Category Archives: Theatre

Two funny shows on Friday

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On Friday I caught two expressions of humour one after the other, in Yes, My Name is Mohamed Ali – Let Me Tell You a True Story, and then The Method Prix.

Mohamed Ali is my favourite kind of standup comedian – the kind whose stories all feel true, and whose delivery feels like he’s having as much fun telling them as we are having listening to them. I would definitely listen to him again. I started telling one of his anecdotes to someone later in the day and I realized that part of what made it so good was that there were seamless transitions from one story to the next – they weren’t just setup/punchline setup/punchline.

There was a part in the middle where he invited the audience to ask him questions while he had a few sips of tea from a thermos (Earl Grey, according to one answer) – and I was particularly impressed by the way he started from an audience question to telling about a series of events which all ended up connecting. Stage 4, Walterdale Theatre.

The premise of The Method Prix is that Deanna Fleischer and Brooke Sciacca are Hollywood types making a film, and enlisting the audience as clapper-board operator, craft services, makeup, auditioners, and background. All the background, I was part of a mountain range at a couple of points. Vincent Prix is a pretentious creepy cocky director, and Dylan Thruster is the … spit-take double … of a young Marlon Brando, complete with swagger, white undershirt, and open-mouthed bedroom-eye stares. Deanna Fleischer’s previous show Butt Kapinski put audience members into roles in a Raymond Chandler-esque noir detective story – I think it was in the old Armoury venue one year and I think I might have ended up being the murderer (“mow-de-wow”). This one was just as fun. Stage 17, Grindstone Theatre.

Fringe 2023 Day 8

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It’s Friday morning – there are two and a half more days of Fringe shows to come. It’s foggy and smoky right now, but it’s supposed to clear up later this afternoon and be sunny with a high of 26 or 27 degrees on the weekend.

Thursday’s schedule was assorted in style, but all very good.

Lesbihonest – Laura Piccinin from Toronto delivered a one-hour standup monologue about her various comings-out and partners, her personal experience of queerness and the background of changing vocabulary and identity labelling. I loved it – and not just the parts I identified with. One particular bit of it, about meeting a schoolchild who talked matter-of-factly about being a lesbian, brought me to tears. I was reminded a bit of Kimberly Dark’s Dykeopolis in, wow, that was 2013. Stage 5, Acacia Hall.

Lia and Dor – I am so glad I fitted this into my schedule. It was lovely. Cristina Tudor, playwright and perfomer, and director Keltie Brown Forsyth shaped this original work in the small Nordic Studio blackbox with a few props and costume elements, giving the flavour of a Romanian folktale. Tudor and the other performer Alex Forsyth played several characters – a contemporary young woman Lia and her Dor, a Romanian word which “means something like longing, or wanderlust or a soul-calling. It encompasses both melancholy and joy and hope. A feeling that drives you to take a new journey, fall in love, come back home. You know this feeling, we all do. ” but also her grandparents and great-aunt, a wolf, a serpent, etc. A bit of puppetry, a bandanna becoming a kerchief, some shifts of voice and physicality, and the transitions of time and character were easy to follow. I like stories where the mythology and the current reality intersect, with characters speaking in contemporary voice along with archetypes and fantasy. I have appreciated the work of Forsyth and Brown Forsyth since first seeing 7 Ways to Die: A Love Story in 2012, and Tudor’s work was a great fit for their company K.I.A. Productions, now Vancouver-based. I’m also looking forward to seeing David Johnston’s Let’s Talk About Your Death, directed by Alex Forsyth, later this weekend.

