Tag: fringe

Fringeopolis – The Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival’s 30th Anniversary Edition

Fringe Theatre Adventures announced this afternoon the theme for the 30th anniversary edition of the popular summer festival: Fringeopolis.

The theme is a play on the “mini-municipality” that Old Strathcona turns into during the eleven days of the festival. The Fringe is inviting everyone to become a citizen of Fringeopolis for free on its website. You can also upgrade your membership by paying $20 to become a builder of Fringeopolis. Builders get a poster and program in addition to the benefits citizens receive (free transit with ETS, notifications, merchandise discounts, etc). I really love the concept, and I think they’re going to get a lot of traction with this theme. As an urbanite it definitely speaks to me.

From the press release:

“The Fringeopolis theme represents the city within a city that comes alive each August: a metropolis born of the creativity, artistic talent, innovation, and experimentation of our festival was founded on,” says Julian Mayne, Executive Director, Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival. “As producers of The Fringe, we believe the evolution of theatre is fundamental to the evolution of community, and Fringeopolis speaks to our past as a creative community, as well as to our future.”

Fringeopolis
Sam Jenkins and Thomas Scott helped launch the new theme.

Also announced today was a collaboration with the Art Creation Foundation for Children (ACFFC) of Jacmel, Haiti. Throughout the festival at KidsFringe, 10 young artists from the organization will create and perform folk stories and vignettes. EPL’s Writer-in-Residence Marty Chan is helping to develop the vignettes and Tanzanian author Tololwa Mollel is adapting the folk stories.

The Fringe is looking for more than 1200 volunteers for this year’s festival. Approximately 35,000 hours are dedicated to ensure the festival happens each year. You can learn more and fill out an application here. Be sure to check out Volunteer Edmonton’s 2011 Festival Volunteer Fair on Thursday at City Hall too.

The graphics and visual art for Fringeopolis was done by local artist Gabe Wong. I think it looks amazing!

Fringeopolis
Gabe Wong in front of his poster.

Last year nearly 160 productions by theatre companies played more than 40 stages across Edmonton. The festival also featured 200 outdoor performances and more than 50 busking acts. The Fringe sold 93,000 tickets last year, and more than 400,000 people visited the festival grounds. More than 1000 tickets sold on the first day of sales last year, and Frequent Fringer and Double Fringer passes were completely sold out in 24 hours. Make sure you get your tickets to this year’s event early!

Here’s a video created by Graphos for Fringeopolis:

Fringeopolis runs August 11 – 21, 2011 at venues throughout Old Strathcona and beyond. Stay tuned to the website or Twitter for more information in the weeks ahead! You can also see what others are saying on Twitter using the hashtag #yegfringe.

Edmonton & Winnipeg Fringe Festivals break records in 2009

The final numbers for the 28th Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival were released yesterday: a record-breaking 92,279 tickets were sold over 11 days. Less than a month ago, the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival announced that it had sold 81,565 tickets over 12 days, a new record at the time for fringe festivals in North America. Edmonton held the previous record – 77,700 tickets in 2006.

Clearly, this year has been a good one for North America’s two largest fringe festivals. Being the stats junkie that I am, I decided to look up the ticket sales for Edmonton and Winnipeg in recent years. I was able to find solid numbers for 2002 onward:

These numbers come from newspaper articles as well as press releases from the festivals themselves. There are a few minor discrepancies depending on which source you look at. For example, this year’s numbers for Winnipeg are inconsistent – the official site says 81,353 but all the media articles say 81,565. I went with the number I saw most often.

In tabular form:

Year Edmonton Winnipeg
2009 92279 81565
2008 77204 72722
2007 74693 71921
2006 77700 69320
2005 70700 66315
2004 60442 68470
2003 68000 67002
2002 68925 62801

I’m sure there’s a spreadsheet of ticket sales for all of the Canadian fringe festivals somewhere, but I haven’t been able to track it down (looking at you CAFF). I wanted to see how Edmonton and Winnipeg compared with other cities in Canada. It didn’t take long to find the numbers for 2007, which while slightly out of date, give you an idea of the relative size of each festival:

The red area is the metro population for each city, to show how big each festival is relative to the overall population. Edmonton and Winnipeg are clearly in a class of their own!

I look forward to the fringe each year, and I’m obviously not the only one. Here’s to hoping the friendly competition between Edmonton and Winnipeg continues to benefit both cities for years to come!

