June 21, 2008

I don't know if it's the threat of rain or the neighbors, but Frankie Awards have been moved to 2109 St. Lawrence Blvd (the Just For Laughs studio), the first time ever that they've been held inside. It's still at 10pm.

I forgot to verify, but the flyers for Hanging by a Branch being handed out today show a second performance at 5pm on Sunday, in addition to the 2:15pm one. They've not been rained out yet.

I never did see Telegrams from the New Canadian Cinema but it did intrigue me, the company using their slot to show movies. I know I mentioned it to Mira Burt-Wintonick a few years ago, since she was starting to make some movies like her father. But it was also a concept of breaking the boundaries of the Fringe; it's not "theatre" it's something else and there is all kind of things that can be done once someone has the slot in the Fringe. I know I also mentioned it in email to Bill Brownstein a couple of years ago, in a last minute attempt to jam the call for submissions into old media. My email is spread over various archives, and I've not gotten around to digging it out. But then I realize I did mention the concept of showing movies, in last year's diary: Instead we get tap dancing in a play, and burlesque in a play, when we should be seeing someone like Mira Burt-Wintonick trying for a slot to show off some movie she's made. Another Fringe Mystery?

I saw Lancer de Nain/Throwing Gnomes and it was again a full house, complete with some people sitting on the floor.

Meagan O'Shea doing Coffee for One tells me that she's done the show in Winnipeg and Toronto, but this is the first time she's gotten a review. Of course, that's not abnormal, lots of shows going to Tangente don't get reviews. At best, it's usually a preview.

Sex shops are actually a good metaphor for Fringe promotion. They are unknown quantities that many are hesitant to enter. They need someone to lead them in, or go with them, so it won't be so scary. Yet Joytoyz, which if being a sex shop isn't hard enough is not at street level, so they are out there working the crowd, being less intimidating in the hopes that it will lead people in. The acts promoting their Fringe shows do that too, hoping the contact will make people come to the show. The reviews act as an intermediary, telling people what is inside so they may step over the boundary.

The Drag Races went on as planned, the usual crowd filling the beer tent. I can't believe so many can get stuffed inside. As usual, I avoided the crowd. I checked, but no, the Barbies did not participate, a shame since in those electric pink dresses, wigs and sunglasses they are already in drag.

Someone's looking for someone to go to the Fringe with on Sunday. Kind of late in the festival. Read the personal ad here.

No new Fringe-related missed connections though.

The fancy expensive sidewalk that took so long is already coming apart. Up near the Beer Tent, some caulking is coming out from between the cracks, likely to trip someone.

A dolphin walks into the Beer Tent. Flirts with the cashier, then pours some beer. I don't think he gets drunk.

Checks out some of the posters, what an odd name for a show! Then looks over the program grid, trying to decide what to see next.

Better check the Buzz to see what others think of the show.

Having decided which show to see next, he heads over to the Box Office to buy his tickets. He can't help himself, he keeps flirting with the helpful volunteers.

And somewhere in all this, someone gets into an Argument With This Dolphin.

The Fringe even has to mark it's garbage, to avoid theft. In reality, this and the others must have been markers to save parking spaces for incoming bands.

June 20, 2008

A new addition showed up, a tent on the Beer Tent stage. Obviously the threat of rain has caused it to happen. Though, the limiting factor tends to be whether the equipment can be operated in the rain. Then, it barely rained, and today it looks pretty good.

I missed Lancer de Nain/Throwing Gnomes again. This time, it was sold out, not really a surprise given they have a short run, the paper program listing at least one more performance than there really is. I have no idea if I'll give it a third try. Of course, the company in some form had Action/Inversion at last year's Fringe, five dollars and 30 minutes if I remember properly (which makes it a good Fringe show), sort of a fusion of breakdance and/or hip hop and contemporary dance. This year's show is longer, I imagine they've grown from last year (and of course, the fact that they have returned likely accounts for that sold out show in part). Today, they actually had two gnomes in the lobby of Tangente.

Since I was there, I waited almost two hours for Fonction Phatique. That's a thirty minute show. It didn't seem to be improv (I'm not sure I could tell from one viewing, but the blurb and the program makes no mention of it), yet it had the makeup of an improv dance show, including a live electric band. And the dancers did run on and off stage, sitting with the audience just like contact improvisation shows. It was mostly loud and fast dance, kind of a treat since it seems dance has gotten conservative in recent years (or at least those who decide who performs). It had more to it than pretty dance. It probably helped that I liked what the band was playing, nothing known but quite electric. My thought was that this is what should win the Studio 303 prize, though I remember that I felt the same way when seeing Dana Michel's piece a few years ago that won the 303 prize that year; it too seemed to be louder and bolder than what was showing up at Studio 303.

