.

"Brendan and I have been best friends since high school, and seeing the movie version changed our lives," Bavaro says. "It is the defining queer rock musical theatre piece of our generation, and we are no exception. It was always our goal since we’ve been performing and producing together to put our vision of John Cameron Mitchell’s great work on stage because we know the piece as well as we know ourselves."

"Hedwig has always had a special meaning to both of us", joins Halama. "It is something that we both identified with, having grown up in the small suburban community of Sherwood Park, our Wicked Little Town, and being so different from so many of our peers. I think that as friends this is a show that at one point in our lives we both had to do!"

Bavaro says performing in his own town makes for some big time feelings of apprehension.

"In Montreal, I arrived having had experienced a full life and felt open enough about my own identity to perform such an intense role," he describes. "Because I have so much history with this city and its residents, it makes me nervous if people will be able to take the character of Hedwig seriously – or will they just perceive her as me in a dress again?"

"Since moving, I don’t know what my place in Edmonton’s culture is anymore, so it worries me that I am starting at ground zero and that this show means a lot more to future opportunities in Alberta... But in reality, I’m just happy to be performing this amazing show no matter what city we are in."

The two have not been shy on performances together. In 2009 vi.Va?VOOM! Productions brought a sold out run of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the Fringe, and have performed countless drag shows in bars around town.

"My favourite performance together was at the inaugural installment of Brendan’s monthly queer dance party, Queers Never Die, where we fought zombies together as an eye-patched superhero and giant robot to the tune of Robyn’s I’m In Love With A Robot," says Bavaro.

"...also the fact that we have a killer transexual rocker to back us up, helps a little too," pipes Halama.

Both partners have dedicated their lives to theatre, and though they say expense and travel make doing the whole Fringe circuit while studying virtually impossible, they feel very fortunate for where their talents have taken them thus far.  For Bavaro this also includes a recent reading of Holy Tranity at the Toronto Fringe.

"I was a pro actor as a child, and I completed the rigorous musical theatre training Grant MacEwan’s Theatre Arts program," he says. "I started hosting and performing shows in drag as Connie Lingua in Edmonton at Buddy’s, the Roost, Boots and Saddles, and since then have worked professionally in opera, burlesque, performance art, video art, film, spoken word, community development and activism."

"For my whole life I have been performing, on or off stage: choral, musical theatre, drag, and acting," says Halama. "Performing is something that to me is more of a side- passion or something I do for fun. My full-time passion is working as an outreach worker at the Old Strathcona Youth Co-op."

Come out and be captivated by Bavaro’s portrayal of the esteemed German trans rocker, through botched surgery, fame, love and despair, as she recovers from the back stabbing betrayal by ex, superstar Tommy Gnosis,  and seeks to "fulfill a burning desire to become whole".

The energetic, punk glam rock musical cult classic will be performed alongside a four-piece band live at the Westbury Theatre in the Trans-Alta Barns at six shows throughout Fringe.

Jeremy Banks was once an average guy working an average job, and then he went back to school to study theatre. In April of 2010 Banks wrapped up his studies at the Vancouver Island University and applied to Fringe festivals across Canada, at which he ended up working all jobs involved – from box office to stage management.

"I wound up visiting or being hired in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria and Vancouver," he says. "The catch is that I did short interviews with artists and producers along the way, YouTube kind of stuff, and got to learn much more through conversations with producers and artists than I ever expected."

By the end of the summer he was performing his own show at the Victoria Fringe, The Big Smoke, written by Ron Fromstein. The show was originally scribed during the 24 hour playwriting contest in Toronto, fleshed out, and in 2006 took home the top spot in the Canadian National Playwriting Competition. In 2007 the play was produced for a short run in Summerworks, and then remained shelved until Banks picked it up while interning with Theatre BC.

Banks sold out two shows in Victoria, and received a shining 4.5 stars.

"I was elated; blown away in fact," he describes. "Guess you could say I fell in love with the Fringe."

is an intimate, authentic and passionate tale of a small town kid searching for "more," moving to new and strange places and realizing the baggage he is toting with him.

Banks was taken with this premise. Coming from Nanaimo, BC, he related to the protagonist who leaves familiar dwellings to find himself in a strange new world.

"Tommy... discovers, denies and eventually has to deal with homosexuality despite his own small-town headspace...at the same time I am discovering a world of Fringe and theatre and performances while I have to deal with a slightly larger small-town headspace," Banks describes.

"It’s much less an I’m here, queer and proud [plotline] and much more a personal tale of a kid coming to terms with changes he was never prepared for: sex, the big city, making friends, dating."

Through the length of the performance, Tommy finds himself in denial, hating himself as much as he loves the time he spends with men.

"It’s a coming out story of another colour; as only in the last five minutes of the show does he come out, and only to one person," Banks describes. "...Tommy isn’t really ready for the end of the show when it happens."

When Banks initially took an interest in The Big Smoke, mutual friends connected him with writer Fromstein. The two have since collaborated on other projects, including a post-apocalyptic romantic comedy entitled Bess & Jen, which he was performing in Saskatoon at the time of writing. In addition, Banks holds the executive producer position down for Nanaimo’s Fringetastic Theatre Festival, the first Fringe Festival in the town since 1997. However this will be his first time performing at Edmonton’s.

"I was there last year doing some interviews for three days," he says. "It was so big and hectic I didn’t know what to do. Now I’m performing there and while I’m confident in my show, Edmonton Fringe is the biggest theatre festival in Canada and yes, that terrifies me."

If past praise is an indication of how he will be received this month, Banks stands a good chance to woo his audiences.

"My dream audience is anyone from a small town that has realized a need to get out; anyone that has stepped farther than they expected and had to face up to a scary truth they weren’t ready for," Banks says, "...because The Big Smoke is about Tommy’s journey as he does all of these things, and discovering the reasons that make it worth it."