Hitting the eclectic community of Inglewood this month will be the sixth annual Calgary Fringe Festival. What started as one Calgary man’s dream has quickly blossomed into an exciting local event that showcases both local and international talent.
Michele Gallant and her husband were performing at the renowned Edmonton Fringe roughly seven years ago when the simple thought was posited: "why doesn’t Calgary have one of these?"
And so the Gallants launched Calgary’s first Fringe in 2006. Over the half dozen years that the festival has taken place, it has grown "organically". Fringe will include 34 different artists this year, up from roughly 24 at the last.
Venue space has also increased. Six Inglewood resident businesses have agreed to open their doors and host various artists in what Michele termed a BYOV – bring your own venue – performance system. Added to the four main stage venues, this brings the total tally of performance spaces up to 10.
"Performers were saying, I can perform standing in a window of a shop, or I’d be able to go into a nightclub environment," and so the venue boutiques idea originated, Michele says. The goal was to provide performers with spaces better suited to their act.
These spaces will include an evening of musical storytelling, performed by Calgary’s Red Flame, at the Nine Café (formerly Serendipity); Six Guitars and slut (r)evolution at DaDe Art & Design Lab; Sabotage, performed by a Loose Moose alumni at the Loose Moose Theatre in the Crossroads Market; a melodic whodunit at Jacqueline Suzanne’s Bistro; Fucking Stephen Harper and Folk with Benefits at Club Paradiso; as well four shows, including ONEymoon, at the Lantern Church sanctuary.
"The pastor there is programming spiritual/family-based shows in the sanctuary of the church," Michele says, in addition to the gym space the church is providing for five other performances.
"Merchants are getting more involved... which means that it opens the doors for Fringe artists to have special types of shows that wouldn’t necessarily be set in a traditional theatre environment," she says, And "that creates more of a festival vibe up and down 9th Avenue."
All of the festival performers are selected by way of lottery-style draw and composed of 15 percent national acts, 15 percent international, and 70 percent local. Each performer selected is guaranteed six shows throughout the festival’s duration.
"The draw means that everyone has an equal chance to get in," Michele explains. "Because of that, it’s an anything goes festival – we don’t edit."
The only requirements that the Fringe does ask of its participants is full disclosure on what their performance entails, a nominal application fee, and that no laws are broken.
"Otherwise whatever you want to throw up on stage – you go to town; from family shows all the way up to, you know, slut (r)evolution."
Many of the artists tour the Canada Fringe circuit every summer, with the last dates of the season taking place in Victoria, bringing with them their latest show and an entrepreneurial spirit.
Artists can choose their own admission price at Calgary’s Fringe – from $8.50 to $13.50 – of which they receive 100 percent of the proceeds. In addition the festival charges $1.50 per ticket to cover box office, advertising, promotional materials, marketing and tech support. On average, Michele says, artists from last year went home with $2,300 apiece.
"These are artists that care passionately about what they’re doing," she states. "They’re not reading scripts; they’re doing what’s important to them."
Michele recommends that if you haven’t been to Fringe before, go and check out something you would not ordinarily attend. She is sure you will not regret it.
To take place each year, the Fringe relies almost entirely on a huge team of volunteers. Michele is the festival’s sole full-time employee, with the addition of an assistant she hired on in May, and tech staff that work through the duration of the event.
Sponsorship is also a big help to the festival. GayCalgary & Edmonton Magazine will be proudly sponsoring the four following shows out of this year’s stellar line-up, running from July 29th to August 6th at various venues in Inglewood.
ONEymoon – A Honeymoon for One, written by Jimmy Hogg and Christel Bartelse, has sold out audiences, earned five-star reviews and a nomination for the Canadian Comedy Award in the category of Best One Person Show. Last year the act toured the Toronto, Minneapolis, London and Victoria Fringe Festivals, as well as Frigid Festival in New York City, where the show attracted an invite to Indianapolis the following month.
ONEymoon is the story of Caroline, a woman with ambiguous ideas about marriage, bent on finding perfection, who decides to reinvent the traditional convention. The audience follows her zany journey through a solo marriage celebration of song, dance, and dilemma.
"We all struggle with relationships, whether it’s with a partner, or a relationship with yourself," Christel Bartelse, the show’s sole performer, says. "This show is about the long struggles of relationships, and that sometimes it’s better to just be with yourself, although even that has consequences."
