Alex Eddington: composer, musician, writer, actor, &tc.

against the wall

Did you know that half of Washington State - the "Evergreen State", mind you - is desert? Desert carved by heavy floods toward the end of the last ice age. Desert without cacti. Desert with columnar basalt sticking up out of it. I feel like I'm in California crossed with Scotland. Fringe is finished, and we're on our way back by a roundabout route. Yesterday was the first time since the beginning of June that I have set Acky the Volvo on an eastward course - except perhaps for the ferry trip back from Vancouver Island. We've decided to swing into the Shoulder of America (my term) to visit my cousins in Othello WA, before swinging back up into Fernie BC and sliding the Frank Slide all the way to Calgary and the badlands before finally settling into a responsible south-eastward progress of eight hours of driving or 1 major city per day. The other two Torontonian companies of our acquaintance who are driving home - "Dickens of the Mounted" or "Tale of a T-Shirt" - are doing so in, like, four days. But not us! We are careful, or lazy, or non-eager to enter Real Life or The Fallow Period, depending on how you look at it. Vancouver was both okay and amazing. Crowds were good enough for me to want to return, despite only getting one very late review in the Georgia Straight. What was amazing was the weather - 12 straight days of sun and 20 degrees (my favourite temperature) and how much fun it was to perform in an intimate space to small crowds who laughed and gave me their support for an hour. Five out of six times, at least. Goodbyes are hard. Alison couldn't leave until she'd performed a specific (even ritualistic) one with Penny Ashton ("Hot Pink Bits") and once completed, she could not reenter the bar and risk a post-goodbye encounter. The performance poet Jem Rolls threw me playfully but forcefully against a corrugated iron wall (which is the only vertical surface to be found on Granville Island) and told me to stop being so smart! But to keep producing the crazy shows. This final night behaviour is apparently not atypical for the generally un-touchy-feely Jem, who picked Alison up and swung her around BOTH this year and last at the close of Vancouver Fringe. "Dishpig" star Greg Landucci reports being playfully, but firmly, slapped. Oh, I have drummed up my CBC performer blog from Winnipeg Fringe this year, and I will post it on my site. Look here. Wik. I'll tell you more about the trip home soon...

I don't wanna

I see it as no coincidence that we left Courtenay the day after Labour Day, the very morning that Alison's two teenaged cousins were heading out the door to their first days of grades 12 and 8. I felt the same way that I suspected that they did: how can you make me do this? After this amazing, relaxing break, after this time when I had no responsibilities, how can you make me go back there? Except that my break was shorter than theirs. If we had taken the tour to Victoria, I'd still be running at full guns I think. I was tired after Edmonton, but not impossibly so. Victoria is a relaxing festival - I could have chilled out but I'd still be on my game. But after 5 nights in Courtenay, a rainy day trip to Tofino, and about a thousand photographs of trees, I'm just not in the mood to do another festival! I've been in Vancouver since Tuesday. We decided to give the Labour Day ferry traffic a miss, which is why we arrived on the same day as our tech. What stressed me out more than that, though, was not being able to check in with my billet until AFTER tech rehearsal - about 11 pm. Turns out though that not only is she night-oriented, but she is greatly experienced in two areas relevant to my planned 2008 show, the Queen Charlotte Islands and mental illness. We talked until after 2:30, and she worked at 9:00. I struggled my way down to Granville Island on the transit and was (and continue to be) upset that there are no transit maps to be had! I think I've vowed to drive from now on. There is SOME free parking to be had near Fringe, if one doesn't mind a bit of a walk. I'm still debating which method of transport is less stressful to me, which is all that matters to me now. This festival is kind of weird. We have to deconstruct our set between shows (usually we just wheel it backstage). I have to share a washroom with the public! They added a row of chairs since my tech rehearsal that makes the stage space unusably small for my purposes. I don't wanna. It will be fine, I know. I just have to open the show, and I just have to deal with locomotion for a couple of weeks. I've planned my return itinerary, and it looks like I'll be home near about September 27th!

now with three kinds of stomachs

I'm in Courtenay BC! Courtenay, to be clear, is PAST Vancouver, halfway up Vancouver island. We finished up Edmonton Fringe on Sunday the 26th with a sold-out show, the third of these that we had in Edmonton this year. I felt like a minor celebrity out on the grounds in Edmonton. Not that "The Fugue Code" was a hit of hits, or even a hit exactly, but to sell out half of six shows and most of the other three felt marvellous. Most of these crowds were great, but the final show (whose 9:00 pm Sunday slot I had been dreading all summer) was the best of the summer. They were HYPER, even in preshow, which is usually a kind of reflective time. People kept coming in and failing to locate seats and I had to play usher and aparently made good comedy of it. There was a wacky charge to the air that night. It was a full moon. Edmonton was where I remembered that this show is a comedy again. And where I got my fifth four-star review of the summer (actually a "Daniel Craig" in a convoluted Bond-ranking system in VUE Weekly), and my first zero-star review. Zero stars! That's, like, the reviewer went to see the show and nothing whatsoever occurred! No script, no performance, no nothing. Since they obviously saw a show, and an obviously carefully prepared show...well, there's really no explanation. You can't not like a polished show enough to give it zero stars. Zero stars isn't a bad review - it's a laughable review. So my confusion turned quickly to humour. I didn't hide it, I mentioned it in the lineups. I showed people where I had put the zero stars on my flyers - right there, at the top. Oh, you can't see it? That's because there's nothing there! This is how I thicken my stomach lining against the pain and worry that can come with bad reviews. But as I said, things ended on a really high note, and then we fled for BC. We spent a night in Yoho park, and a night in Kelowna, and then rushed out to Vancouver where we were very surprised to get on the first available ferry to Nanaimo. We broke a Nanaimo bar on the ferry in a spontaneous ceremony. Today we went up a mountain and walked in a beachside forest. We're decompressing. And I need to get my energy up for my last six shows. Vancouver needs me to invest!

