The Fringe Theatre Festival got started last night. I’ve seen five plays, I have tickets to five more, and I have a long list in my program book of more I’d be interested in seeing. Maybe I should have signed up to volunteer, and earned some free tickets, but I still don’t have unlimited energy and can’t always predict — and it looks like lots of the volunteer jobs are outdoors in the sun.

There are a couple of neat new things at this year’s festival, and one old thing I took advantage of for the first time today.
– At the beer tents, you can buy a glow-in-the-dark souvenir cup, put your name on it with a Sharpie, get a dollar off every beer, and have it rinsed out to carry it home. Also, it feels nicer to drink from than the flimsy biodegradable-plastic cups.
– There’s a same-day-discount booth now. Artists can choose to have some same-day tickets for their shows sold at half price. (It doesn’t work out to half the total cost, because you still pay the $2.50 facility surcharge.) Today there was a list of maybe 20 performances on sale, and I found something I was interested in that fit in the gap in my schedule.
– Also, because I came from another appointment I wasn’t travelling by bicycle today, so I used the voucher in the program for a free bus ride home. It turns out that they just hand you an ordinary bus ticket, so maybe I will go get a bus ticket on future nights even if I do have the bicycle. I have to say, it felt very weird to walk away and get on a bus; I kept feeling like I was forgetting my bike on site.

The shows I’ve seen so far:

More Power to Your Knitting, Nell – this was a one-woman show that the artist was promoting on Ravelry, inviting people to knit at the show. It was a sort of sketch framework about a woman hired to do a radio show motivating patriotic knitters during World War II, and mostly an excuse for the artist to sing authentic WWI and WWII songs about knitting. She has a great voice, and is also doing another show at Fringe about Edith Piaf. There were only about 3 of us in the opening-night audience who had brought our knitting, and she handed out knitting projects to a few more people who knew what to do with them (including the man in front of me). Then every now and then she would put us on the spot with questions in the play. I’m never very sure how funny or original to be in a situation like that; not that I’m naturally all that quick, but I always worry about stealing the show when it seems like my role is to be good-natured about being made fun of. I did get in one funny line that made the rest of the audience laugh.

Charlie: A Hockey Story – mostly a storytelling performance, this one was more moving than I’d expected. I really wish I could learn to do that kind of storytelling. I’m not really interested in the kind that’s like telling long jokes, or the kind that my internet/Irish-Week friend Yvonne Healy does which is like traditional recounting of legends – just, I have lots of memories that I like to recount, and I’d like to know how to recount them in a way that would have an audience on the edge of their seats for an hour. Anyway, he had us rapt with stories that I mostly already knew the public parts of because they were important to my father and I’ve read them – the stories of the Leafs in ’33 and ’34, the longest playoff game ever and the Eddie Shore – Ace Bailey collision, injury, and aftermath. The artist’s uncle was one of the players on that Leafs team. It made me want to write to my brothers to check my memory of our own very small personal connection to those stories (I think that it was Joe Primeau Jr and some other possibly famous guy who ran the Mississauga team, and I think that King Clancy once came to a game and maybe Dad got him to sign a hockey card or was just struck dumb with magic.) The story was also about the artist’s relationship with his father, and about Shakespearean imagery. I really liked it.

Fools for Love – one of the two actors in this clown show is Christine Lesiak, a friend-of-a-friend whom I think I have met at Folkfest and/or at a party. I don’t always like the kind of exaggerated physical comedy done by clowns, but these actors were fun to watch and good at what they did.

This is Still Not a Play – three modern dance pieces in a very small venue, local company Good Women Dance Collective. I didn’t get a program, so I missed the titles of the pieces and that might have added something. But I liked it. The first one played with cell phones and video-calling and the idea of being there and not-there. The second one was more lyrical and there was probably some symbolism that I missed. The third one was about mirrors and echoes.

Geography Club – twelve young actors in an adaptation of a 2003 young-adult novel about GLBT high school students. I haven’t read the novel. Turning a novel into a 1-hour show made for a lot of very short scenes, which I found a bit jarring. I could see it working better as a novel or a movie (which is apparently in the works). I enjoyed it though. I can’t decide what I think about the fact that the apparently-transgender character was just there, never identifying zir sexuality or gender identity or aspiring to romantic relationships like the other teenage characters. I wanted to hear more from/about that character because a kid who is always reading rather than making eye contact but who interjects thoughtful points in discussions seemed interesting.