Bartelse’s first one-woman show, CHAOTICA, was invited for inclusion in Toronto’s Pride festivities and toured Ottawa, Wakefield, Saskatoon and Edmonton Fringe. In London it received the Best in Venue Impresario Award and scored a nomination for the Brickenden Award for Outstanding Touring Production.
"Christel’s work, while hilarious and high-energy, also has a strong undercurrent of real emotion which stems from the conflict between what an individual wants and societal expectation; and deals with the difficulty of self-invention in the face of these two opposing forces," Bartelse’s manager, Sheila Sky, states. "While I can’t speak for all audience members, gay or straight, I think it is this undercurrent which leaves such a lasting impression."
ONEymoon has received a host of international accolades by both media and theatre aficionados.
"This production – a celebration of independence and girl power – is an energetic, manic and hilarious tale full of obligatory audience participation...original music, rapping, inebriated cabana boy seduction and tap dancing," Thandi Fletcher, for the Victoria Times, praises. "A masterful improviser, Bartelse is a bouncing ball of energy who clearly enjoys the spotlight."
ONEymoon will be performed six times during Fringe at the Lantern Church Sanctuary. Tickets are $15 and the show runs 60 minutes in length.
Gametes and Gonads, is written, directed and performed by Saanichton, British Columbia’s Jim Leard, of Active Salad Productions. Leard says the show follows the themes of forbidden love, massive scale war and tragedy, and blind religious dogma.
"But mostly it is just a solo comedy about sexuality with a sci-fi background, making references to Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, a touch of Shakespeare and various tidbits of pop culture," he explains.
Leard completed the script last year and performed Gametes and Gonads at the 2010 Victoria Fringe Festival where it was received with acclaim by audiences, and graced 4.5 starts by the Victoria Times Columnist. Leard also performed the show earlier this month at the Toronto Fringe.
"Gametes and Gonads is about the massive battle going on inside your genitals at all times," he says, describing the sperm as "a massive military force...in an all out assault on their greatest enemy: the Egg" while the ova, guided by ancient pagan religion, "are forced to sacrifice one of their own every month... to appease the Goddesses of the reproductive system."
Gametes and Gonads is rated Age 14+ as it contains violence, sexual content and mature language. Leard will be performing the 40 minute show at the Alexandra Centre Society six times throughout the festival. Tickets are $10.
FUCKING STEPHEN HARPER: How I Sexually Assaulted the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada and Saved Democracy will be performed by journalist Rob Salerno, the script’s writer, director and inspiration, at Club Paradiso for six of the festival nights.
Salerno has toured the show across Canada, including festivals in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Victoria, and Vancouver, winning audiences over every time. The show has sold out dates in every city it’s ever played and has been recipient of audience pick awards in Winnipeg and Ottawa, including Best of Fringe.
"It’s a solo act, and probably should be rated R, but I figure the title lets people know what they’re in for," Salerno says, though this show is restricted in Calgary to audience members 19+. "The show is about my actual experiences reporting on the 2008 federal election for Xtra, attempting to get an interview with Stephen Harper, and instead finding myself arrested for sexually assaulting the prime minister."
Sounds funny right? But it is a true story. Maclean’s calls the journalist’s account of what happened a "hilarious take on Canadian politics, the media, the gay community, and what Stephen Harper’s balls feel like."
In a more serious light, "It’s also about the struggle for queer rights and my outrage at the current government’s attempts to roll back our rights and victories," Salerno states. "Gay Calgarians will appreciate that the show is as queer and Canadian as they come."
FUCKING STEPHEN HARPER has helped to raise funds for persons living with and affected by HIV/AIDS with the Ten Foot Pole Theatre. Tickets for this one hour event can be purchased for $15.
Last, but not least, slut (r)evolution (no one gets there overnight) will entertain audiences all nine nights of the Fringe at DaDe Art & Design Lab.
From Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, playwright Cameryn Moore is this comedy cabaret’s sole performer, directed by Elizabeth DuPré.
Attendees of last year’s Fringe might remember Moore as the phone whore. This year she comes back to merge memory with manifesto, "to explore incendiary events from her very sexual life".
Moore has been recipient of Best Female Solo at the San Francisco Fringe and excels at dramatic storytelling. This show is rated 18+ for its mature, and sexual, content. Tickets for the 60 minute show are $13.
For more information on the Fringe, venue addresses, show information or to purchase tickets in advance, visit their website, listed at the end of this article.