Since The Gazette said Traces was well worth seeing twice, I saw it again, partly as a joke. That's one of the neat things about the Fringe, you can see a show more than once. The ticket price is low, and the shows actually have a longer run than at Tangente. You often can learn from a second viewing, especially if you sit in a radically different seat. I saw Traces a second time partly because I could, but I actually liked it better the second time.

Maybe I was too tired the first time, but it did seem more like tango then, which as a performance isn't that interesting to me. But this second time, I didn't see tango, I saw contemporary dance, with vocabulary taken from tango. Maybe it just requires a shift of perception, but suddenly I saw a new vocabulary, that of tango, applied to contemporary dance. Not that different from the troupes taking from break dancing, eating it up and spitting it out in another form. One has to know the field in order to try new things with it, and they clearly do know tango. It will be interesting where they take it, if they continue in the vein, since the vocabulary may become common enough that it loses the tango angle, or it may be abandoned. That's the history of contemporary dance, new waves coming in to replace the old, with some sticking around. Juxtaposing different pieces, which is something else the Fringe is good for, is another way of seeing dance, two different pieces next to each other tell us things.

I think it's past the point where people are dreaming of sleep. Earlier in the week, people are tired. But now, there's an awareness that the end is in sight, you may badly need sleep but you can get it in a few days. Why sleep when other things are happening?

The sleep deficit does keep adding up. I keep thinking of things to write about, and yet they keep getting stacked in a pile as I choose to get some sleep. Big Moves was camped out at the corner of St. Lawrence and Rachel, and I went over and ended up talking with them for over an hour. Someone left the Beer Tent, said hi to me, went to a show and returned while the conersation was still on. Lots of fodder for writing about, yet it keeps getting pushed lower in the stack.

Last year, one family was Fringing together (and maybe previous years, I'm not sure). Really getting into it and at one point offering bagels to the volunteers. They were there when I saw Mayan Time Reversal, and felt the same way I did, going in wondering what it was all about but pleasantly surprised by the improvisational music. Anyway, I spotted them today, or rather they spotted me. Nothing like being a minor Fringe celebrity. Last year I kept bumping into someone and talking on and off, and he turned out to be on the Comedy Nest jury. In retrospect, I suspect he might have recognized me. Of course, audience members who keep coming back become minor Fringe celebrities in themselves.

I missed it earlier, but there's a folk festival (if you can call a one day thing a "festival") on Saturday, and one act is Annabelle Chvostek. She was in at least one Fringe show, providing music for Jane Gabriels Fragments in 2000. Apparently details can be found at www.hellodarlinproductions.com, which is what I tried to find the other day when I posted about the Pete Seeger concert, since they are doing that too.

I guess it was the Summer Solstice today. I remembered ahead of time, and then forgot today. Funny, it seemed more like summer last weekend. I even forgot about Bloomsday earlier in the week.

A third missed connection today, at least it too is vague. Something about a bike and a dog, Handsome guy at fringe - 4.

Someone posts about a "flash mob" that is merely an attempt at getting an audience to a show, Carlito: Nothing To Lose at 3pm on Sunday, montreal: FRINGE FLASH MOB. Who knows who's trying to originate this, it could just as easily be someone connected with the show. (Wait, I now know who it is, there's no obvious connection though maybe she's just passing the word on.) Also, it's hardly a "flash mob" if you are merely trying to fill seats. People do that all the time, every time there is a performance. A "flash mob" is spontaneous, a "flash mob" is an event or even performance art in itself. Just because they use the concept for commercials does not make it a flash mob, even though that is likely the way it's now propagating. The idea isn't new either, though the name is relatively new. It was done in San Francisco in '67, printing flyers up on that Gestetner machine and getting them out fast, or in '68 when the Yippies would call Bob Fass's radio show in New York City to announce some event, including the infamous "Yip-In" at Grand Central Station.

Without Annette had a fresh set of chalkings up, but still they are the only act doing chalking this year.

I think CFCF was at the Beer Tent today. When I arrived, they had a remote truck all set up across the Rachel from the Beer Tent, and Christine Long was rushing about, wondering where I got the samosas (at the Tibetan restaurant about two blocks up, 2/$2.50), but nothing was being filmed while I was there. So maybe they were filming the sidewalk sale, not the Fringe.

