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.