hoppity, hop-hop

Why haven't I written again since coming to Edmonton? We've had 2 shows! We're a third of the way through the run in this crazy town! And Edmonton, I guess, is overwhelming. This is the festival that's like a circus - the venues are connected by what is, essentially, a fairground - albeit sorely lacking a sideshow tent this year. The crowds are oppressive at peak times, especially when I need to get from "my changeroom" (the FTA washrooms - Fringe is sorely lacking an artist green room this year!) to the Walterdale Playhouse (my venue, for the third magical time in a row) in time to perform. But Edmonton should be old hat. But it isn't. But The ticketing system has changed everything - audience flow, hence flyering flow, being the most important. Mostly, I like it now. I have constant box office lines to flyer between busy show lines. And I can check sales reports, which today reported a sellout (my first of the summer!) for our 4:30 show. May the 6:30 tomorrow sell as out as its predecessors. May my final Sunday gather more than 8 souls. May no one request an exchange (refunds not aloud). I've heard (and made) some grumbles about the slow lines at the kiosks (satellite box offices) but heck. Heck. There were more sellouts than I've seen before on the first weekend. I think - and hope to see verified - that sales are way up. I got my fourth four-star review of the summer today! Four squared! And four is my lucky number, as I tell the crowds I flyer. Four main characters, four stars four times, four shows left, sold out the four-thirty. And four is the crucial number of "The Fugue Code" too. The sellout has got me in a good, good, good mood. Alison and I attempted to celebrate with Ethiopian, but Langano Skies is closed until mid-SEPTEMBER, so it was Tasty Toms for us. No complaints there. I've been eating well and I intend to continue doing so. I feel has hoppity hop-hoppy as the two giant Edmo rabbits I saw in the wet field between the outer venues (the two King Edwards) and the rest of Fringe. These are rabbits dressed for summer - but winter comes to Edmonton closely on the heels of Fringe. Don't think about that. Yikes. But seriously, we've experienced 35 degree temperature swings on this tour. Up and down and up and up and up and way down. On the way home there could be snow. Enjoy it while you can, bunny-buns.

ssssSSSPooff!

It's been a little while! 10 days! Saskatoon is done with, and tomorrow Alison and I leave for Edmonton, planning to get there in time to not only pick up the posters from Industry Images, but to poster them - along Whyte Ave shopwindows. I'm not really all that keen about returning to the big city. Edmonton felt like a small city when I was in it, a bit too small for my Toronto-bred sensibilities. I like to be able to be anonymous in big crowds, big traffic, crowds that aren't mostly middle-class and white - but that's another story. During Fringe, though...I like my life to be kind of calm. Predictable, simple. During Fringe I don't tend to spend too much time exploring a city. I spend most of my time on the Fringe grounds and I like to be able to go home fairly quickly when it's 2 or more AM and I'm tired. And Saskatoon has been great for that. I've been billeted a 5 minute walk from the Oskayak high school, where I was performing! Edmonton will not be like this at all. I'm staying near the Stadium - which is not too far - but Alison is way out at Clareview, the end of the LRT and pretty much the edge of Edmonton. I used to drive my friend Alan home there, and at night I always worried that I would fall out of the city and be lost in endless black prairieness. There are roads near Clareview that lead into nowhere. And Edmonton seems complicated - big city complicated. There is a new technology-dependant ticketing system. Tickets are more expensive than in previous years and getting them takes more forethought. And we have what may be the worst schedule I've ever seen: opening show first on the opening night, and in fact during the Free For All; half the shows done by the first weekend, two afternoon shows during the week, and the final show in the venue, 9:00 pm on the final Sunday after everyone's given up completely on Fringe '07. We didn't do spectacularly well in Saskatoon, but we made some money. I'm kind of worried about heading into an overly complicated Edmonton, and a Vancouver where Fringe artists are in conflict with the juried "Encore Series" of hot Fringe shows from previous years, produced by Vancouver Fringe during primetime slots (a conflict of interest over which one Fringe performer (who happens to be an attourney) has threatened legal action). And all the while travelling further from home. Our final show in Saskatoon was in a perfect, primetime slot, with (for once) no competition with top-selling shows. We had flyered solidly starting the night before. I felt good. But then, it rained - a little. We had 38 people. We never broke the 40 mark in this town. I'm told that the crowds are small, but "Homeless" nearly sold out 6 shows. Sigh. But you can see where my disappointment stems from, and that leads to worry when I see what I'm up against in the next 2 festivals. The highlight of Saskatoon, as always, was the spoof night. Rob Gee (performance poet from England) nailed my costume and some of my demeanour, trying to play 250 characters (non-actor that he is), "all of them bonkers". We spoofed "Tale of a T-Shirt" by basically performing it again (quirky, even goofy high-energy skit-based show that it is) really fast and making it about the travel of a Fringe van instead of a T-shirt. Spoof night is over 2 nights here - 4-5 hours of spoofing! I don't know how many late nights I had here in S'ktoon (once I recovered from my sickness) but those two were particularly late! Some companies are talking about pulling out of Vancouver, but I think Alison and I are going to stick with it. We're talking about a show for next year, set in B.C. The place, not the time. So we have some research to do.

S'ktoooooon!

We have opened at Saskatoon Fringe! I did NOT feel quite 100% today, by our 5:30 curtain, but I certainly felt better than most of yesterday. The fever is mostly gone and I'm well into the final stage of the illness, which, as always for me, is COUGHING. This is obviously problematic during theatrical performance. But I know that this kind of coughing is, to some degree, psychological. If I want to, I can let the phlegm build up in the back of my throat and not cough at all. I can ignore the tickle. And I did, today, until there was so much phlegm built up that every breath, no matter how light, was something of a wet wheeze that - as the hour-long show progressed - I wanted more and more to expel with a whimsical sound that would sound something like "S'ktoooooon!!" which is of course where we are. The situation was mitigated by getting to cough a bit during my 2.5 minutes offstage, and a bottle of water in the back corner of the stage that I used (always as my Jerome character for some reason) once or twice. On the whole, it was fine - and it's good to be open. After the show I was accosted by an expert on Baroque tuning systems who enjoyed the show, but accused me (I fear, correctly) of perpetuating the myth that Well Temperament was close to Equal Temperament. And I'm the kind of person who doesn't want to perpetuate myths. I like to create new ones - and most of The Fugue Code is based on made-up history anyhow. I'll think about it.

I'm back...from the near-dead!