The Fireworks Festival begins on Saturday night, so that will explain the booming. It seems to have receded somewhat into the background, always there but not the Big Event it was in the early days; I know in the early nineties I'd go looking for interesting places to watch them. And I remember watching the free movies on St. Lawrence Blvd and being able to take in the fireworks just by looking up.

I'm not sure how the Studio 303 prize is going to work out. Only local choreography is being judged, which isn't a surprise given that the studio can't put on a full blown multi-night show so there's not much incentive for an out of town act to return. On the other hand, last year's Tangente prize was supposed to be about the out of town acts, or include them I can't remember, and that was changed during the festival so two local acts were chosen. But the point is that out of six acts that seem to fit the criteria of local and dance, make it seven since I suppose Piss in the Pool is included since a specific piece will be chosen rather than show, three immediately have been tested out at 303 in some way. Then I saw a piece from another there, two times actually, and sort through the rest and likely some have been there already. We need spaces for dancers and choreographers to go after the Fringe, not to return from whence they came. There are some local choreographers who don't seem to perform much locally, yet end up performing elsewhere, and since dance is seen as fringe, the only place you hear about it is out of the mainstream.

Someone was handing out flyers just outside the Beer Tent, when I first looked I thought it was a promotion for some heavy metal band. But when I get home, I see it's flyers for various Comedy Festival shows. One is for MacHomer, $5.00 "for Fringe fans", if you buy it at the comedy festival box office during the Fringe. There are only two performances, July 11 and 12. There is an error on the flyer, I don't know where they get the idea that MacHomer was the hit of the '99 Fringe. Every true Fringe Fan knows it was the smash hit of the 1996 Fringe (complete with a last minute extra showing on the final Sunday, no award ceremonies back then), and it was in the 1995 Fringe too, though I honestly can't remember how well it did (though likely it did do well). In 1997, Rick Miller did (...But is it) Art? and a children's show with future wife Stephanie, Babaloo & Ganoosh. I see nothing in 1998, though I'd have to check to see if there was a single shot performance, Rick did MC the first Frankie Awards that year, and warmed up the tent with some of his musical impressions, which is when he humped my leg. In 1999, it was Slightly Bent and then I think the next year he was off in Toronto. Somewhere in there, he did perform MacHomer at the comedy festival.

It's not looking good weather wise. Rain is forecast for the next few days, not good for the sidewalk sale, and not good for the Fringe, but maybe the thing that will have us shaking in our boots is the fact that rain is forecast for Monday. Putting away the Beer Tent is awful if it rains, and even worse if it rains hard. You get wet and stay wet, and things slip and you get muddy. Rarely has it been bad, but there is the legendary storm of 1999. But hey, it's lots of fun; when you volunteer for the Strike, just be sure to wear old clothes, and maybe bring gloves especially if it rains.

June 19, 2008

According to this, the wrestling is off for Friday, unless they can find an indoor site. Too much threat of rain. I just noticed, they gave up the Internet angle; I guess we can pull off those tail fins now.

I saw Barbie World. It's only 30 minutes long, which helped a lot for a performance that started at midnight. I heard the interview on the radio, but I had expected something to play up the pop culture aspect of Barbie, especially given the cast has been running around the Fringe in electric pink dresses and wigs. I had expected more of entertainment type dance, so I postponed my viewing of it. But, other than the opening piece, where the cast are Barbies, this is contemporary dance, maybe with a fair influence from ballet. It was pretty good. A bonus is that there are lots of dancers, a lot of dance at the Fringe is solo or duets, surely the result of the small stage and finding performers who can be at performances at varying times. I remember now that I had almost gone to see it months back when it was performed at Studio 303, and something came up. It was right around Barbie's birthday, which is supposed to be March 9th; she was born in 1959 so she turns the Big 5-0 next year.

That reminds me, I've noticed a number of shows are shorter than the time in the printed program, but have lost track of which. That's the sort of information that can be useful, since even five minutes can make the difference between whether you can get to another show or not. There were multiple shows at about 8pm today that I wanted to see, and my indecision made me miss them. In at least one case, one show was ruled out since going to it would cause me to be unable to see a show later that was more important.

Francois dropped by the Beer Tent in the evening, complete with a flyer for a show at Studio 303 on Saturday and Sunday. Improv dance apparently, recognizable names but an independent show. Why do they feel the need to schedule it during the Fringe? It's bad enough all the years that the June Danse-Vernissages at 303 were smack in the middle of the Fringe, forcing me to leave the Fringe for a bit. Anyway, on doing a search I find there was a piece in Hour last week, Chien Perdu. I want to go, there's no way I'm able to. At least Thea Patterson is performing, so her daughters can help put things away afterwards.

