Tired Clichés, starring Alex Eddington

Acky-Made presents...

(see more photos)
TIRED clichés
a solo comic monologue
by TJ DAWE

starring ALEX EDDINGTON

directed by LAURA ANNE HARRIS

“★ ★ ★ ★ ★
... [TJ Dawe has] a way of weaving stories together that would inspire quiet awe
if one weren’t busy laughing so hard.” - Winnipeg Free Press (“The Slip Knot” 2002)

"A FANTASTIC one-man show!" - Indyish.com (Montreal, 2009)

"I judge all one-man shows by the standard set by Alex Eddington,
whose PHENOMENAL rendition of TJ Dawe's Tired Clichés I recently saw at the ARTery."
- SEE Magazine (Edmonton, 2009)

press reviews!

audience reviews!

upcoming performances

TORONTO (@ Hub14): November 13-22, 2009

Join the Facebook event HERE!

“A guy walks up to an Intersection...”

The comic monologue that made Fringe favourite TJ Dawe internationally famous returns, in a new and unique production by award-winning performer, writer and composer Alex Eddington, directed by the star of the hit one-woman show "Pitch Blond", Laura Anne Harris.

Tired Clichés, at first, seems to be a scattering of monologues on unrelated thoughts - graveyard shifts, traffic lights, how gracefully cats vomit... but little by little a story emerges about a nameless young man who graduates from university and finds himself with Nothing To Do - except to join the delightful world of minimum wage work. TJ Dawe's hilarious script deftly weaves jokes and stories into a comedic whirlwind, building to a riveting climax that ties everything together in a way you'd never expect.

Acky-Made’s new production of Tired Clichés marries Dawe’s unique storytelling style with physical theatre, about 20 characters, prop comedy, live sound design, and sleight-of-hand...

Tired Clichés was first toured by TJ Dawe in 1998 and 1999, won some awards, and was performed again by Dawe at selected festivals in 2005. Alex Eddington is the first other person to perform Tired Clichés - or almost any of TJ Dawe's solo shows...

WINNER!
1998 Jessie Richardson Award for best new play!

One of the TOP 20 SHOWS of the last 20 years of the Toronto Fringe! - Now Magazine (2008)

“Tired Clichés is one of the most original, tightly conceived and well-performed comedy acts I've seen"
   - The Georgia Straight (1999)

“Part monologue, part sketch comedy, part storytelling and part beat poetry.”   - Saskatoon Star-Phoenix (1999)

“★ ★ ★ ★ ★... Dawe reinvents the genre.” - Vancouver Sun (1999)

see more reviews of TJ Dawe's Tired Clichés

Download hi-resolution publicity photos!

TIRED clichés: performance dates and ticket info

TORONTO (@ Hub14)
November 13-22, 2009

Hub 14
14 Markham St., Toronto (map!)

(1 block W of Bathurst, 1/2 block N of Queen, enter on the south side)

Friday November 13 - 8:30 pm

Saturday November 14 - 8:30 pm

Sunday November 15 - 3:00 pm

Thursday November 19 - 8:30 pm

Friday November 20 - 8:30 pm

Saturday November 21 - 8:30 pm

Sunday November 22 - 3:00 pm

Tired Clichés is a 60-minute show

Intimate venue: no latecomers!

WARNINGS! Coarse language; overanalysis

TICKETS: $10.00 regular, PWYC students/arts workers, everyone PWYC on Sundays!!

available at the DOOR ONLY

TO RESERVE SEATS:
phone: 647-448-0071
or email alex [dot] eddington [at] sympatico [dot] ca

Join the Facebook event HERE!

And, as always...
Join the ACKY-MADE group of Facebook for updates about all of Alex Eddington's musical and theatrical performances

TIRED clichés: creative team BIOS
Alex Eddington | TJ Dawe | Laura Anne Harris

Alex Eddington (performer) is an award-winning composer, musician, playwright who has two degrees in composition, from the Universities of Toronto and Alberta. His musical works have been commissioned and performed in Canada and internationally. In 2008, his orchestral work Reiteration was the winner of the Orchestras Mississauga Emerging Composer Competition. He received a 2004 SOCAN award for his monodrama Death to the Butterfly Dictator!, and in the same year, Dance Attack! for orchestra was a finalist in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s “New Creations” competition. Mr. Eddington is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre .

