Tag Archives: late night cabaret

A full Saturday at Fringe 2023

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On the final weekend of Fringe, I’m in “just one more!” mood. Saturday ended up including Ken Brown’s Life After Life After Hockey, Natasha Mercado’s Tree, into a black shirt into the booth for a performance of i carry your heart with me, then the last episode of Die-Nasty and the last Late Night Cabaret.

Life After Life After Hockey was a masterclass in solo narrative, with a throughline, clear transitions, and interesting actions. The creator-performer Ken Brown takes us through the creation, performance, and lengthy touring career of his 1980s solo Life After Hockey, and about how it led to the next things in his life, with challenges and joys. There are familiar experiences and recognizable names in the hockey parts of his story, but also in the parts about becoming a theatre creator and inspiring generations of other local theatre creators through his time teaching at Macewan and afterwards. For a solo, it had a lot of special guests – but that is not a complaint at all, they were delightful. Holger Peterson playing harmonica, Dana Wylie singing and playing guitar, Edmonton’s former poet laureate Pierrette Requier reading a poem about Edmonton, etc. Stage 13, La Cité – Servus Credit Union Théâtre.

Natasha Mercado’s Tree was a charming solo about a tree who longs to be human. Lots of low-key audience participation (“now I need a babbling brook through the forest – just this side of the room”) and a bit of a twist that I thought was going to turn into The Giving Tree. (It didn’t – which is good because I can’t stand that book). A game-show “Would You Rather” explored some of the possibilities available only to humans, good and bad. Stage 7, Chianti Yardbird Suite.

Die-Nasty’s Fringe series wrapped up with a few more deaths, everyone in jail exonerated especially Liz Nicholls (Kristi Hansen) who was recognized as the Spirit of the Fringe in an inspiring song, and the traditional port-a-potty hookup between Liz and the gonzo podcaster Fisher T Johnson (Mark Meer). Die-Nasty’s fall season opens its curtain on Monday October 23rd, set in a 1920s circus sideshow, and the first one’s free! (a successful marketing ploy for many substances …)

Late Night Cabaret was crammed full of special guests, stunts, contests, and inside-jokes that include the whole Fringe community as the insiders, which is the best thing about LNC. (@lnc_yeg, as the hosts often remind us.) Last night was also the last performance ever of Zee Punterz, who have been the cabaret’s house band for more than ten years. A slideshow gave us glimpses of many of their performances and paid tribute to the late Brett Miles, saxophonist through most of that time. They ended their last set, and the night, with a great rendition of Stairway to Heaven, along with the musical guest Lindsay Walker. And then they gave us an encore. Before the lights came up and the Fringe technicians started striking the band’s set, as a reminder of what will be happening today and all through the next week, as the Fringe grounds gets returned to its usual uses as a park, an alleyway, a parking lot, a road and bike path … and the theatres go back to being rehearsal spaces and classrooms, music performance rooms, bars, dance studios, lecture halls, a Masonic hall, and … and a lot of theatres preparing for their upcoming 2023-2024 performance seasons.

But that’s for later! For today, I’ll put my lanyards back on and find my sunglasses and head out to watch some theatre before our 5 pm performance of i carry your heart with me (Stage 27, Sugar Swing Upstairs). First stop, Multi-Vs. 2 pm at Stage 11, Varscona Theatre.

Starting the Fringe 2022

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Crack in the Mirror – This Guys in Disguise show is set at a late-1970’s Women’s Group meeting in a suburban home. Strident divorcée Ruth (Jason Hardwick) shows up at Melanie’s (Trevor Schmidt) finger-foods and wine event with earnest brochures and speeches about Gloria Steinem, but both of them are disappointed when nobody else comes except for the older, naive, Ginger (Jake Tkaczyk). I once heard Trevor Schmidt speak at a script reading and he said in his writing, he favours choosing kindness when possible – that there’s still lots of scope for conflict and interesting stories with characters who don’t set out to be mean to each other. And I didn’t realize it at the time – I was laughing too hard – but Crack in the Mirror is a good example of that. Varscona Theatre.

Meatball Séance – John Michael of Chicago’s solo show is infused with so much manic awkward energy that the themes of loss at its heart didn’t bring it down. Lots of audience participation bits, always with an option to decline. Sue Paterson stage at Campus St-Jean.

Mules – Directed by Kevin Sutley and with a good cast of actors from U of A Augustana (that’s the campus in Camrose), I bought a ticket for this because of the playwrights, Beth Graham and Daniela Vlaskalic. It was dark, it was twistedly funny in parts, and it managed to evoke some really disturbing things without actually showing any of them directly. It is a longer play (90 minutes), but I was really engaged with what was going to happen with these characters, played by Miracle Mopera, Kyra Gusdal, and Frank Dion. Walterdale Theatre.

Late Night Cabaret – I don’t make it to this Fringe midnight event very often, because I usually need some sleep more than I need a variety show with an amazing house band (Zee Punterz), amusing hosts from Rapid Fire Theatre, and glimpses of many of the Fringe artists and phenomena that I hadn’t yet had time to catch up with. But in the scaled-down masked-up Fringe of 2021, I managed to score one ticket to the limited run of Late Night Cabaret and when I walked in to the Backstage Theatre that night, its perfect blend of nightclub energy and community acceptance was something I hadn’t known I’d been missing. Last night’s hosts were Joleen Ballendine and Joey Lucius of Rapid Fire and the guest performers included Ingrid Hansen (Epidermis Circus), Tymisha Harris (Josephine, Josie & Grace) and Rachel Comeau (Josie & Grace), and Johnnie Walker (The Heterosexuals). Backstage Theatre.

White Guy on Stage Talking – I am stage-managing this, an innocent operations production with Jake Tkaczyk and Meegan Sweet. Like Tkaczyk’s previous innocent operations work, it includes a series of images and explorations devised on a theme, many of them topically pointed, excessively silly, or just absurd, and never takes itself too seriously. It’s fun to show audiences the things the performers and other creative contributors have been building. Walterdale Theatre.

This year’s Fringe has kept some of the innovations we first saw last year. The option to do paperless ticketing, and the move to one-step sales in the beer tents instead of the old get tickets here, give tickets there ritual. The bigger liquor-licensed area covering the old South Beer Tent and the whole of McIntyre Park (Gazebo Park) which eliminates a lot of the crowding/bottlenecks. The “no handbills” rule was easy last year as reducing the interactions between artists and patrons on site felt appropriate, and it eliminated a lot of paper. This year I think it’s more of a challenge – performers do need to engage to sell their shows, and it’s probably harder when there’s no tidy way of taking a card to wrap up the conversation. I’ve seen performers wandering in costume and wearing billboards and T-shirts with their QR codes.

The gravel parking lot (formerly Farmers’ Market parking, rebranded a few years ago to Theatre District parking) has increased in price to almost $20 for a full day, which will change my strategies a bit. Lots of my favourite food vendors (the wood fired pizza, the grilled cheese people, Fat Frank’s, the spaghetti in a cone, and the green onion cakes) are back, along with Native Delights (bannock burgers!) and something I need to try based on recommendations, BF Korean Chicken. Some people are wearing masks – more indoors than out, more performers than guests. There has obviously been some festival planning to eliminate pinch-points and bottlenecks and other non-intentional crowding, which is helpful in many ways other than reducing covid transmission.

Happy Fringe!