Interestingly, every time a traffic report comes on CJAD they are talking about St. Lawrence Blvd being closed for the sidewalk sale and the Fringe Festival

Joytoyz returned to the Beer Tent today, though moving their table to outside the fence near the info booth, rather than the tent they occupied near the Box Office last weekend. And the bug-eyed vibrator is pretty good looking too. Maybe there'll be brownies again.

Something big was happening at 13th Hour tonight, various volunteers were getting dressed up fancy.

See Bob Run got a review in Hour and Lydia Zadel was ecstatic. This is right after, my having to get the camera out lost the best moment. Producer Tristan Brand was equally pleased, though he doesn't show it here.

I still don't know if there's anything to this "persecution" of Cobra II: Cobra Christ Superstar, but they do now have a sign out at the beer tent claiming it's no joke. Yet in the online buzz, there is a suggestion it's merely a campaign. The funny thing is that back in 2000 when the "family values" group made a minor issue of federal funding of the Montreal Fringe, they no threat but real words while Skidmore did use it to trump them, using it as fodder for a column in Hour. Here, I'm not as convinced there is any truth to it.

Jenn Doan, who is in Diverge serving beer at the Beer Tent. I seem to recall she did it last year too. The tshirt isn't really visible in this photo, but it is advertising for the show.

The problem with the digital camera is it takes so long to focus and take the actual picture that everyone is posing before the camera is ready to snap the picture. So very few end up being cameos. On the other hand, a lot tend to be pretty good because they are reacting to the camera. I keep finding things I didn't even notice at the time, me trying to take a shot of the emptiness of the Beer Tent or something else and then later showing someone in a pretty good pose.
Here we have one of the rovers, he's been doing it for a few years now, maybe even longer now, and somehow he was turned into a member of the board of Mainline, apparently waiting. For some reason, there is this on his webpage.

Something "spontaneous" is supposed to happen on Saturday at 7pm, according to this, though I don't do facebook so I don't know the origins. I can't help but wonder if it's the other festival, we has never been much more than a footnote and seems to fade a bit more each year.

Another missed connection, this one more obscure; i saw you at the fringe outdoor stage on Thursday - m4w .

Emptying my pockets, I find a flyer that doesn't seem to be a show. I can't remember if someone handed it to me, or I picked it up. It looks like a Fringe flyer, small plain and cheap, and there's a URL. But the URL redirects to a Greenpeace website. I don't know whether that's good or bad. It's changed a lot since my friend Bob Cummings went on the first Greenpeace voyage to Amchitka way back in 1971; he killed himself in 1987. About forty years ago, he was writing for the Geogia Straight and he was one of those named for an obscenity charge against the paper. Phil Ochs and Allen Ginsberg did a benefit for the paper later in 1968, the recording was decades later released as a CD with nobody aware of the origins. It was Bob Cummings who found me the place to stay in Toronto back in 1979, that happened to belong to the owner of the legendary sex shop in Yorkville, Lovecraft, which was certainly woman-owned at the time.

Since this is technically the 20th when I write this, I should point out that the Altalena landed in Israel on this day in 1948. Noteworthy is that one of the crewmembers was Leslie Solomon who later went on to be editor of Popular Electronics when small computers first came about. An early all in one computer was named the Sol after him, made by Processor Technology. The actual designer was Lee Felsenstein who had a company named Loving Grace Cybernetics named after the Richard Brautigan poem "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace that was distributed free by that pre-internet printing press, the Gestetner machine. Lee Felsenstein was involved in Community Memory way back in 1974 which was a forerunner of all the community networking that happened later.

June 18, 2008

Now things start to get urgent, as sleep tries to overcome the participants and the end is in sight. Back on Friday, there seemed to be lots of time, but as the final weekend approaches the chance of missing a show increases greatly. Not just because the crowd builds, but there may be more collisions of shows to see. Earlier in the week, I waited because there wasn't anything at a given time, today there were multiple shows that I was tempted to see and all happening at the same time. Zeppelin Was a Cover Band is tempting, and someone I know said it was good, but I notice it's all of 80 minutes long (if the program is correct, I've been to some that run short) which is long for a Fringe show. Not because of short attention span, but because there are other things to see. And it can kill the evening, locking out other shows.

