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July 17, 2008


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2008-07-17

Viva Las Fringe!

The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival is still everybody's favourite fringe fest

Jen Zoratti

The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival turns 21 this week - and it's celebrating Vegas-style.

The annual alt theatre festival kicked off on July 16, and 141 local, national and international companies will draw over 100,000 Fringers to 22 venues in the Exchange District over the next 11 days.

This year's Sin City-inspired Viva Las Fringe theme (and its cheeky tag line: "What happens at the Fringe stays at the Fringe") is a particularly fitting one - after all, the festival has plenty in common with the city that never sleeps.

"Vegas is about big-scale shows, small-scale shows, music, entertainment, variety - and that's what the Fringe is about," says Chuck McEwen, the festival's executive producer.

In other words, anything goes - an idea which has attracted thousands of artists and fans alike to the Winnipeg Fringe Festival every year.

It's also an idea that brought McEwen back to the Winnipeg Fringe. While this is McEwen's first time at its helm, the 44-year-old worked at the Winnipeg Fringe from 1994 to 1998 as a co-ordinator, before heading east to oversee the Toronto Fringe Festival.

"It's almost like a homecoming for me," he says of this year's event. "It's been fun getting back into putting on the best Fringe fest in the country."

Indeed, the Winnipeg Fringe Festival has certainly come a long way since its first run in 1988, which featured 49 companies at five venues. Now, it's the second-largest festival of its kind in North America (the trailblazing Edmonton Fringe Festival is the largest).

Still, there's always room for improvement, and faithful Fringers will notice some new additions to this year's festival.

One of the highlight newbies will be found on the outdoor stage at Old Market Square. Hosted by actor/writer/comedian Ken Rudderham, Fringe After Dark is a live talk/variety show which will feature interviews with and performances by Fringe performers. Held nightly at 9:30 p.m., Fringe After Dark allows artists to strut their stuff outside their designated venue, and ideally, get more folks out to their shows.

"In Toronto, we had a late-night talk show which allowed artists to promote their shows," McEwen says. "I thought I would bring that with me to Winnipeg to help integrate the indoor programming with the outdoor programming."

Another exciting new feature can be found at the festival's revamped website, www.winnipegfringe.com.

"This year, for the first time, advance tickets are available online," McEwen says. "We're also putting more show descriptions online as well, so people will have that added convenience."

The festival is also becoming increasingly accessible to little Fringers. While the Kids Fringe in Old Market Square isn't exactly a new thing, the festival has further expanded its indoor Kids Fringe programming. This year's lineup includes eight shows for young festival-goers.

"We want to develop future Fringers," McEwen says, simply.

That said, whether people start Fringing when they're five or when they're 50, getting people to come back to the festival doesn't seem to be a problem.

"It's infectious," McEwen says. "A lot of that has to do with word of mouth. You'll see people in line talking about what shows they've seen and what shows they're planning to see."

Ah yes, word of mouth: one of the defining traits of the Fringe Festival. Because so many of the works are brand new - about 95% according to McEwen - Fringers have learned to get the scoop on the must-see shows and performers from other Fringers.

There are, however, a few returning Fringe favourites whose reputations precede them.

Jem Rolls is one such performer.

This is the eighth year the British performance poet has been hitting the Canadian fringe circuit, and his hilarious, high-energy performances have consistently earned him plenty of high praise across the board.

Still, there's a special place in his heart for the Winnipeg Fringe

"For me, (Fringe) is a tour, but Winnipeg is the bit I enjoy the best," Rolls says. "It's somehow even more demented in Winnipeg."

Rolls returns to the Fringe this year with his epic How I Stopped Worrying And Learnt To Love The Mall. While most of the poet's earlier shows have consisted of smaller, slam poetry-style pieces linked together to create a full-length performance, How I Stopped... marks the first single-theme show Rolls has ever attempted.

"It's an 8,500-word poem about shopping - at which I'm really bad," Rolls says. "I've never done anything like it before and I've never come across anything like it before, so to me, it feels very individual."

Based on its reception so far, it looks like Rolls is destined to receive more raves at the Winnipeg Fringe with the new show.

"It's going great. It's gotten me more standing ovations than I've ever had before," Rolls says. "That's the thing about the Fringe. You can do whatever the hell you like as long as you go for it. You have that freedom."

T.J. Dawe is another critically acclaimed audience favourite returning to the festival this year - with not one show, but three.

The 33-year-old Vancouver-based writer/actor is directing Mr. Fox and Teaching the Fringe as well as starring in his new one-man show, Totem Figures - a 90-minute monologue about personal mythology.

"I'd never want them to hear this, but I'm glad that we had the cities in the East to get ready for Winnipeg," Dawe says of his current Canadian fringe tour (his 10th). "Winnipeg and Edmonton are like the Broadway of the Fringe. Everything else is like off-Broadway. I think most touring companies consider the Winnipeg Fringe to be the best in the circuit."

There's lots of things about the Winnipeg Fringe that makes it stand out from the rest - but for many people, one thing in particular leaps immediately to mind.

"Our audience is so diverse," McEwen says. "That's what I like so much about it - it really appeals to everyone. It's a great community event and Winnipeg has really embraced the Fringe idea more than any other city."

Rolls agrees.

"It's the audience. That's what makes it," he says. "It's very well run, but so is Toronto's and Edmonton's. It's really the adventurousness of the audience."

For more info see www.winnipegfringe.com.

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