Okay, it's not that bad. But my body has chosen this point between festivals in the middle of my tour to get sick. A summer cold (from summer heat of sometimes 50 celcius in Winnipeg, considering humidity) and fever, the kind that made for 4 hours of sleep last night in 12 hours of resting. My mind kept itself awake with endless lists and logistics, about nothing more substantial than the various lumps in my blankets, as various parts of my core and limbs continually re-evaluated how hot or cold they needed to be. Even without this illness, the 15-or-so-degree drop from when I first arrived in Saskatoon two days ago would have thrown me. (and just for those of you who are intimately unfamiliar with Degrees Celcius, them's big honkin' degrees!) But I'm now on the mend, thanks to Cold-FX *and* Vega *and* salads *and* Booster Juice *and* Buckley's *and* sleep. I'm not taking chances: in 27 hours I'll be in the middle of my first performance in Saskatoon - performance 22 of 39 or something - and as old hat this show is becoming, every new theatre and new city is a different beast, and I need my head on straight. A little coughing, I can suppress. Fever and imbalance - not so safe for such a wordy and physical show. But I am positive, and thanks to "Foucault's Pendulum" (which I should have read a long time ago, considering that it could seemingly have inspired "The Fugue Code") I'm keeping out of trouble and in of doors. I haven't posted here in a while, because I've been posting on the CBC Manitoba Fringe Site as an official CBC blogger. Which, just like last year, was great. People read those things - it's publicity and it makes me feel important. Not much else does these days, so I take it where I can get it. But when I come to a new festival (like Saskatoon) braced for unimportancem sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. Saskatoon Fringe has really improved its ways since last year. The programme is free and came out early - the sandwich boards are free to us - advance ticket surcharges are paid for by the buyer, not by us (according to CAFF regulations and unlike, *ahem* Toronto) - and on the whole the vibe seems better. I feel good about our venue (the pleasantly cavernous Oskayak (once "Joe Duquette") high school gym and our techs (one of whom was in that clown funeral show here last year that I loved) and even the odd eye-level lighting hang, which Alison used to great advantage when setting lights in yesterday's tech. I hope for bigger crowds than last year - and with fewer shows, that may well happen. So that's that. I'm actually feeling well enough to go for a brief walklet. Alison's doing all the publicity work today while I sit around recovering, which is very sweet and very wise considering our two livelihoods depend on my health. You'll hear from me again after we open in Saskatoon! 'til then...

B minor???

(the last post of Alex's 2007 official CBC Winnipeg Fringe blog)

Could this be the end? - The last post? It's Saturday, the day of our final performance in Winnipeg. We're into the second half of our tour now, and about to wrap up things, and wrap things up, and sail up to Saskatchewan for smaller climes. Winnipeg has been great to us. We had our largest crowd of the tour (2:30 on a Thursday!) and some of our most welcoming, engaged and amused audients.

Today, I will flyer, though, like it's the beginning of the festival. The Fringe is swarming with new spectators who have come out for the final weekend. In some ways, they are hard to sway: they have read the reviews and they are not open to suggestions. The hard-core Fringers who have been out all week are not in the mood to be flyered.

Yesterday, I was looking around Market Square for folks who were looking to make decisions, when I came across a middle-aged couple, each peering quizzically at a separate program. The perfect people to approach! "We're all booked", she said. I waved my extended flyer incredulously between the two open programs and mumbled something about Saturday at Six, but she shook her head, resolutely, in time to my flyer's oscillations. "We're...all...booked." I don't know who was ruder, she or I. He never looked up from his programme.

I'm determined to have a good crowd today, despite being up against such sellouts as "Giant Invisible Robot", "Jesus in Montana", "Maxim and Cosmo", "Bye, Bye Bombay", and The Simpson’s Movie. Last week it was Harry Potter. Oy!

Right, gotta chop flyers. If I don't write again, I'd like to thank the Fringe admin, the volunteers, the performers, CBC Manitoba, and of course the *audience* for making this a great Fringe! This is really the best of the big festivals on the circuit, as far as I'm concerned. And if I can be, I'll be back next year (with something quite different again)...!

A minor, bk. II

Ack, I'm agitated! Don't know why. My best explanation is this: and thus: we had our biggest crowd of the tour so far! I think we broke the hundred mark! And they got it! And I found stuff and it was clear and I FELT it! So I think my agitation is because of a pull within me - an interesting pull and a not-so-common pull for this show, the performance of which is so much of a mechanical process for me (otherwise, I might break an ankle): the pull between feeling great about the crowd and the reaction (and the suddenly-cooler weather!) and a kind of sadness that I think is left over from one of my characters. Nigel, the organist.

This doesn't normally happen, but today, the ending of the play has left me with a sadness for him and his situation. It's a sadness that I haven't felt too much since actually writing the show, and now that I feel it while and after performing. I guess I'm relaxed enough with the mechanics of the show that I can FEEL its feelings in this kind of way. That's probably a good thing for someone like me who can tend toward headiness and whose first performance experiences were as a trombonist at the back of a concert band.

It's also the halfway point. Today was show 19 of 39. If I look back, a l o n g way back, I see Ottawa in June, and the hard, hard work that went into tweaking what we had in preparation for the Ottawa Fringe. If I look forward, a l o n g way forward, I see Vancouver in September - the end of a summer, "past" the end of a summer and a long, l o n g drive home to my new and old home in Toronto. And into...I don't know yet. I don't even have one plan for the autumn, at least not one that pays.

It's a funny feeling, strung between joy and melancholy, past and future. But I dig it. I think I'm going to go eat a lot and see some shows. Yum, yum. Um, and the German buffet is waiting for tomorrow.

A-flat Major?

I wish there was a flat sign on my computer keyboard - I'd use it all the time.

I missed a day of blogging and almost missed another in my hurry to go to a schnitzel buffet just down the road from my billets' house. 'Tis the time of the Fringe when my attention begins to turn to other Fringes - two Fringes ahead, as it is necessary to get the Edmonton press kits out on time.
It is a trickier thing than it should be, keeping track of future festivals while living in the present one. I still have three shows in Winnipeg (including early this aft), but because of hot weather and soaked flyers and thoughts of SKTOON billets and EDMO press kits, I feel like the carpet here is beginning to roll up. Each festival goes so quickly. I come into town, dreaming of bike rides and Forks' visits and Osborne Villiage hang-outs, and then, 14 days and 5 days of heat-wave in a row later, it's time to go.

But today, Uptown Magazine will release their reviews, which may inject a bit of life into me yet.

I think I may write more later today. But right now, I have a date with a post office and a whole lot of German food.

Oops! I forgot E MINOR, which is in my show for goshsake!