Lady Porn – This Whizgiggling Productions threehander was written by Trevor Schmidt, and stars the same three fascinating actors as the Destination Wedding and Destination: Vegas shows of previous Fringes: Cheryl Jameson, Kristin Johnston, and Michelle Todd. The context was a woman-centric porn-film company like the ones that appeared in the 1980s. But the story was just a fascinating look at three characters who start the project with apparently-compatible ideals and goals, but each of them has different constraints and needs, leading to a series of compromises and eventually the question of have they really achieved anything different? Johnston is the producer Jill – after starting as a performer in that industry, she inherited money from a much older husband and is now the one seeking out backers and locations, moving into directing as her goal, announcing each scene with a clapper-board. Jameson’s Bonnie has been born-again as a youth pastor’s wife, returning to the industry because her husband assures him God said it was fine to get money that way for household expenses. Todd’s Denyse is a financial and commercial success as a porn actress. She’s well aware of where Jill is shading the truth or changing her plans, and doesn’t hesitate to call her out. The lights go up on Denyse reclining on a couch poolside at her mansion, regal in a bright yellow pleated dress with snapping fan. As in all Trevor Schmidt designs, the costuming conveys the period, distinguishes clearly among the characters, and blends well with other costumes and the set dressing. There was no nudity – it didn’t need it – and the casual discussion of the on-film blocking made it clear that to the characters Denyse, Bonnie, and Jill, the film is just work, nothing about themselves. More thought-provoking than the Destination plays, but equally entertaining . Stage 2, Backstage Theatre

Agent Thunder: You Only Laugh Twice, is the entertaining improvised spy story which explains why two well-groomed young men have been roaming the Fringe grounds in dinner jackets all week. Matt Ness and Michael Vetsch first brought Agent Thunder to the Fringe in 2019 I think, but I didn’t see it then. It’s a clever setup – the premise is that the shows are a series of agent-training seminars, designed to demonstrate the business to new spies (the audience) by retelling some of Agent Thunder’s past cases. In the one I saw, the audience suggestions led to “The Case of the Fast Alpaca”, but the plotline involving an alpaca of golden fleece resolved quickly and then shifted to a trip to Chile to discover why the Andean mountains were growing more quickly than classical plate tectonics would predict. As in a James Bond adventure, characters included the Director of the Service and the Lab Doctor who endowed Agent Thunder with some new gadgets, then a local guide, a mountaineer, the head of a company with evil aims, and others. Unlike in a James Bond adventure, there was no gratuitous romantic subplot, and I didn’t miss it.

Ness and Vetch practice the type of improv where the two of them switch characters frequently with a tapout, as other duos of long experience often do (Kevin Gillese and Arlen Konopaki of Scratch, Jim Libby and Jacob Banigan of Rocket Sugar Improv, etc). It’s fun to watch them maintain the character traits that they other one started, and it also keeps the story moving along since they often tap out when one has an idea for something the other character can do. Andrew Creswick provided musical accompaniment, and director Corina Dransutavicius was in the booth with near-instantaneous response of a wide range of suitable sound and lighting cues.

Going into the final weekend of The Answer is Fringe, there’s time to fit in a few more shows. Hope you see something great!

Amor de Cosmos, and Puck Bunnies

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It’s a little harder to find a connecting theme for these two – Amor de Cosmos: A Delusional Musical is a fantastical recounting of the biography of a not-very-famous figure from Canadian history. Puck Bunnies is a play about contemporary young women who are hangers-on of a local minorleague hockey team. One’s a new work written by Richard Kemick with music and lyrics by local singer-songwriter-actor Lindsay Walker, and the other is a remount from local playwrighting team Darrin Hagen and Trevor Schmidt.

Amor de Cosmos: A Delusional Musical is not in the printed Fringe programs because it was a late addition off the waitlist. And it’s a little hard to describe, but it’s quirky and charming. Cody Porter, who directed the show for its Toronto-Fringe run, stepped into the performing role for Edmonton, which is a treat for his fans here. I loved the way he changed characters as Walker (accompanying on keyboard and narrating some parts from newspaper headlines) flipped him different hats, with physicality, dialect, and eye-twinkles to match. The elliptical/heightened text recitation reminded me a bit of Jonathan Christenson’s work, and was delivered with such clarity that I didn’t realize until afterwards that a lot of it was iambic pentameter. The main character was born into a mining family in New Brunswick, made his way to California as a photographer, and ended up in BC as a newspaper publisher and then politician. I was fascinated by the way the writers included acknowledgements of where this character stood or would have stood on various issues of the day that now we see as injustices (e.g. Indian Act, Immigration Act) and was cracked up by a throwaway anachronism about the right of homosexuals to give blood. Stage 8: Kick Point OSPAC, in the schedule slots showing as Ruby Rocket in the printed program.