Yesterday morning I  went to the Chapters store where I had arranged to meet up with a friend from Montreal.  She ended up being quite late, being dependent on relatives for rides, but we texted back and forth. Basically, we just went to the beer tent at the Fringe and hung out in the shade knitting and talking all afternoon. It was really nice and relaxed, and made me laugh at myself a bit for how reluctant I’d been to be social and disrupt my weekend.

Then I went to see one play, and then came home and went to bed.

ONEymoon – at the library, sold out. Light, funny, fictional, one-actor show. The actor is good at the Fringe-promotion thing – she added me on twitter just because I’d mentioned something about #yegfringe. She talked in Dutch for some of it (pretending to talk to her relatives at the wedding), and she had a couple of audience members come up to read speeches she gave them – one was in Dutch and the guy said “Can I do this in Spanish instead?” and the other guy started to add in extra stuff, which was actually pretty funny. Bob our retired computer guy was there (I remember seeing him at Fringe shows in other years).

Twitterverse tells me that American comic actor Zach Galifianakis attended a show I was at. I don’t think anyone’s seen Nathan Fillion though.

Today I saw five plays at the Fringe. I also did some tidying and dishes and laundry this morning, went to the market, and between plays dropped off the shopping at home and lay down for a rest. As long as I park my bike on the perimeter instead of trying to walk it through the crowds to the main parking, this is easy.

Food notes for today: Nomad’s Kitchen is still good, the naan from the other place is precooked and nowhere near as good as the fresh naan from New Asian Village, and the wood-fired veggie pizza is really good.

Afternoon Delights and Emergency Exits – I’ve seen this modern dance company before, and I enjoyed them again, especially in the longer funny piece about flight attendants. They had the stylized gestures down pat.

The Big Smoke – This one-person narrative was my favourite show of the Fringe so far. It was poignant and very realistic. I won’t put any other spoilers until the run is over.

My Name is Jonas – comedy sketches loosely based on Weezer’s Blue Album, done by members of local improv company RapidFire Theatre. The funniest was the Jane Austen-esque dialogue that was full of sexual terms like cockblocking and wingman.

N.O.N.C.E – Another one-person narrative, this one written by the performer and mostly autobiographical. He’s an English performance poet, telling the stories of his time spent teaching poetry in a prison. I’ve recently read two books by people who taught creative writing in California prisons, and this guy was more interesting than either. It was more thought-provoking than I expected.

Bye Bye Bombay – A cast of one, but filling out the overwhelming impressions of a visit to India with video, music, puppets, dancing, a sari, and other props. The character was also dealing with the death of the mother she hadn’t gotten along with, and I was glad to see that theme done in an understated way.

Now that I understand how it works so I’m not embarrassed, I really like the way the Fringe artists advertise for their shows by talking to people. When done right, it feels intimate and sincere. Almost always it makes me more inclined to want to see the show (although I think the guy whose brother sings like Roy Orbison is annoying, reciting the same patter without making eye contact or maybe without knowing the right way to interrupt people comfortably). Also, after the applause the actors often recommend other shows and invite actors in the audiences to shout-out for their own. The N.O.N.C.E. guy talked to me yesterday. The When Harry Met Harry guy talked to our queue tonight and I told people I’d enjoyed his show. And there are several more on my wish list after encounters and recommendations.

I’ve always started out my show-shopping by trying to avoid one-person shows, because I used to feel like it was more interesting to watch the interactions in a larger cast. But I think I should change this rule, because I’ve seen so many good one-actor shows here and not just this year.

When buying tickets for Fringe 2010, it was really bothering me that I couldn’t remember whether I’d been to any plays the year before.  Eventually I realised that I could see my order history from previous years on the Fringe tickets website. As I thought, last year I went to two plays one afternoon. They were called Seeking… and A Cynic Tells Love Stories.

I’m not sure which bugged me more, the idea that I might have missed a year or the idea that I might not have written it down. I’ve kept some kind of diary, journal, or datebook record of my life since I was nine years old, and I still have all of them.

I went to the Fringe theatre festival when I’d lived here less than a week, and I first discovered Big Rock Traditional Ale (my current everyday favourite) at the beer tent that first Fringe.  Anyway, this year for the first time I managed to get one of the Frequent Fringer 10-show passes (they don’t sell very many). I’m going to use most of it this weekend because I have some weekend-night commitments and because next weekend I need to take it easy before the Sunday-morning half-marathon race.

When Harry Met Harry – a one-actor show about a man of fussy routines. A little bit of audience contribution. Australian actor, great facial expressions, funny.