Tonight was an early night returning from the Fringe, which is to say that I'm beginning my blogging at (exactly!) midnight instead of, like, 1, or 2, or many. I just made a conscious decision not to see "Bald Ego", deciding instead to save it for a time when my head was more together and the Number 11 Bus (there's a piece of experimental music-theatre by Peter Maxwell Davies called that, just so you know, named for the much more exciting #11 that goes by Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and St. Paul's Cathedral) wasn't arriving at the bus stop on Main St. at the tantalizingly exact same time as me. I saw three shows today, one heavy and poetic ("Toasting the Snow Bride"), one light and personal and poetic ("Be Prepared"), and one personal and heavily-physical and exactly what I needed at that moment ("On Second Thought"). The first two were underattended, as have been many shows I've seen this year. Not one performance has yet to sell out in my venue (#4), despite there only being 125 seats. Whassup?

But considering the late night I had last night, the reasons for which were revealed in this morning's blog (take that, Kris Joseph, two in one day!), I find myself here, sitting and sipping typically fizzy homebrew, feeling like today hasn't really started. Today I was sitting on the bus at about 3 p.m., just heading into Fringe, feeling like it was MORNING. This is not typical. I'm not one of those "dudes." I like my mornings to be before noon. This is what Winnipeg Fringe does to me, and what Saskatoon Fringe with its "dude"-filled performer bar and the easy stroll home will do even more. Fringes make me into a Perpetually Tired Person. I am not a morning dove, nor a night owl, I'm just always kinda dozy. And this heat don't help. Today, especially, I never woke up at all. I'm going to sleep now and get up again, and then today will finally get going, I think.

Today was a day off - now we have 4 show days in a row. And if you've seen "Fugue" yet, you might have a sense of why my body whimpers a little at the thought. But it's all good, once I get going. After all (as I just found out through a write-up that my billet printed), I am performing on a stage that has held Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Harry Houdini, Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, though they were of course facing the other way, into the big hall. This building has to be haunted by ONE of them. I insist on it.

F# minor

Okay, so I'm actually writing this the next morning, although eight minutes into this writing session, it will actually become afternoon. Last night I had an 11:00 p.m. show, which is not really my preferred slot. The question is always what to do with myself during the day, so that I don't go crazy with anticipation, so that I'm focussed, but not worried. So I went to the beach. Not Grand Beach (I'm saving that for a less hurried trip), but Winnipeg Beach on the stonier west side of Lake Winnipeg. While the temperature in the city was supposedly 37 Celsius yesterday (a record?), it felt more like 25 up there, in the shade and in the breeze. But I'm not a chance-taker and wore my tank top and wide-brimmed hat into the water. The sun and I have a complicated relationship.

But as cool as it felt there yesterday, I have to admit that my usual claim that every time I perform "The Fugue Code" I get a little less sweaty was deeply false last night. I, in fact, sweated for hours after the show, as I looked for somewhere to sit and something to drink at the King's Head Pub.
Last night was also far from a typical show, because the audience was at least half performers. I worry about late slots. I worry that, if I have to perform this crazy vigorous show at the end of a long hot day to an audience of 5, I will explode. So we pumped up the proverbial volume and got some support out there. So we didn't make much money last night, but we had fun.

Gemma Wilcox ("The Honeymoon Period is Officially Over") and Paul Thorne ("Bald Ego") chose to sit in the very front centre where they rather stuck out. My blocking was subconsciously altered, and I found myself very frequently looming right over them, drenching them I'm sure in sweat and spittle. Jayson McDonald ("Giant Invisible Robot"), a repeat customer, dominated the left flank of the crowd with the broad smile and an open posture that would not have been possible in a full house. I don't know how I could miss anyone in the small crowd (the house lights are up for Scene 1!), but Erik de Waal ("Decameron" and "African Folktales") surprised me in the bar with a batch of freshly baked hugs. Erik has been closely following my nascent Fringe career, and the inception of "The Fugue Code" owes a lot to his suggestions at Saskatoon Fringe last summer. If Erik is proud of me, then I know that I am on the right track.

Now that it is afternoon, I must set off on some tasks. I'm going to see a show with "Snow" in the title at 4:30, and then...???

F# Major

Audiences. Audiences! They're all different! Mine on the whole fall into one of two categories: the Laughers and the Listeners. Not that there isn't some mixing, but generally speaking, almost the entirety of the audience at a particular show is one or the other. The Laughers take the show as it passes by, enjoying moments in the present, laughing at the words, or the physicality, or whatever their particular set or neural pathways makes them likely to laugh at. The Listeners quietly hang on to all the (admittedly enormous pile of) information as it passes by, looking to form the bigger picture (and there is a BIG picture in this show, I assure you), afraid (I suspect) that if they laugh, then the gathered information will slip out and be lost.

I can never know if an audience will be primarily composed of Laughers or Listeners based on time of day, day of week, or size of crowd. I spend a lot of time thinking about whether a minority of Laughers in a Listener-heavy crowd get pressured into Listening by the dominating silence. And these are, of course, the general trends. In every crowd, there could be the Bored, the Baffled, the Smiling Constantly, the Eyes Closed But Possibly Listening Even More Attentively Than the Average Listener, the Walkout, the Would Be a Walkout if I Didn't Have to Cross the Stage to Do So (some of these have been kind enough to blog about their experiences), the Engrossed Ten-Year-Old, the Guffawer (a Laugher who laughs in unexpected bursts, or possibly a Listener who has given up and must expel the information thus far collected), the Whisperer (usually, but not always, travelling in pairs), the Family Friend, and the Scribbler. Or yes, and the Blogger who often assumes (and this is a natural but dangerous assumption) that their way of seeing and reacting to the show was, is, and will be shared by all members of all possible audiences. If performing - and especially performing this show - has taught me anything that is useful to me as an audience member, it is that I should own my reactions/opinions, because they are highly individual and highly variable.