The Guys in Disguise play Puck Bunnies debuted at the Fringe in 2017, and the playwrights won Outstanding New Work Fringe at the Sterling awards that season. In this remount, Jake Tkaczyk is playing Tammy, the new mother bringing her baby to the game as a visible reminder of her claim to the team captain Cliff. Tanya, played by Trevor Schmidt, seems to be the one making the rules for the group calling themselves the Puck Bunnies – providing hair/fashion consultation, relationship advice, and decreeing who can sit where. Newcomer Tina, played with adorable well-intentioned bewilderment by Jason Hardwick, used to sit with the “loser girls” but has been invited into the clique as a replacement for someone they’re shunning. As they watch the intersquad game from the stands (the bleachers are facing the audience) we learn more about their lives and their relationships and a lot of it is troubling. As I probably wrote when I saw the original production in 2017, I knew people like this when I was growing up in hockey rinks in the 1970s, so it’s troubling to see the same “put the boys first” mentality in a setting contemporary enough to have Google and selfies and pussy hats. Like other recent scripts by this writing team or by Schmidt, there’s a layer of poking gentle fun at the characters, but underneath there are some pointed messages about society and glimpses of hope. Even for these young women with their limited outlook and unsupportive environment, by the end we see hints of how things can change for them and for the people around them. Stage 11, Varscona Theatre.

Today I’m excited about catching Lesbihonest, Lady Porn, and Agent Thunder. How about you?

Music and laughter: Scoobie Doosical and Die Nasty

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On Monday at the Fringe both shows I caught were comedies. Comedies with lovely original music and clever lyrics and amusing choreography and movement. There are a lot of funny people around this festival.

Scoobie Doosical is an original musical by Rebecca Merkley, a tribute to the well-known 1970s cartoon television about the ghost-debunking gang and their Great Dane. Merkley’s company Dammitammy Productions did something similar a few years ago with River City: The Musical, parodying the Archie comic-book characters.

Live accompaniment (Yvonne Boon and Robyn Slack) enhances the lyrics both goofy and touching, and the impressive singing voices of cast Cameron Chapman, Bella King, Natalie Czar, and Andrew Cormier. Cormier plays the villain Professor Gigglepuffs (“Riggleruffs” in Scoobie’s dialect) with a flair evocative of Frank N. Furter in Rocky Horror (Picture) Show – and also plays Velma. Czar plays the villain’s sidekick/cat and also plays Daphne. (Imagine some wig-quick-changes). Chapman and King play the Shaggy and Scoobie characters, building on the source-material expectations to create lovable caricatures. The plot was also reminiscent of the source material, confusing at first but all falling into place with happy and fair resolutions. Stage 4 Walterdale Theatre, selling quickly.

Die Nasty is “an Edmonton comedy institution for 30 years” according to their program blurb. At the Fringe, the long-form improvised soap opera has an episode every night that takes place at the Fringe, with some familiar characters and some archetypical ones. The night I saw it, it was directed by Peter Brown with live music by Paul Morgan Donald, and there were 16 performers on stage, including guests Joel Taras and Jake Tkaczyk as well as Stephanie Wolfe, Jacob Banigan, Kirsten Throndson and other ensemble members. Characters I remember from previous years included Kristi Hansen’s version of Liz Nicholls, this time skating off across the grounds with Jesse Gervais’ Robin Fairweather, the tin-whistle-playing Edmonton institution. I particularly appreciated the acknowledgement of this character’s mixed reputation, and I think other audience members did too. Mark Meer’s Hunter S Thompson-esque podcaster wasn’t in the episode I saw, but his gum-chewing colleague Kalyn Miles was. The Mormon elder missionary (Jason Hardwick) was successful in converting hot dog vendor Fat Frank (Gordie Lucius), and for some reason this involved switching the missionary’s white dress shirt and nametag with the hot dog vendor’s apron. Murray Utas made an appearance (as portrayed memorably by Jake Tkaczyk). When given the directorial challenge by Brown to speak about his secret wishes, we find out (in an original musical solo then enhanced by a dancing ensemble) that Murray would really like to leave paperwork behind and perform his own Fringe autobiographical solo piece, complete with embodying three characters, the young Murray, the woman who coaches him, and … I’ve actually forgotten who the third one was, because I was laughing so hard at this point.) Die Nasty continues every night at 10 pm at Varscona Theatre, Venue 11. You do not need to have seen previous episodes to enjoy it.