One good thing, the venues are generally better placed this year. None of those venues way up there that took half an hour from the Beer Tent if you're fast like me. Tangente is only 20 minutes from the Beer Tent, and maybe a more pleasant walk than going up to the Bain St. Michel. I admit I've not been to the Lost Venue, Geordie over on Berri, or Theatre St. Catherine; I once went there some years back though arriving too late, and it really is far from the Fringe.

Someone brought cup cakes to the Fringe today. Someone trying to move into my turf. Yet usually I just see the giving, the receiving is different and that cup cake was great. Especially since it was chocolate and I've not had any real chocolate in a week.

I saw First Hand Woman. In some ways it's like a lot of monologue shows, but of course there are five women on stage which changes things dramatically from a solo show (and solo shows are common at the Fringe because it's too expensive to move a bunch of performers from town to town, and even finding people who give up the time). On some level, it seemed like a flashback to shows in the late sixties or early seventies, attempting to change theatre but also give voice to women. I kept expecting to hear Nina Simone come through the speakers. There were only a handful of empty seats, and the crowd reacted well. One mystery, at the back of the program they thank various people, and there is a Marjorie Chan listed. That name sounds familiar (but it's too much trouble to dig out the old program) but the name sounds like someone who was in Barb way back in 1996, who someone, maybe Byron, thought well of.

I got to the Fringe late, and after seeing First Hand Woman there wasn't anything for a while, but I decided to wait around until Tossing Gnomes at 11pm. I get there, and I'm told the performance was cancelled, indeed it was cancelled very early on. The troupe's flyer shows the proper times, and I even noticed that earlier in the week, but then I forgot.

I can't remember, but I thought I looked at the board at the Info Booth and there was nothing about it being cancelled. There are errors in the paper program, and I know the info people haven't always been informed, since I've caught The Green Zone up there a few times when the only place it exists at this Fringe is in the index and grid of the paper program.

We have a winner. There's a Fringe related Missed Connections, Redhead at the "Robin Hood Redux-There will be tights" show tonight. I don't like the sound of that, the show takes place at the Mange Mes Pieds studio, and that's Cat's studio, and she has red hair. So the post just may be about her, and in that case, she's involved with someone.

Most of those posts are not missed connections, they are people too hesitant to approach someone. People who don't interact with strangers on a general basis then don't feel they can approach someone for reasons of lust. Flirting isn't about a pickup, flirting is about interacting with someone and letting them know you find them attractive; if something does happen, it's icing on the cake. A society that doesn't flirt is only going to have Missed Connections. If there's something really there, chances are good you will run into them again at some point.

It was immediately obvious who that Improv Hottie post was about, and that woman didn't need to post about a Missed Connection they needed to send email if they really wanted something. Instead, they just become interesting fodder for jokes and comedy routines. Or maybe a book.

June 17, 2008

I saw Coffee for One, over at The Portuguese Association on St. Urbain. It's categorized as dance (and obviously by the company) but I think that's a limiting definition. There is dance in here, but at times it's some of that spoken word where Meagan O'Shea moves while she talks, and other times it's one of those monologue shows. There is even a point where all the audience is on stage (nothing bad happens, though there is that doubt; I want to engage performers but on my terms, not their's). Most dancers and choreographers I know do have a sense of humor, but it often isn't in their performances; this one is funny at points. I think she is trying to do something else than merely dance, and it works. Too many people seem to turn away at something titled "dance", but even if they have a legitimate reason for turning away, this show is likely to fulfill a wider audience.

Since it's again Santropol Roulant Day again on Wednesday, I thought I'd include links to two messages I posted a decade ago about some benefits they had, a long string of attempts to show how we could be using the internet. Here and here, where I try to make a virtual connection between the reader and the group.

The Uncalled For All-Star Fringe-Prov Jam took place as scheduled this evening. Here's a shot that may have all the contestants.

The first chalking of the year was spotted today. Without Annette had some chalking up near the rear exit of the Beer Tent, pointing people to their venue just over there. This doesn't come out well, sorry, I'm trying to balance between showing off things and not spending too much time delivering the graphics (and for that matter, spending too much time getting it just right).

From a source that should know, apparently there was pressure for the Piss in the Pool show to take place during the Fringe this year. I've been to every edition of the show, and they don't lack for audience even a week after the Fringe, so it makes no sense to put it during the Fringe when people have to choose. They'll get their cookie quota, but I doubt I'll be in attendance.