Two years ago, I did a show (called "Adieu, Friedrich Lips", it played only at Edmonton Fringe) in which my character had a line about "the very limits of human preception [sic]". Sometimes, with this show, I feel like I'm playing right along the edge of it. I didn't exactly intend to. I intended to write a show that is bigger than it is - that is so full of detail (so, if you will, Baroque) that members of my audience are forced to find their own path through it - to follow parts or listen to the whole as suits them - to enjoy whatever number of layers they would like. This is an appropriate metaphor for Baroque music, particularly fugues: a whole made from parts in argument - music that gives up more the more you study it. This is a show about listening, so I wanted people to have to listen. So I expected people to have varied reactions - to have chosen differing paths. While people (including myself) have a lot of trouble talking about their memories of theatre (or music) that they have just experienced, I am pretty sure that the experiment has succeeded. But I did not expect the size of the discrepancy:

Some people follow every word and beg for more. Some people (I don't think that many) shut down somewhere in Scene 3 or 4, or maybe 8, and completely ignore the rest of the show (Alison and I cannot figure out why, and we spent three days talking about this on the drive to Winnipeg). Some people cannot follow the character changes at all, while some (including a visually-impaired woman in Toronto) have not the slightest bit of trouble. Many people assume some sort of direct and specific connection between this show and the Da Vinci Code, which I personally put down and haven't picked up again after reading it once (the main difference is that DVC has no moral or emotional purpose, and...). One person didn't connect Jerome in the opening monologue to Jerome throughout the rest of the script. One person thought I had three main characters, not four. Two separate people in Toronto blogged that we ought to do better sound-checks when using microphones. We don't use microphones at all.

What I secretly wonder is whether people's perceptions of ALL shows are quite varied, but that something about the rather extreme intensity of mine, and the purposeful experimenting with Too Much Information makes them want to share their reactions with me.

I've decided, though, just to perform the show. Whoever's there can take it any way they want. (But Laughers make me sparkle just that little bit more... like tonight. There were moments that they brought out of me that wouldn't have been there for a quieter crowd).
 
Tomorrow I'm going to the beach! I'll be back for my 11:00 p.m. show!

E-flat Major

Today was a four-show day, maybe my busiest day of show viewing on the festival circuit so far. No, that's not true. There was a day at the end of Ottawa when I dragged my visiting girlfriend to what seemed like 8 shows, but was probably 5. But most of those I had seen before (including my and most's perennial fave "Giant Invisible Robot") and wanted to share with her while I could. Today I saw four new shows, two of which CBC asked me to see and write about, so I even had the little notebook going. Okay, it was a sheet of printer paper. But there was one for each show.

Keir Cutler ("Teaching As You Like It", another show I've seen twice) has been following this blog and requests on behalf of the populace that I explain the keys a little bit more. Here's what I'm doing.

My show ("The Fugue Code") is based around a certain cycle of pieces for keyboard by J.S. Bach called "The Well-Tempered Clavier". Bach wrote a pair of prelude-and-fugue for each of the 24 major and minor keys, C major, C minor, C# major, C# minor and so on, all the way up to B minor. Twice through. Now-a-days (that's a much better phrase when you hyphenate it, don't you think?) we think that music can be played in any key (especially on piano), that they're all the same, just transpositions up or down from some other key. But to Bach and his ilk (I always, and I mean *always* think of cartoonish salt-licking elk when I see ilk), to Bach and his silky-wigged ilk, the way their harpsichords and organs were tuned made each key sound somewhat different - the shortish explanation being that the distances between some notes on the keyboard and their neighbours were larger or smaller than others, and depending on what note you choose to begin a scale, you come through this uneven pattern of intervals in a different order. So, Bach (and Beethoven, and many more) felt that music in different keys had different characters. Bach's approach was more subtle than Beethoven's (for whom C minor WAS ALWAYS a certain kind of mood), but in the Well-Tempered Clavier, he gives us a new mood for each key. And these are subtly shaded gradations of feeling: moods that could not be expressed in words, so he expressed them in preludes and in fugues. The fugues are what interest me (and my script), because they are both a mood and a journey, sometimes a rollercoaster of ups and downs within the given emotional colour.

So what I'm sharing with you, in my offhanded way, is a list of my favourite fugues in the first volume of the well-tempered clavier. No joke. And we probably won't get through them all. E-flat major is one of the few I've learned well enough to perform. C#-major is one I will never be able to play, but one that I will never, and I mean *never* tire of listening to. And there are so many more that I've studied and learned to love. A good Bach fugue is something that reveals more the deeper you dig, but you can also choose to just relax and enjoy the ride. Maybe this will make what I'm trying to do in this crazy little play of mine a little clearer...

And now I'm about to trip into bed.

D minor

The choice as always is between blogging now - fresh from the King's Head and on my way to sleep - or in the morning, when whatever noonish show I plan to catch is quickly looming. I made a pact with myself (but not with the CBC) that I have to blog daily. HAVE to. That's the way it was last year (I think) and that's the way it will be. And tomorrow I'll start reviewing shows too. That is a pact with the CBC.

I opened tonight, a 7:30 slot with 80 paying guests! All strangers, save my billetors. The stage, as predicted, is wide. I was nervous coming into tonight's show, thinking about that wide stage. About how the show would take twice as much energy. And parts did. But the theatre's cavernousness goes beyond the width of the stage. Behind the wooden backdrop at the back of my stage space is a whole other theatre's worth of seating: the real theatre. I and the booth and all of my audience are on what is just the stage for regular productions at the Pantages. When "The Fugue Code"'s plot enters the Cathedral, we light up the huge space behind us a bit. They use this spooky green lighting up on the molded plaster of the theatre balconies during preshow. When I told this to Alison on the big drive here, her eyes lit up and she insisted that we use it in the show, if the technicians can easily build it into the cues. Then I found out that "The Churchill Protocol" is shining a flashlight up and around the cavernous theatre space at the beginning of their show. Even awesomer. Anyway, this theatre is cavernous in more ways. My dressing room is underneath, way at the end of a long chain of little rooms, one for each show in the venue. Halfway down are stairs down to a door to stairs down to a low-ceilinged basement that must be as vast as the floor plan of the seating area above it. Like all vast old theatres I've seen, there are tiny doors for half-sized men in coveralls to enter huge boiler rooms and toil far beneath the proscenium. I don't get a proscenium - or rather, it's behind me.

The key I've chosen for this post seems oddly appropriate. I don't agree that D minor is "the saddest of keys"; I've always thought there's an agitation to it. Tonight I feel somewhere between melancholic and stirred up by Fringe thoughts - about last year, about this year on whose edge I sit. I went to see Rob Gee's poetry show (The Ghengis Khan guide to Etiquette) and loved his style even more than when I saw him last year. Before the show, Alison and I reminisced about a certain poem (commissioned, then banned, by the BBC) on the subject of Remembrance Day. It was even more simply, beautifully brutally anti-war than I remembered. Now in my billetors' home office, I am faced again with a printed quotation, uncited, sticky-tacked to the wall: "War does not determine who is right, war determines who is left." This feeling of being half-stirred, half-resigned fits my mood like a glove. It's time for some more weird dreams about Unidentified Flying Humanoids (the forefront of UFOlogy if you're interested). OK, so there was only one dream, but the UFH in question turned out to be my ex-girlfriend. Yeah.