Through his theatre company, Acky-Made, Alex Eddington has created three original plays for himself to perform on the Canadian Fringe theatre festival circuit: two solo shows - an autobiographical monologue (WOOL) and a multi-character “musicological comedy-thriller” (The Fugue Code) - and a two-person play with live music (Old Growth). He is the recipient of the 2008/09 Urjo Kareda Residency Grant at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, through which he created and workshopped a full-length play (Emily C.) and was an apprentice to three professional sound designers. In summer 2009, Mr. Eddington will travel to Calgary to participate in One Yellow Rabbit’s Summer Lab Intensive.

Alex Eddington has created music for theatre and dance that has been presented by Mile Zero Dance, Nextfest, The Works Art and Design Festival, the InterFEAR festival, the Expanse movement festival, and the University of Alberta Department of Drama. In 2005 Mr. Eddington was the recipient of a SSHRC grant for a project exploring new intersections of music and theatre/dance.

He has also appeared as a choral singer, conductor, concert narrator, curator of experimental music, and is a freelance arts administrator and musical ASM who has worked with Tafelmusik, the Toronto Consort, soprano Mary Lou Fallis, and the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra. His poetry has been published in Carousel magazine.

“Brilliantly theatrical and manically precise... [Eddington] commands the stage...
★ ★ ★ ★” - Eye Weekly (“The Fugue Code” 2007)

SEE Magazine Top 10 list (Alex Eddington’s “WOOL” at Edmonton Fringe 2006)

“Exponentially more sophisticated and original than most Fringe fare...
★ ★ ★ ★”
                                - Winnipeg Free Press (“Old Growth” 2008)

“A must-see... superb... ★ ★ ★ ★”    - Edmonton Journal (“The Fugue Code” 2007)

see more reviews of Alex Eddington and Acky-Made's previous shows

TJ Dawe (playwright) is a Vancouver based writer, performer, director and dramaturg. He's been making his living by creating his own stuff since 2001. TJ got a Bachelor's in Fine Arts (in theatre) from the University of Victoria.

TJ went on to tour the Canadian Fringe circuit (82 festivals so far) with a series of highly successful solo shows, including Tired Clichés, Labrador, The Slipknot, Tracks, A Canadian Bartender at Butlin's, The Curse of the Trickster, Maxim & Cosmo and Totem Figures. He has brought various shows to venues outside the fringe, and was named the BC and Alberta Touring Council's Artist of the Year in 2004. Bravo Television and CBC Radio have nationally broadcast A Canadian Bartender at Butlin's. He's performed at the Adelaide Fringe, the Edinburgh Fringe, the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, the Victoria UNO Festival of Solo Performance and the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival. His plays have been published by Brindle and Glass Press and 13th Tiger Press.

Along the way he was involved in a variety of capacities (co-writing, directing, adapting and/or dramaturging) in a bunch of other shows: 52 Pick-up, The One Man Star Wars Trilogy, Toothpaste & Cigars, The Power of Ignorance, One Man 80s Blank Tape, The Doctor Is Sick, One Man Lord of the Rings, Teaching As You Like It, Dishpig, Local Celebrity, Teaching the Fringe, Mr. Fox, Elephant in Zulu and Sev.

His latest project is the Totem Figures Podcast Project, in which he interviews various people about who and what has help shape their lives and their views. These interviews can be heard at www.totemfigures.com.

TJ Dawe’s main website is www.TJDawe.com.

Laura Anne Harris (director): Born and raised in Victoria, B.C., Laura trained at the University of Victoria’s Acting program. There she performed Dourine in Moliere’s Tartuffe, Isabella Bird and Win in Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, and within the ensemble of a Butoh inspired movement piece entitled Riyorku Butoh. Since graduating in 2007, she has appeared at the Belfry Theatre in Theatre Bombus’ production of The Josephine Knot written by Meg Braem and directed by Amiel Gladstone. Also, she acted and coached inmates at William Head Institute as a part of a theatre outreach program within their production of Waiting For Godot.

Laura first performed Pitch Blond at the 2007 Victoria Fringe Festival where she won the 2007 Critic’s Choice Award for ‘Best Fringe Production.’ Since then she has performed to a sold-out run at the 2008 Uno Festival in Victoria, B.C., at the Sunset Theatre (Wells, B.C.) and the Calgary Fringe Festival. She has recently premiered this play, in Vancouver, at the Chutzpah Festival and will have her American premiere at the Orlando International Fringe Festival.

Laura is very excited to be a part of Tired Clichés, which is her first directing project.