9 Months to Mars – this was a comedy, but to me the best parts were the not-ridiculous parts, the credible characters and possible story. Plus, anything about space travel just has me from there. I really wish Defining Gravity hadn’t been cancelled after one season; even though it wasn’t perfect, it was a story.

I have four tickets to shows today, so far.

On the first Friday night, I went to the Fringe with my friend Rob. We didn’t plan much ahead of time — just he sent a list of plays that people at VUE were saying good things about and I tried to figure out what was on and not sold out … so mostly we enjoyed the Fringe-site experience, eating green onion cakes and talking, running into people he knew, going to one off-site venue to discover it was sold out, hanging out in the beer tent, then going to “The Year of Magical Thinking“, a compelling one-woman show written by Joan Didion that reminded me of when my dad died. Rob was still up for more theatre after that, but I was overheated and sleepy, so I went home.

I told Rob about how last year I’d been to the Fringe by myself and thought about how in 2009, I could go with people I hadn’t met yet, or run into such people there. He liked that. It’s sure different, seeing that part of my neighbourhood closed to traffic and full of crowds and attractions, now that I have a picture of what “normal” is there, cutting across the empty courtyard to my library, etc.

Addition: An Unconventional Love Story: A young male-male couple has a threesome with a stranger, then fall in love unexpectedly. I was laughing and smiling-in-recognition and tearing up at different points from the rest of the audience.

Afternoon Delight: Six pieces of athletic and playful modern dance, company of four young  women. I really liked it.

Michael in Primetime: One-person show, intentionally disjointed, I didn’t like it.

Inviting Desire: Vignettes about women’s sexual fantasies. Not just comedic, and a bit more challenging than some of this genre, but could have been more queer-inclusive.

nggrfg Rob had told me on Friday that he liked it, and when he saw the actor/writer in the beer tent he told him it was the best thing he’d seen so far. One-person show, good use of minimal props, speaking directly to the audience at the start and finish about the two important words needed to talk about his life, which are words that can’t even be talked about. Also really good. Particularly interesting in the context of http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/offensive-words/.
So out of six plays, only one that I didn’t like. And a bunch more that I’m interested in seeing but couldn’t schedule are at the hold-overs next weekend, for $17 each. ( the all-female Importance of Being Earnest, Bashir Lazhar, 7 Lives of Louis Riel, or Cherry Cherry Lemon)

As for the rest of the festival experience, I ate a green onion cake, samosas and naan, a mango lassi, an elephant ear with chocolate sauce, and some assorted other stuff. And I tried a free sample Vitamin Water. I also fitted in some grocery shopping, and enjoyed sitting in the shade knitting and people-watching.

Overall experience I wasn’t as rushed between shows as on Friday, so I spent some time sitting in a breeze in the shade watching people,and talked to a Japanese tourist in the beer tent (Almost entirely in English, because I don’t remember much Japanese). It’s an interesting slightly-counterculture midway – I realize from visits to Montreal and Ottawa street life that Kingston doesn’t have these vendors even at festivals. I ate a green onion cake – something I’d never heard of till I came here which seems to be a local delicacy – fried savoury dough with green onions. There are so many beautiful tattoos in evidence. When I was leaving The Trojan Women, the actor Raoul Bhaneja who does the Hamlet (solo) was handing out flyers and talking up his play. So I told him that I’d already seen it, on the recommendation of a friend who saw him in Montréal, and that I thought it was great.

I don’t mind being by myself, but I am sure that if I come next year I will meet people I know. That is an interesting thought, because I probably haven’t met those people yet.

The Trojan Women I didn’t see this when they put it on at my daughter’s high school and now I’m sorry. It was powerful and haunting and earthily funny. The Cassandra was especially good.

Learning the Game was another one-person show, the kind of play that gets done for school audiences because it’s about an Issue. I saw it because the topic caught my eye-a teenage girl hockey player with a learning disability: how could I not! Afterwards I told the actor that it made me cry, and I got all tongue-tied in front of the playwright. The actor, Megan Leach, said that one in every three performances she feels herself going deep onto the character and knows it’s good. I guessed where in the play it happened today, and got it right.

Grey/Green Paradise was a short sparse contemporary play about two awkward young guys who are roommates (in Montréal, but it doesn’t really matter). One is kind of an extreme environmentalist, and the other is not quite so extreme and works in a bank. It kind of reminded me of one of my Montréal friends looking for philosophically-compatible roommates for some reason. At the end, the actors said that they were working without a script and it was different every night — so maybe the awkwardness wasn’t just part of the story. It worked, anyway.

There are a bunch more shows I want to see, if I have time and money this week. And if not, well, not.