I'm just going to shows tomorrow, our next is Saturday aft. I'll report back soon!

C# Major

I'm in Winnipeg! We got in last evening at 6:01 p.m., just exactly the teensiest of too late to pick up our posters from Industry Images, the posters that electronically beat us across middle Canada, raising intriguing questions about the e-transport of humans, next year, instead of driving. We got in at 6:01, but the Fringe itself was still kicking. Alison guarded the car by an unpaid meter while I checked us in and postered the MTC with cheap yellow posters. Non-glossy posters actually stand out in a forest of glossy ones, especially when posted at a wonky angle. This is old hat for me. Old wonky hat.
So we didn't actually get to my billet until after 8:00, and didn't get unpacked and fed and settled into our respective homes until nearly 10:00. I'm staying further out than Alison along the same sweeping arm of this prairie galaxy. My billet is my style, open-hearted and pet-free with homebrew in the cellar. Hers appeared to be entirely filled with over-friendly animals, which seems to be Alison's style, the cat more than the dogs. Since May, she and I have been engaged off and on in a discussion re the cat-dog dichotomy.

Today, the festival began! In rapid succession, we had our tech rehearsal, showed up to perform at the Free For All, jostled our newly updated sandwich board (now with two kinds of Four Stars!) into the Forest on the southern tip of Old Market Square, and commenced flyering. To address these activities in order: our venue (#4, Onstage (or "On Stage", depending) at the Playhouse) is entirely crazily massive. This is a stage meant to be viewed from out in the hall, a stage for BIG shows, but here we are all on it together. The depth is what ''m used to, but the width...Well, if you can imagine how long the rows have to be if there are only 4 of them and the capacity is 125. Well, it's that wide. If I can win the sightline game, this will be insane fun. All the parts of "The Fugue Code" that involve width-wise movement are going to be HUGE. The Free For All, as always, made me more nervous than a full performance. All those unfocussed eyes - a sea of children's eyes - the faces of daytime parksitting ennui. How can I stand out against all the other 139 2-minute excerpts? I can give the tech music to play the frame my skit, and they can forget to play it, and I can rely on the strength of my charisma alone. Which on the whole seemed to work alright.

Flyering led me fairly quickly to actually see a show, instead of flyering. Lines were unpredictable - MANY peeps were out tonight, going sometimes to unexpected shows. TJ was full, but so was Gemma Wilcox's "The Honeymoon Period is Officially Over", perhaps due to spillover from TJ (if one trips outside Venue 1, they will land in the lineup for Venue 2), perhaps due to a brilliant $5 opening night ticket price, perhaps due to typical Canadian excitement about foreign performers. Perhaps because they clairvoyantly knew it was awesome. Then a ticket fell into my hand for "Tale of a T-Shirt". These folks had been in Toronto, but I only met them here. The show is unashamedly, almost epically weird, so confident that whatever on earth it is, it IS that. It was really, really funny, and really well performed, and really totally wacked. And there was an audience of seemingly over a hundred, while "Jesus in Montana" had, reports say, 20-30? BASH'D had 60? What's going on here?

We open tomorrow (Thursday) night. 7:30, Venue 4. Yes, I've been spieling to people and people remember "WOOL" from last year! There is interest - even sometimes excitement. We have an awesome opening night slot. We're not against too much competition, I think. I just don't know what to do with 60% of my stage!

C Major

(the first post of Alex's official 2007 CBC Winnipeg Fringe blog)

I have set up my little "The Fugue Code" tour office in my Volvo's passenger seat. Alison is driving today. We're on Day Three of the long car trip between Toronto and Winnipeg - between two Fringes whose schedules are squooshed together such that those of us who have to drive between them (due to big sets or big cast-and-crews) have to really boot it. Or, as in our case, take it at a careful but steady pace and just accept that we'll be postering the 'Peg a day or two later than we'd like to.

I drove all day yesterday, along the wiggly shore of The Big Lake: Superior. Acky the Volvo and I know each other well, and I didn't want the most dangerous part of this summer's drive compromised by any driver-vehicle miscommunication. Highway 17 along Superior demands constant attention and an intuitive understanding of your car's physical properties: momentum, turn radius, tendency or tires to grip or not at certain speeds in the rain. This is the Trans-Canada, but this is wilderness. This is a single little ribbon of highway (as the song goes) at the bottom of an endlessly tall stack (as the map implies) of trees and lakes and bogs and rocks and no trees and muskeg and island archipelago and ice. When I look at the map of northern Ontario, I feel like the North is crushing down upon this highway, and yesterday I could feel it. It's hard to believe that Winnipeg is further north yet than all of this. It's hard to believe that most of today, the third day of all-day driving, will keep us in Ontario.

Alison's driving most or all of today, so I'm sitting beside her with Acky the Dell plugged into an adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter thingy (does anyone actually use those to light cigarettes?). This feels like a break. Yesterday I not only drove but plowed (slowly - plowing by oxen) through the entirety of "The Fugue Code", moment-for-moment, looking at staging, logic, continuity, emotion, making a few changes and mostly learning more our sometimes divergent ideas of what happens when I go up on that stage. Yesterday we entered a new phase with the show, an acknowledgement of deeper places it can and must go. Artistic integrity, it seems, comes in fits and starts. I wrote this thing, with Alison's help, and together we built it and polished it and mounted it on a stage. The easiest thing to do would be to let it stand there as it is, all summer, for six festivals. But now that a third of our tour is done (Ottawa and Toronto Fringes) and we are driving, driving, driving, the show itself seems to have told us that now is the time to do some more fine chiselling.

But I mix my matadors.

Winnipeg is happening quickly! We get in tonight and (hopefully) check in right away. We poster tomorrow morning, tech tomorrow afternoon and then run over to do a two-minute excerpt from the show in the Free for All at Old Market Square. And we open on Thursday! No idea what time. Better look at that schedule, but don't worry, I'll be there, with a freshly tweaked show.