Forest of Truth and Bathsheba …

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Putting all the show titles in the post title makes weird mashups. Especially these two, which some from very different shared mythology cultural referents.

Forest of Truth involves the same people who brought the inspired weirdness of i’m lovin it to Fringe a few years ago, Theatre Gumbo of Japan. It’s set in a fairytale milieu with some familiar tropes, and references to characters like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. There’s a problem to solve – the Queen of the forest needs some True Love Extract to preserve/extend her beauty – and an adorable sidekick. But the unfolding action includes some parts that are very much not for children! I loved it that the plot did not stick with the Man being the romantic pursuer and the Woman wanting marriage for other reasons – the Woman was also checking out (climbing on?) several audience members as potential partners, with clearly physical intent. As in i’m lovin it, there were some visually-delightful bits with props, and a diarrhea joke. Forest of Truth would also have been funny if it were slightly less heteronormative. Venue 28, Roxy Theatre on 124 Street.

Bathsheba and the Books is a straightforwardly ridiculous comedy. I was familiar enough with the source material to find extra humour in the details, but even without, I think Aimée Beaudoin’s sex symbol of the ancient world, as costumed by Trevor Schmidt with exactly the right kind of gown to seem credibly period and suitable enhancement for the character’s … endowments … was just so fun to watch and listen to. She’s obviously in control of her world, a scholar who manages the men of the household after the death of her husband King David. Chris Fassbender and Jeff Halaby are her collaborators and servants, and Jake Tkaczyk is equally larger-than-life as her son, a young King Solomon. Directed by Davina Stewart, the pacing is good, the laughs are frequent, and the canon-consistency is left at “it coulda been”. Lots of dramatic-irony asides which are funny if you have some ideas how the Bible is treated in 21st century cultures and religions. I have to admit that I was a tiny bit distracted by the costume practicalities of how they got sparkly gold Birkenstock-type footwear. Venue 1, Westbury.

Fringe Day 2: Anatomica, rain, Late Night Cabaret

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Maybe the rain should come first. It was definitely the start of a lot of conversations – where were you when the hail hit last night? what all did they shut down? how are they managing the flooding and cleanup? Friday there were no outdoor performances, on stage or in busking pitches. There was no KidsFringe, no North Beer Tent, no Wine Tent. There was a very busy and competent Squeegee Crew – I am sure they have another official name, but I always saw them with squeegees. And it kept raining.

Anatomica is Amica Hunter’s solo show. I think they said it was their first solo? I remember them from the two-handed A Little Bit Off physical theatre performances of previous Fringes, Beau and Aero, and A Grave Mistake. Anatomica was different in some ways – it was all a conversation with the audience – but it employed similar absurdities, exploring odd ways of moving and expressing the performer’s body and discussing the idea of having different kinds of bodies. The performer represents a lobster or crab at one point, and a worm at one point, both in weirdly-credible ways. There’s enough narrative thread to feel satisfying, some honest reflections on the performer’s life through the first pandemic years, and some very funny prop business that worked. (Sometimes I wonder about physical-theatre creators and their process. Do they walk through Home Depot with a shopping list but get distracted by picking up things and saying “this would make a great megaphone! this would make great nipples for a meatsuit! if I put these things together could I build a toilet-paper shooting cannon?”). I think that people who like Very Weird Theatre would like this, but also, people who don’t like Very Weird Theatre but just like stories, people who want to hear various bodily frailties represented on stage, and people who liked watching Amica and their performance partner in the earlier shows. Venue 22: Holy Trinity basement, whatever that is called.

Last night was the first Late Night Cabaret of this year’s Fringe. Joleen Ballandine and Sydney Campbell were hosting, and Zee Wee Punterz were the house band. Lots of the usual traditions, from Writers Row jokes to Free Shit giveaways, cameo glimpses of several shows in the festival all of which I want to see now, and a happy crowd coming back together. I don’t actually know the premise of Shakespeare’s Sirens so I’m not entirely sure who the characters were supposed to be who were having a gladiator-style single combat complete with dueling pasty-twirling … and I don’t know the etiquette of mentioning performer names when I’m not sure of their burlesque stage names … but let me say, that was memorable and probably unique. And I have a ticket to see it again tonight. Stage 2: Backstage Theatre.