Edmonton Story: Discovering Live Theatre

Last week, my Edmonton story was published at EdmontonStories.ca. Titled Discovering Live Theatre, my story is about finding a love for local live theatre. Here’s the first paragraph:

When I was in high school, my idea of theatre consisted of going to see the latest Hollywood release at one of Edmonton’s many movie theatres. It wasn’t until I was in University that I was introduced by a friend to live theatre. At the time, I wondered why my friend was so keen to have me go. Surely you had to be in New York or London to experience great live theatre? Not so, I soon discovered.

It’s perhaps a little out of character for me, in that it’s not related to Twitter, social media, or technology at all. I wanted to write about something that wasn’t associated in any way to my work. That said, I still think it captures part of what makes Edmonton special to me.

Of course, theatre and technology do cross paths once in a while:

No texting during the show!

Give it a read and let me know what you think. Can you guess who the friend mentioned in the story is?

If you have a story, submit it here. You can read about the contest for submissions here.

Also, the 2009 Edmonton International Fringe Festival is coming up! The program went on sale today – you can buy it 7-Eleven or a few other places, or online. This year’s theme is “Stage a Revolution”. The festival runs from August 13th through the 23rd.

Fringe 007: Ignorance, Mini Donuts, and Die-Nasty

Sharon dragged me to the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival, aka the Fringe, a few years ago, and I actually enjoyed it. I’ve since come to enjoy Edmonton’s live theatre scene, so I was definitely looking forward to this year’s festival, called “Live and Let Fringe” in honor of the year. The festival runs until August 26th.

The first show Sharon, Dickson and I went to see last night was called “The Power of Ignorance” and since Sharon took care of getting tickets and such ahead of time, I didn’t know much more about it than that. Turns out it was a one-man show, performed by British comedian Chris Gibbs, in the form of a seminar that promised to help you tap into your power of ignorance to lead a better, happier life. I really enjoyed it – it was extremely funny! I laughed pretty hard. The ending was kind of weird, but otherwise, great show. The Journal gave it 4.5 stars (out of 5) today. To that I say: well deserved.

Afterward we wandered around the grounds, taking in the sights. No trip to the Fringe is complete without mini donuts, so I got some of those and headed for the beer gardens. On the way we stopped to see Hoja, a popular Canadian a capella group. We saw them perform “YMCA” and “500 Miles”, complete with dancing and everything.

We ended the evening by going to see Die-Nasty. I have to say I didn’t enjoy it as much as their season 16 finale. For one thing, there was no Jeff Haslam. His comic timing would definitely have helped the show out. Davina Stewart was there however, and she was really funny! On the whole though, it was just average. Perhaps it was because they were making fun of the Fringe itself, and I just didn’t get all of the jokes?

I’m going to go see at least one more show, but I am not sure which one yet. Perhaps I should have a look at all of the pieces of paper we received while waiting in line. Sharon remarked that the Fringe would be a good place for entrepreneurs to learn, and I have to agree. The elevator pitches that the performers give as they work the lineups at other shows are really quite good. Entrepreneurs could definitely learn a thing or two.

Check out the official Fringe site here, and also the Edmonton Journal’s complete coverage.

Read: Fringe 007

2005 Vancouver Fringe Festival

Post ImageI quite enjoyed the Edmonton Fringe Festival this summer, and I am looking forward to next years. We’re not the only city with a Fringe though, and Darren is blogging this year’s Vancouver Fringe Festival:

Last night I went to the Fringe Preview Gala. Not only did I see excerpts from a bunch of shows, but I also grilled artists and staff alike for their favourites. Here’s a quick run-down of what looks promising…

If you’re in Vancouver or you’re going to be, you should check it out! You can see Darren’s list of promising shows (as well as some more in the comments) here.

Read: Vancouver Fringe

The Key to Violet's Apartment

I went to see another Fringe show on Friday night after the birthday party. Sharon wanted us to get there early so that we’d get good seats unless the show sold out. Unfortunately, we ended up having a lot of time to kill for nothing as the show was almost empty! We went to see a solo act entitled, “The Key to Violet’s Apartment“.

It was written and performed by Paul Matwychuk – a huge guy! He was extremely tall, which I suppose is good because he definitely commands your attention. In the show he tells the story of his friend Violet, and the mystery surrounding the key to her apartment (hence the title). I don’t think Dickson, or Chu or the others enjoyed the show as much as I did. I thought Paul was an excellent story teller.