There's a rainbow in Winnipeg

I've left home - or I'm coming home. Toronto is where I once lived, and where I now (once this tour is done with) live again. But Winnipeg - the 'Peg was where I began my Fringe tour last year. Winnipeg is my favourite Fringe. Winnipeg is full of serious theatre-goers, serious reviewers, serious theatre-goers who are vigilante reviewers. The CBC website is a meeting place for the theatrically opinionated. The Jenny is a free Fringe paper that has its own staff reviewers. The Fringe is contained and buzzes audibly. They like to listen and they like to think. Toronto was good to us. But the festival is too spread out. Fringe, for me, is a festival of impulse consumption. With every venue a 10 minute walk from the beer tent, in Winnipeg I can make last-minute choices. Buzz can influence the direction and speed of my gait. In Toronto, buzz gets diffused - and is so often biased toward local shows (as is the lottery process for accepting shows, as is the media who only seem vaguely aware that Fringe is something that not only happens in other cities, but is larger and better attended and older and, and...). But we got good crowds. Surprisingly good crowds - like never less than 30, even for our three weekday afternoon slots in a row. I don't know if it was our pre-festival target marketing or festival buzz or all my family friends (hometown advantage), but it turned out alright for sure. I'm glad, though, to (hopefully) be stepping up the intensity of things in Winnipeg. Here, we can make it bigger, if we make it big. But I won't be back to my home-home until late September. That's some serious instability. In Winnipeg I'm also going to be a CBC performer blogger. You can check that out here (although...it might be similar to this blog for the length of the W-Fringe. TBC. Toodles.

buzz and controversy

Eye gave us 4 stars and a beautiful, sympathetic capsule review. Now gave us 2 N's (out of five) and accused the show of amateurism and even an ugly set. People seem often very intrigued by "The Fugue Code" when I try to sell it to Fringing lineups, but judging by the audience posts on the Eye website, it can't be everyone's thing. What amazes me is how MUCH it is or isn't someone's thing. I have been people's favourite show of the festival and I have been "the worst by far of 18 shows" that one man has seen. Some come up to me after, even days after, amazed and thankful and full of questions. Some walk out (or blog that they would have walked out had the door been less close to the stage - as though telling me (and all) about wanting to walk out is all that less bad than actually doing it! (I'm anti-walkout for almost anything btw, but others of course feel differently) It's easy to dwell on the negative. I wanted to build a show that everyone would want to grab onto and follow through to its end, but some people just don't want to take the (admitedly roller-coaster-of-a-) journey with me. But the truth that I need to hang onto is that art is not always for everyone. Entertainment aims to be for all, for now, but art is built to last longer. And (or so I feel right now, with this play) that means building it in a place where people have to come to it to see it. I just don't think that the purpose of all Fringe plays should be universal, immediate comprehension. Music is a mystery and an abstraction, and so "The Fugue Code" is enigmatic, abstract, and apparently to some (who usually assume that their reaction is shared by all around them), insumountably baffled. And people get angry when they see others following and they can't (this happened to me yesterday at "Legoland", for reasons I'm not sure about but partly because I was tired from my own show. And btw I didn't let myself get angry because I remembered that these things are subjective - and that I can't account for the rest of the audience nor even really know what they're thinking).

The real nerves

I'm in Toronto. I'm in Toronto! I've been eating a whole lot of ice cream from Ed's Real Scoop in the beaches and not thinking too much about the show. Now Toronto Fringe has suddenly started with a vengeance, and I feel a little taken off-guard. Not that I don't trust that the show is still "in" me - Alison and I have done two line-runs where my unconscious mind rattled the thing off with little incident while my conscious mind listened intently, occasionally surprised at witticisms and plot details that it had forgotten. Tomorrow I will make sure my kinetic mind is good and ready as well. Theatre Passe Muraille has the kind of stage you can fall off of. So I open tomorrow. And I had nerves TODAY. A day ahead! This is new! So if I feel good about the show, if maybe a little out of it due to too much time off performing - and if flyering is going very, very well (good and big and friendly attentive crowds of real theatregoers) - what am I nervous about? I think it's that my parents are coming tomorrow. Really. i'm 27, and my parents have come to see SO much of what I've performed since I was 7, or 6, or born and haven't they always loved or at least supported it? Of course! But it was almost all music. The last two and a half years, when I was in Edmonton, my performing life changed. I am an actor/playwright more often than not now. Tomorrow I have to convince my parents of a whole other realm of talent, another kind of tough tough life. This shouldn't be something to worry about, but...I've got nerves worse than opening night in Ottawa! I'll let you know how the show goes. Alison and I have been flyering non-stop these first two Fringe evenings. There's some talk of us, some confirmed ticket holders, and a lot of folk with free tickets in their hands. See you there.

One Down

Ottawa Fringe came shuddering to a close on Sunday night, and now it is already two days after that, and many since I've written. Why? My girlfriend's in town, for a start. And also, I have to admit, I was and am worn out. Fringed Out. And this is only the first festival. Why? Because The Fugue Code is a very tiring show to perform. Because it needs a charged-up audience to feed off of, and since audiences here have been small (despite one near sellout - in a 75-seat theatre!) there's sometimes not been as much energy coming back at me as I would hope (though these things are unpredictable, considering that a 13-person 11:00 pm crowd laughed louder than a 41-person Sunday evening). Because Ottawa has this odd way of being unjuried (anyone can get in from a lottery, as is Fringe standard) but judged: there are awards given by a panel of local theatre professionals, which while not as prestigious as a Dora &tc would be mighty nice to have on one's poster. So one worries, and worry tires one. If one is me. Yesterday, though, I went up into the Gatineaus to decompress on a hike with my girfriend's relatives. In the evening I kayaked lazily on the Gatineau river, rescuing an escaped pool noodle and wishing sweet dreams to a dozing downy mallard en route. Tonight, another relative has a dinner party even further north into Quebec. This is the exact opposite of my life over the last two months: rural, unstructured, not Ontario, physical activity that isn't performing the show. Yes, my limbs can still move in other ways than the show's gestures but they complain a little. I keep thinking about that snoozing duck. What a big, beautiful, soft butt he had. Some of the nicest feathers are underneath. Is this a metaphor? I don't care. See you in Toronto, I expect.

