Image: Fringe 2024 poster designed by Yu-Chen (Tseng) Beliveau – drawing including universal aspects of Fringe and specifics of many previous festival themes.

This year’s Fringe theme, Find Your Fringe, highlights the concept that everyone’s Fringe is different – that there is no “wrong way to Fringe” but thousands – hundreds of thousands – of ways to Fringe, as many as there are attendees and participants.

My Fringe had a great start with a performance of the new musical I’m stage managing, Regression, at the Playhouse. Then I rushed to two more performances, in weather that went from smoky to cloudy to rainy.

Heartstrings, at the Lumos Dental Grindstone-classroom space at Whyte Avenue and 96 Street (venue 19) is a sweet improvised relationship story from Two Girls Improv of Calgary. The two performers get an audience suggestion, and then segue seamlessly into various scenes from the lifespan of a romance, not all in order, with related backstory and additional characters. I love watching this kind of long-form episodic improvised narrative, but I’m especially impressed when they can manage scene changes /character changes without an obvious “tell”. (Improv troupes who make these switches more obvious include Agent Thunder and Scratch.) The humour in the characters was inherent and gentle, and all of them were familiar, easy to relate to – even the dad who didn’t know how to dad, and the awkward inappropriately-personal church lady. There were several opportunities for characters to come out to themselves or their scene-partner, all of which were played in a natural 21st-century way. I’d like to see this troupe again.

Brother Love’s Good Time Gospel Hour was scheduled at just before midnight in the Westbury Theatre, after it had started to rain. So the audience was small, but enthusiastic (also thanks to FOH, who let us line up indoors). When we entered the performers were already “on”, interacting with patrons as if we were coming in to a revival meeting. They encouraged us to sit in the front rows where some props were placed, and they kept playing and singing something with gospel-music harmonies and words that I only gradually noticed were … well, non-traditional. The shift from pre-show into show was nearly un-detectable, as Brother Love (Noam Osband) and Sister Alice (Edna Mira Raia) welcomed us to their revival event. They also had backup musicians and a vocal chorus on stage. And their event became more and more outrageous, from declaring their motivation to raise funds (for alimonies, and for a trip to Helsinki to see Cher), to the various appeals and merchandise sales they were proposing. There were some opportunities for audience member participation, and I thought they were good at reading the audience and giving permission to decline. It’s marked PG – I think teenagers would probably enjoy it a lot but adults might squirm if their teenagers were in the room, instead of guffawing at the “I can’t believe they said that!” moments and frank discussion of sex. Apparently the show runs 75 minutes, but it is well paced and I was so caught up in it I was surprised when they cued that it was almost done.

Today I’ll be doing my first volunteer shift, maybe buying my first green onion cake, showing my artist pass on the bus for the first time this year, and enjoying Day 2 of Find Your Fringe. Hope you find yours! And if you see shows, tell people what you thought of them – in person, on whatever social media you use, on the comments below, or wherever else you hang out. One of the best things about Fringe is the way we build a communal experience, from our personal experiences. “Did you see …?” “Where were you when …?” “You really need to make time to see …!” Other blogs to check out include https://12thnight.ca/ and Finster Finds. There will be some reviews and previews at the Edmonton Journal (Check the Festivals tab, or Local Arts or Entertainment). Global TV news has an “eye-cam” on site and other features. Productions that have a St. Albert connection are covered by the St. Albert Gazette‘s arts reviewer. I’ll add more links to collections of media coverage as I find them – it shifts from year to year, and I still miss the VUE Weekly’s concerted effort to review every show within the first few days. Tag your own posts, anywhere public or semi-public, with the artists’ handles, with the Fringe’s handle, with a venue handle, to share your Fringe enthusiasms. See you on the grounds!