I missed three dance shows last year because they wanted to be OFF-Fringe, and it was just impossible to work the trip to the venues in. If these groups would get out of their old school networks, and build up new clusters where dance was posted next to notices of bike repair and free ice cream, it would be easier to draw an audience. Just knowing who is performing is pretty important, yet they often can't get that information out, instead thinking gloss is what matters. I remember when Cat Lipscombe did the 401 Dance Collision some years back, and I found out about it because I bumped into her. She said they weren't doing a good job of promotion, yet when I got to the show there was loads of biographical information in the program. That information was harder to create than to put it on the web, yet they didn't bother or somehow thought the information was the reward for attendance, rather than the lure.

Here's Bob from See Bob Run, Lydia Zadel, striking a pose at the Beer Tent rock. Actually, she as volunteering but it was a quiet moment.

Bill Brownstein of the Gazette was spotted talking to the woman doing Busty Rhymes. He said something in my direction that I didn't hear but seemed to be that he recognized me. I guess I won't post the photo of him doing the interview, that was done at long range so it looks like something out of a tabloid. So I'd expect a Bill Brownstein column in the Gazette about Busty Rhymes.

The paper buzz is only slowly developing this year, and they've reverted to not covering it so when the rain hits it's going to turn into a soggy mess. Some don't seem to get the concept, one has the name of the show in the place for the actual buzz, as if it was a voting process. Others lack the title, presumably because some acts are handing out the forms after the show and then collect them, so the audience don't realize they should fill out the line for the title. I don't really see a pattern. There was a time when the very early buzz was generally optimistic, and it came out early and in quantity. Then a second wave, where people maybe lured by the early buzz from friends and family see something else and respond to the early buzz when they find the shows are not as buzzed, and then a more natural wave where the audience is merely writing about something they saw.

There are two paper buzzes up about the lack of recycling. That's always been sporadic, but I think it's not merely the fault of the Fringe. There's a recycling bin somewhere out there under my name, and I know Miss Gina signed for some bins another year, yet both times when we went to get them they were pretty clueless about what we were up to. It's not really bins that are needed, but the collection. This year, someone did mark some garbage cans for recycling, but that's less obvious for recycling, and of course once someone puts some garbage in it's hard to notice that it is specifically for recycling.

Of course, one has to have a credit card to order tickets from home, which of course separates the haves from the have-nots. I was puzzled why one post was asking about whether they ought to go early to the box office for tickets for specific shows, and then realized they likely don't have a credit card.

I've got some names of who is on the Jury for the Studio 303 prize, but today was the first time I saw any of them. The Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa is over, the end of it overlappging with the first weekend of the Fringe.

June 16, 2008

The Beer Tent was once again fairly empty in the afternoon, with a bevy of volunteers waiting around in case they were needed, earning those precious Fringe Bucks

I can see one thing that's happening, apart from the fact that the real Fringe doesn't start till about 6pm. The article in the Gazette on Monday quoted Jeremy as saying advance sales are up. Not really a surprise, since there's no longer a premium for that. Why bother buying at the box office or venue if it won't save you money? Anyway, that too impacts the feel of the festival. Up until 1999, the Beer Tent was for the Fringe goers, where they'd hang out between shows or wait for tickets to go on sale and the troupes would come by to do an impromptu "streak" in an attempt at luring the audience. If you can buy tickets from home, why bother hanging out at the Beer Tent, which then lessens the initial crowd, that then lessens the walk in crowd.

Joytoyz was again absent from the Beer Tent. They were missing on Sunday, but I thought they might simple observe Sunday as a day off. One might hope they'll return on the weekend, after all the Sidewalk Sale starts on Thursday. It likely seems they didn't feel the crowd showed enough interest, not the first time this has happened. I never did hear the outcome of the Orgasm Test, were the brownies better than the vibrators?

Way back in 1996, Ben & Jerry's was a sponsor, and had a mini scoop-shop at the Beer Tent (which was in driveway of the Shatner Building at McGill). But, for the price of a cone, you could buy most of a show ticket, in a few cases could see a show for the same price, which likely does cut into the ice cream sales. I wish they'd returned, I know I bought the ice cream, but clearly what they thought would be a good thing did not work out.

Late afternoon, the wind picked up the clouds rolled by. It sure looked like rain, and something that was happening on stage ended and the speakers got their wrap of tarps. It did start raining, yet it was terribly brief and amounted to nothing much. Yet, it looked like the rain would come and come fast; if you wait, things usually get quite wet before things can get properly covered.