yesterday seems so faraway

Yesterday evening was the third performance of "The Fugue Code" in three days. Today I hurt. The soles of my feet, the tops of my feet, my ankles, my shins, my calves. My right big toe has what may be mini-splinters and what may be lacerations from the stage floor. My left thigh is strained from publicity chalking. My right knee is mysteriously bruised. My shoulders are tense, but that's usual - it's the hurt below the waist that is new to me. We're halfway through our Ottawa run, and we've only just come out of the first weekend. Today I'm trying to convince myself to take the night off. Today is already almost noon. Response has been good - very good. No reviews yet, and I will post them when they come, but yesterday we had 49 people in our crowd (amazing, I'm told, for a sunday on the first weekend at Ottawa Fringe), including 12 performers who said amazing things to me after. That they would never have considered being that physical on stage, taking such risks, punching characters so much, trying to play four characters at once - but that when I do it, it works. It works, and it's funny and it's entertaining and they followed the story and they laughed and they we engaged throughout. And I must be snorting crack before the show. We did not know if we could safely expect that people would climb on board and stay with the plot! But it would seem that my hard work makes them work hard too. I'm pretty happy. Alison's pretty happy. Last night felt like the real beginning of the tour. We treated ourselves to a good Italian meal before trundling off to ill-attended 11pm shows. Friday and Saturday were good too, if a hair loose. I need to remember to spap my character changes quickly. I need to remember to breathe. I need to remember to look at specific people in the crowd. I will breathe as much as possible before our next performance on wednesday at 11pm. We have a piece of theatre that's worth seeing. I have no idea how it happened, or how I perform it, but perhaps I shouldn't ask too many questions. good Night, I mean g'mornig imean

encounters with the famous

Yesterday I met Fringe superstar TJ Dawe. This is TJs first time performing in Ottawa, so, oddly enough, he and I are on similar pages at this point in terms of public excitement about his show. (except for some scripts that he has authored or co-authored coming here before him). Three years ago I saw "Curse of the Trickster" in a huge, packed, hot Edmonton venue, and never forgot his charisma and precision. This year he's performing "Maxim and Cosmo", which are apparently not the names of a Russian guy and a Greek guy, but the names of two respected monthly publications. I still can't shake the idea that it's a show about friendship across the divide between eastern-western Europe and western-Asia-that's-still-really-Europe. Apparently he had a decent crowd for an 11pm last night, and only 1 walkout (he seemed to prefer this to no walkouts, if I read his tone correctly)! Earlier in the evening I met TJ for the first time, in the beer ten entranceway, after years of wondering what he's like offstage. What follows is a transcript of my first encounter with this Fringe heavyweight: Me: You're TJ Dawe. TJ: Oh. Who are you? Me: I'm Alex Eddington. You don't know me, but I've seen your stuff... TJ: Oh. What show are you doing? Me: [explains the premise of "The Fugue Code"] TJ: Oh, are you a musician yourself? Me: Yes, I'm a composer by training, I've only come to theatre recently. Because of Edmonton. TJ: Do you know anything about noseflutes? Me:...yes. I've played them before. I've performed on them. TJ: I just got my hands on a bunch of noseflutes. [small smile betraying restrained excitement] Would you like to try them? Me: ...Sure. And we parted ways, beckoned by beers and shows and friends.

openings

Tonight, I open "The Fugue Code" at the Ottawa Fringe festival, uncertain of several things. Uncertain my my audience: size, type, responsiveness. Uncertain of tech: although I have a fine stage manager (Alison) and a fine house technician (whom Alison *taught to tech* back at their arts high school), we ran out of time before we could finish a solid cue-to-cue yesterday. Also, the sound system is finicky, and this is an, um, rather sound-dependant show! Uncertain of myself: what will change, and what will stay the same tonight - what suprises will I give myself, despite all the line runs, all the on-its-feet rehearsal? If I compare my nerves to last year's opening of WOOL, though (in Winnipeg)...I'm a much more put-together person. But WOOL was very personal - it disclosed things - I was ME on stage. Plus, WOOL was put together in, like, 2 weeks. Yeah, I'm ready. Here's to a new show and a massive tour! Think of me at 9:30.

previews and postviews

When Alison first sent me our rehearsal schedule, there were THREE scheduled previews for high school students in Ottawa, including one very shortly after our arrival. Despite her insistence that the kids would be in small groups, be drama students, and would have to write something about "The Fugue Code" for their classes, I never quite lost my dread until, for whatever reason, it was revealed that I would actually be giving ONE preview, at the school where we have been rehearing in Ottawa, only 3 days before our actual opening at Ottawa Fringe. So, I would be fairly ready, making this a fair test. Yesterday, I gave that preview, and now I think I can perform through anything. It was hot. Very hot. Hot enough that my glasses fogged when I got into my car afterward. Not only had that never happened to me, but I never knew it could happen. The auditorium was not only not air conditioned, but predated airconditioning. This was our second run with movement of the day. And the students were in Grade Nine. Now, keep in mind that their teacher (Alison's father) told me afterward that some of these kids had never sat still for an hour before. But considering that they are a drama class, it would seem that many of them have no idea how to experience theatre. Was I like that in Grade Nine? No, but I suppose I had been exposed to theatre from a young age. Mostly, they were good and quiet but unreadable. Hard to make laugh, or slouched, or seemingly distracted. But I had one constant, loud, and apparently peer-supported heckler. I would say his main transgression was to say "Be a Man!" a lot. Being, of course, already a man, I was mystified by his comments, until I realised that perhaps in his eyes, the two of my characters who are gay (or possibly bi in the case of Antonius but he never tells me) are not exactly men. Matter of opinion, all sorts of reasons like being raised in traditions like Being A Jerk, but certainly not one to share with me OFF AND ON FOR 40 MINUTES WHILE I WAS PERFORMING? I certainly hope that my adult audiences realise that they are not sitting alone really close to a television screen. Smaller transgressions (supported by neighbouring peers - there was counterpoint) include it's-dark-and-spooky vocal SFX during the blackout scene, and (actually, this was charming if really weird) CHANTING ALONG with a certain pre-recorded character in the climactic scene. Alison says Grade Nines are like this. Was I like this? The next day, apparently, one of the members of the class apologized on behalf of the behaviour of others - probably not his own. Sort of like when I'm in choir and I put up my hand and say something to the conductor like "Could you please clarify whether we should be in fact singing the correct pitches throughout the entire piece, because I, personally, am not sure that we actually are." Now to take the show in front of so-called grown-ups. They don't heckle, usually, but much of the time they've confused Art and Entertainment right enough. (this show won't help)...