At the beginning, he explains how he was talking with his friend Max one afternoon about what it would be like to be a woman for a day, just to try it out. Eventually the two men ended up describing exactly the type of woman they would be. Paul then launched into the story of Violet, describing the way she looked. The thing is, I didn’t picture Violet the way he described as the story went on – I pictured her like the woman he described he would be. He saw himself in Violet? Or maybe that’s a little too deep 🙂

In any case, I thought it was pretty entertaining! The lighting was done really well too, as was the stage. Paul sat on a stool in front of a curtain of keys that glimmered red or blue depending on how the ighting changed. It made for a great story telling environment.

Read: Edmonton Fringe Festival

The Key to Violet's Apartment

I went to see another Fringe show on Friday night after the birthday party. Sharon wanted us to get there early so that we’d get good seats unless the show sold out. Unfortunately, we ended up having a lot of time to kill for nothing as the show was almost empty! We went to see a solo act entitled, “The Key to Violet’s Apartment“.

It was written and performed by Paul Matwychuk – a huge guy! He was extremely tall, which I suppose is good because he definitely commands your attention. In the show he tells the story of his friend Violet, and the mystery surrounding the key to her apartment (hence the title). I don’t think Dickson, or Chu or the others enjoyed the show as much as I did. I thought Paul was an excellent story teller.

At the beginning, he explains how he was talking with his friend Max one afternoon about what it would be like to be a woman for a day, just to try it out. Eventually the two men ended up describing exactly the type of woman they would be. Paul then launched into the story of Violet, describing the way she looked. The thing is, I didn’t picture Violet the way he described as the story went on – I pictured her like the woman he described he would be. He saw himself in Violet? Or maybe that’s a little too deep 🙂

In any case, I thought it was pretty entertaining! The lighting was done really well too, as was the stage. Paul sat on a stool in front of a curtain of keys that glimmered red or blue depending on how the lighting changed. It made for a great story telling environment.

Read: Edmonton Fringe Festival

Nighthawk Rules at the Fringe!

Post ImageLast night I went to a late show at the Fringe with Sharon and Dickson. This was my second year attending the annual festival, the first for Dickson, and the millionth for Sharon (she’s such a pro she knows the code-speak the volunteers use!). Parking was non-existent as usual, and there was a lot of people. It was fun though! Oh and for the record, I really don’t like this year’s name, “Fringe A-Go-Go”. Doesn’t appeal to me at all, I don’t know why.

We waited in line to buy tickets, and then had time to kill before the show started so we walked around a bit. To my surprise, they were selling mini-donuts! I love those things, I just can’t help myself when I see them. After I bought a bag, we went to Starbucks. I really wish they had made that one on Whyte Ave and Calgary Trail bigger – it was so crammed last night.

The show we went to see was called “Nighthawk Rules“, from the company 40 Foot Theatre, directed by Jeff Page. It was written by James Hamilton and Colin Doyle, who also starred as the two main characters. The only other character in the show was played by Lora Brovold. Here’s the description:

It’s hard to stay friends. Barry and Dick have been friends since grade 7. The problem is, Barry wants to settle down with his girlfriend Pam, but Dick still wants to drink all night and steal street-signs for kicks. While Dick pulls from one direction, Pam pulls from the other. Dick and Barry embark on a drinking game to end all drinking games-the object of which is the destruction of their friendship or the destruction of Barry’s future with Pam.

If you’re planning to go see the show, skip this paragraph. The description is okay, but it doesn’t really tell you what happens, which I guess is the point, but still. It turns out that Barry and Dick fall in love, and end up starting a relationship. Totally unexpected, but brilliantly portrayed in the show! The guy who played Dick was especially convincing, and delivered his lines perfectly. Lora who played Pam only had a very small on-stage role, and unfortunately for her, it was meant to be completely over the top, so you’re left not liking her character at all. There was a lot of laughing, a lot of swearing, and some good “shock value” moments too, such as when Barry and Dick share their first kiss.

It was a really great show! I enjoyed it, though I could have done without Sharon’s comments afterward. But don’t worry, I will exact my revenge one way or another. I’m planning to go see at least one more show, so watch for another review!

Read: Edmonton Fringe Festival