I hope everyone caught the Lester & Eliza reference that's the name of the troupe doing Degrassi! The Musical? It comes from an episode of The Simpsons where Bart & Lisa meet a guy who claims Itchy & Scratchy Studios stole the idea from him. They help him get to court, where he wins lots of money, and the studio goes out of business. Bart & Lisa then try to save Itchy & Scratchy Studios, and they figure something out, rushing to the studio only to see the president of the studio publicly thanking Lester & Eliza for saving the studio. "Sure kid, send it to me in care of last week". The other pair look quite similar to Bart & Lisa.

Shaun has been at the Fringe since 1998, and always a venue manager. The first two years he was at actual performing venues, but from 2000 on he's been one of the two Beer Tent managers. Very few people have his attendance record, and I don't think anyone has lasted as a Venue Manager longer than he has.

I wonder if Degrassi! The Musical will get filmed for ETalk? After all Degrassi: The Next Generation, is on CTV, unlike the parents that were on the CBC? Made in Canadian daily entertainment shows, yet they deal in Big Entertainment and rarely cover things at the fringe level, indeed much of ETalk and ET: Canada is really a rehash of US entertainment news. On the other hand, there may be copyright issues that may become obvious should the show hit National TV.

I bumped into Gillian Rae-Fournier who was the stage mistress at Studio 303 this year. She was also in the Short And Sweet Show some months back, a fact I didn't know until the day after when I actually saw a poster. She's somehow connected to Time to Put My Socks On, and was responsible for those socks hanging at the Beer Tent.

I saw Diverge. It's pretty common to see a dance show at the Fringe put on by recent graduates of the Con-U dance program (and sometimes even current students). They resemble the end of term shows, each choreographer bringing a piece or two so there's no unified form to the whole show. But that's also what the Fringe is for, the next step after starting out, no real existing venues for putting on a first show (even the Danse-Vernissages at Studio 303 have become harder to get onto, as it morphs more into a performance series complete with theme). The Fringe is one place, requiring work in promotion yet I don't think nearly as bad as a standalone show. This is the continuum of dance, the dancers and choreographers don't magically become something, they have to work at it and we can watch them.

And one thing I noticed when I regularly went to the Con-U end of term shows (I stopped after about a decade when they couldn't be bothered getting the announcement out, and I was the loyal audience, not having friends or family in the shows) was that all the dancers were capable, but the work varied. Technically they were fine, but the art was sometimes missing while other pieces stood out (and stand out a decade or more later).

This show is like that. Or maybe it's just I liked some pieces better than others. One piece was danced with a chair, and it worked, not just a prop but adding to the piece. The last piece was a bit long, but reminded me of taiko drumming, which has always seemed so stylized. It made me think of maybe how the drumming had been taken from dance, and then it has now come back to dance. Dance is often the foundation of other things, and I think I'm seeing a trend of borrowing back from those other things.

An example was at one of the Piss in the Pool shows, where it had the form of those magic pieces you'd see on The Ed Sullivan Show, carefully choreographed and with no words but a specific type of music, and then the dance piece returned it to dance after taking in what it could learn in the world of magic shows. Or something like that.

The show started with a short spoken word performance by Moe Clark (who helped at the Beer Tent on Thursday). Again it struck me as deliberate, an attempt at connecting to the audience before the dance starts. "We won't change our art, but we will try to make the entry easier". I think it worked, though as I told Elinor Fuerter after the Joes went public about their money trouble, art may speak for itself but it only speaks to those who see it. Spoken word is an interesting addition, because it can often straddle words and movement, sometimes leaving me wondering which it is, someone moving while they talk, or someone talking while they move? Then people like Jane Gabriels seems to do both, sometimes being spoken word with a lot of movement, and other times dance with her speaking.

There does seem to be a press release for this year's Piss in the Pool here. Once again, lack of internet strategy. The company has a website, www.wantsandneeds.ca but don't use it for current information. Same thing with the Short and Sweet show they put on, I did a search and found nothing; the day after the first one in March, I found a poster and it listed all the performers, but even then searching on their names gave little results. I don't care what organization you network with (which is what I got for hits in a couple of the performers) I want real information. Make the community your network, not people just like you.

A website should be the document of record, so if there's a press release it should be there so we can verify that it actually is coming from the original source. A press release is easy to toss up on the web, but it contains information that might be useful to all. Old media is a distribution method, artists need to learn that they own the words, they own the space. Of course they need to be in the clusters that are old media, but they need to get around the bottleneck of everyone wanting to be in those clusters. If Wants and Needs believes it's too much trouble to put the press release online, at the very least, then they are network to the wrong people, the old school who can't make good use of the internet because they are too tied to 1978.

