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...