I’m also hoping to catch Forest of Truth at the Roxy (by Theatre Gumbo, the Japanese troupe who did I’m Lovin It at King Edward School a few years ago), and Bathsheba and the Books (Journal 4-stars) at the Westbury.

FIJI and Sad Girl Songs: A Comedy

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Sad Girl Songs: A Comedy Show, by/starring Gwen Coburn, has a little bit of everything. Staged as a standup act with digressions, it includes some very funny original songs about sex and dating, and hints of the performer having PTSD after a sexual assault … with entertaining analogies to some incidents in Greek mythology. Paced like good standup, there was no unbearable lingering, just enough discomfort to land. I had quite a few belly laughs and I could hear that other audience members did too. Sugar Swing Upstairs.

Fiji A lot of the characters I’ve seen Chris Cook portray on stage are earnest, uneducated, uncouth people I end up rooting for and feeling sorry for. His character Sam in Fiji fits mostly into that category – although well-spoken and apparently thoughtful, he’s painfully eager to make a good impression on his host Nic (Vance Avery). The horrific nature of their planned encounter unfolds slowly, in a “is it really? maybe not. oh my god yes” sort of way. Jumps to a series of quiz questions were indicated by a weird loud buzzing noise – at first I thought this might be something more like changes to a different reality, but no, the weekend locked in the apartment progressed relentlessly towards … yeah. I was thinking at the end that if I saw director Lora Brovold or producers Gavin Dyer and Michelle Robb in the lobby afterwards I would say, that is one F-ed up story, but I didn’t. Lively audience with many familiar artist faces for midnight show. I gather that the script was an Edinburgh Fringe find – a few lines were changed to local references (Save-On Foods, Remedy Cafe). Gateway Theatre. Oh! Which was pleasantly cool, with the new air-conditioning system.

Not sure what I’ll see today – I start the afternoon with a shift serving drinks in one of the Fringe’s beer tents, and the show I’m stage managing, i carry your heart with me, doesn’t play until 10:30 pm. It’s raining, but I don’t think that will continue all day.

Fringe is the answer to life, the universe, and everything

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It’s the Eve of Fringe! The ordinary blocks of Old Strathcona where people usually go to the library and the farmers’ market, the restaurants and pubs, the little park where people protest and hang out … is being transformed into the site of one of Edmonton’s best and biggest festivals. Beer tents are up but not stocked. Clean white hoardings have been covered with show posters. A few roads are closed, but there are no crowds around buskers yet, or long queues for green onion cakes and mini doughnuts. Theatre people can be spotted at a higher frequency than in Ordinary Time, as they rush to rehearsals, tech times, and volunteer training sessions. Today while I was carrying posters for i carry your heart with me around to local businesses, I spotted Jamie Cavanagh and Belinda Cornish (performer and director, respectively, for the Bright Young Things production Sea Wall.

The Box Office is open, in the Arts Barns and online. Artist Services is open. And a little under 24 hours from now, the first plays will start.

I’m stage managing i carry your heart with me, Michelle Martin’s solo about her mother, a fiery, funny, French-Canadian. It’s at Sugar Swing Ballroom Upstairs (air conditioned, liquor-licensed, and a short walk from the main grounds). I’m also doing a few shifts in the Beer Tents as usual.

And I haven’t booked any tickets yet, but I’m drafting out my schedule to fit in as much exciting theatre as I can. Some of the productions on my wish list are the following.

  • Sad Girl Songs: A Comedy
  • Tiger Lady
  • Puck Bunnies
  • Scooby Doosical
  • Flicker
  • Forest of Truth
  • Fiji
  • Lady Porn
  • muse: an experiment in life drawing
  • Lesbihonest
  • Amor di Cosmos
  • Bathsheba and the Books
  • Sweet Jesus:
  • Old God
  • Anatomica
  • Rat Academy
  • Method Prix
  • Tree
  • Talk about Your Death
  • Lia and Dor
  • Breaking Bard
  • Late Night Cabaret

Or maybe I’ll add some more that people are talking about. So, talk!

And rest up, it’s a busy 11 days!

More to see on local stages this weekend and beyond

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First, you have three more chances to see Flop! before it closes Sunday evening May 28th. If you haven’t yet been to a show at Rapid Fire Theatre’s permanent home, Rapid Fire Exchange on 83rd Avenue, this is a great reason to check out the venue. Ron Pederson and Ashley Botting bring an inspired variation on the musical-theatre-improv genre which uses the framing of two performers unexpectedly being stuck without script, lyrics, set, or costumes, just a musician (Erik Mortimer), so they call for audience suggestions and build a musical on the fly. Like skilled stage magicians, they increase the entertainment value of what they’re doing by making it look hard, sometimes stepping out of character between scenes to work out what to do next. I’m accustomed to improv troupes who appear to do impossible things easily – Rapid Fire’s own Off Book: The Musical, Gordon’s Big Bald Head – and I loved the extra layer of entertainment in seeing Pederson and Botting acting being terrible at something they are actually brilliant at. I hadn’t seen Ashley Botting on stage before – except in her recent guest appearance in Die-Nasty’s current improv drama Doctors – and she is delightful. Tickets for Flop! and future Rapid Fire shows are available here.

Boy Trouble, the new two-performer version of Mac Brock’s script, has two more performances in the Studio space at the Fringe Arts Barns, this afternoon at 2 pm, and this evening (which is showing as sold out on line.) I haven’t been able to see this one yet but I loved the solo version of it which inspired this retelling, at NextFest 2019 and then again at Fringe 2019.

Prison Dancer at the Citadel closes tomorrow afternoon. The performance this afternoon (Saturday May 27 at 1:30 pm) is the last audience-masks-required performance of the Citadel season. Tickets are available here.

Several years ago I attended a staged reading at the APN Script Salon of a new play called Anahita’s Republic, about women’s lives in contemporary Iran. Even in a music-stands reading in a plain meeting room, the script grabbed my attention and shook up some of my assumptions, so I was excited to see it fully staged. The company AuTash Productions, and playwriting team Hengameh E. Rice, have had two full productions – a recent one at Toronto’s Factory Theatre directed by Brenley Charkow, and this one directed by Brian Dooley, with a completely different cast and creative team. Roya Yazdanmehr is compelling as the eponymous Anahita, a woman who runs the family business and weathy household according to her own rules. From the first scene, when she strides in after a swim, applying lotion to bare legs, and then responds to her brother/business-partner (Yassine El Fassi El Fihri as Cyrus) who is pleading for money for his children’s activities, she did not fit my assumptions about how women live in that particular regime. But their history, and its effect on them, unfolds more slowly, making it more shocking to imagine this woman as a militant 16yo beside her late mother in a crowd of protesters. The next character who enters is a woman in a chador, Omid (Jennie George), but once again, my first assumptions about her life were wrong. Michael Peng plays Omid’s father, business associate of Cyrus and Anahita. Late in the play, when they are all in a situation with no good solutions, Anahita talks about different kinds of freedom and about how nobody is really free. Their situation has a resolution, but it’s not ideal. The play made me want to see more complex stories like this, coming out of a context I don’t know well but not limited by it. Program notes and vocabulary are provided through a QR code, and a large display timeline about event’s relevant to women in Iran on the lobby wall – including both mandatory “unveiling”, with enforcement, and mandatory “veiling”, also with brutal enforcement.

Tickets to Anahita’s Republic, playing until June 4th at the Fringe Backstage, are available here.

In a complete change of mood, last night I attended the opening performance of Elyne Quan’s Listen, Listen! as part of the Teatro Live! season. I giggled so much that another audience member commented to me and my companion about it at intermission.

Farron Timoteo plays a mall bookstore worker passionate about selecting background music, Nadien Chu plays a customer who objects to the music, and Nikki Hulowski and Alex Ariate play a hilarious collection of ensemble characters in the bookstore workplace. The play is set in 1986, which means that the sound designers (director Belinda Cornish and stage manager Frances Bundy) got to use all the catchy tunes of that era, costume designer Leona Brausen, fresh from designing for 10 Funerals, with half its scenes in that era, got to evoke memories of women’s soft-tie business blouses, asymmetrical hairstyles for young people, and leather ties, and the playwright got to stick in lots of dramatic-irony jokes about how people in 1986 expected the future to go.

Like many of Stuart Lemoine’s works performed by Teatro, this play was an affectionate portrayal of quirky characters, plot-driven but with lots of scope for entertaining character business. It was a lot of fun. Tickets are here.

Other theatre events coming up – I may not make it to all of them, but I’m noting them here for you –

Helen, the Euripedes comedy about Helen of Troy directed by Amy de Felice outdoors at the Queen Elizabeth Planetarium, runs to June 4th.

CHUMP, by Sue Goberdhan, is “about growing, grieving, and being Guyanese”. It is being workshopped and will have one public performance at the Fringe Studio June 11.

Nextfest, the annual festival of and for emerging artists, runs June 1-11.

The Sterling Awards nominations will be announced at 5 pm on June 5th at the Arts Barns, and winners will be celebrated at a more affordable event than the pre-pandemic Mayfield galas, also at the Arts Barns on Monday June 26th.

Walterdale Theatre’s 2023-2024 season launch event will also be held June 5th – doors at 7 pm, event at 8 pm.

And … in August it will be Fringe! Fringe 42: The Answer. (Do you know where your towel is?)

Subscribe or Like – real people in the online world

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Set for Subscribe or Like, design Stephanie Bahniuk.

The last event in Workshop West’s season is the world premiere production of Liam Salmon’s Subscribe or Like, directed by Kate Ryan.

On entering the Gateway Theatre’s auditorium, the audience sees a simple box set presenting a room in a small basement apartment. But it’s set on an angle, and there is no drapery backing it or surrounding it. One can’t forget that this room is on a stage – and when the lights dimmed and the play was about to start, we could see each actor entering the backstage space from the lobby, before entering the apartment’s front door as the characters. This cannot be an accident (Stephanie Bahniuk, set and costume design).

The characters living in this apartment were a young couple, Rachel (Gabby Bernard) and Miles (Geoffrey Simon Brown). He’s unemployed, trying to find work commensurate with his marketing degree instead of joining her at the coffee shop where she’s a part-time barista, and he has a toothache. Their socioeconomic situation is tacitly illustrated by the fact that the dialogue never considers taking the toothache to a dentist – he treats it with a salt-water rinse and she doesn’t comment. Miles likes to make and share “prank” videos, often involving scaring or surprising his girlfriend. She doesn’t seem to enjoy this. It’s clear that both are unhappy with their lives – it’s less clear whether they are still happy with each other.

Miles continues posting his videos on a YouTube channel, and talks about reaching enough subscribers to make money with it. Rachel co-operates – they talk about whether the stunts work better when scripted or when she is truly surprised – and then she starts adding some of her own content to the channel. They start adding viewers, likes, subscribers. They seem – if not happier, then at least more engaged – and they focus more on how to attract and keep the viewers, making some more extreme choices (including one or two that I could hardly bear to watch).

Another feature of the show’s design was the extensive use of video (Ian Jackson, multimedia design) to show or evoke online content. I think there were nine large LCD screens suspended outside the room, and sometimes the content was also projected across the walls and floor of the apartment. So “the set” is clearly not just the room in their apartment, but also … the internet? The video isn’t just clips from their YouTube channel, but some of the comments.

And this is important, because the comments affect the characters. In one disturbing but credible exchange, Miles explains to Rachel that the trope of misogynistic commenting generating more interest in the channel is a common phenomenon and a good thing for the channel.

When they talk about whether stopping the posts might be a good next step for them as people and as a couple, Miles protests that the channel matters to the viewers. “But they’re not real!“, protests Rachel.

It is very odd to be writing a blog post about this play, wondering if people will read it, and wondering if reading this post will influence them to go see the play. (See it! It’s good! It’s entertaining, it’s horrifying, and it made us stand in the parking lot for ages talking about the issues raised.) While YouTube is not my medium, I know that online communities are real. This … I was going to say corner of the blogosphere, but spheres shouldn’t have corners? … isn’t particularly interactive, but I know it’s still contributing to community. And just as I notice how many people viewed my blog post or Instagram story, liked my Facebook post, or clicked Agree on my Ravelry forum comment, I know that a playwright is a content creator too. Other artistic contributors like actors and designers are also engaged in presenting the work to the audiences in the auditorium. Part of why I blog is that I want the theatre artists to know they have moved me and made me think. And the Subscribe or Like playwright and team did.

Subscribe or Like is playing at the Gateway Theatre (formerly Roxy on Gateway, formerly C103) until June 11th. Tickets are available here.