Is there controversy over Cobra II: Cobra Christ Superstar or is it made up controversy? I don't know, but I did find this Jesus Protest at the Fringe.

Holy Moly. Pete Seeger is going to perform in Montreal on July 5th, just when I had assumed he'd stopped touring. (The recent PBS American Masters on Pete spent most of the time up until 1978, which is when I saw him first, and then glossed over the past thirty years.) The tickets cost $50 and the performance will be at 3pm at the River's Edge Community Church (I don't have a URL at the moment) which is at 350 Cote St. Antoine in NDG. Hello Darlin' Productions is presenting it, I can't find a URL for them at the moment.

William Weintraub will be giving a reading/performance (complete with a saxophone backup) at the Atwater Library on Wednesday at 12:30pm. I mention him here since he did the film The Rise and Fall of English Montreal where there is some footage of that legendary troupe from Syracuse, NY outside the Beer Tent way back in 1992. It looks so familiar, I wonder if that was when I actually saw the bit, or they filmed on another day. Anyway the details are Author William Weintraub and saxophonist Dave Turner Wed. June 18 at 12:30 pm.

June 15, 2008

It was Cindy Davis's birthday yesterday, she once upon a time being a Fringe performer, Sexual Gore way back in 1997, and a Venue Manager, but more recently an actor on TV and in the movies. She played the sarcastic assistant on CBC's Rumors. Anyway, I asked Tristan Thursday if we'd see Cindy, since she often does appear for her birthday. He didn't know. Saturday came and went and I forgot, only to remember when she appeared today.

It was pretty dead at the Beer Tent at 3pm, the Pancake Lunch having packed up. Lots of volunteers eagerly waiting to help, but nothing for them to do. Though, it's better to sit around in the warm and sun than waiting in garbage bags in the cold and rain to tell people the tent was closed (that happened two years ago). For some reason, I thought beer was a standalone thing, the chance of drinking it outside being a good enough excuse, and it was a nice Sunday afternoon, especially after that long snow filled winter.

During this lull, Mike Paterson and Tim Rabnett get on stage to entertain the few. Note the nifty Fringe banner in the background that Tristan apparently commissioned.

Meagan O'Shea, doing Coffee for One (it's over at the Portuguese Association on St. Urbain) was at the Beer Tent on Saturday handing out flyers. Her name sounded familiar, and I asked her if she'd ever performed at Studio 303 and she said yes. Checking, it was five years ago, so maybe I saw her name somewhere else. It turns out she's also collaborated with Ame Henderson who was a founder of Solid State and was in two Fringe shows over the years. This is the status of dance in our society, it's off there over in the corner (as I said back in '95 or '96, dance is the fringe of the Fringe), the fact that she is a "known" performer is likely well documented in the places for dance, yet out in the rest of the world, the connections are not shown.

It was Santropol Roulant's day at the Fringe, half the day's donations go to them. They set up an actual table, not a surprise since they are so nearby. They have a second chance at the donations on Wednesday. And on Thursday June 19th they are having some shindig down at Mcgill from 5pm to 10pm.

It was also Father's Day at the Fringe. Tristan's father appeared, even helping out selling beer for a bit. Poe showed up to spend time with his father Jody who is again handling the sound at the Beer Tent.

This is a shot of Hanging by a Branch, that takes place over on Mount Royal.
I saw it today. Not only is this a free show, but it has lots of pomp and circumstance. The first Fringe thing I saw (other than words in the paper) was a troupe from Syracuse NY performing outside the Beer Tent back in 1992, that grabbed me and dragged me into the Fringe (even if it did take two more years). When you are selling tickets, you have to provide a certain level of performance. But when you are a free show, you have to work in other ways to get that audience. It is immediately obvious that they are working the crowd, like circus barkers or Wobblies standing on a soapbox doing free speech. The troupe doesn't tell people to find them in the park, they wait at the Beer Tent for the crowd to assemble, and then hand out cheap instruments and flags to the crowd, to make them participants. There was even a tuba and a drum player today, I don't know if they will be there every time. Theoretically the march over to the actual "stage" could draw in more people; I don't know if that happened though a number of people saw friends along the way (and the two maids from Shoshinz and Cherry Typhoon were out working the mountain crowd).

And then we arrived at the "stage", it is in the woods, and they had the trapeze and other things set up. The actual performance is about half an hour, after we actually arrived at the site. It reminded me a bit of when they did Shakespeare on the mountain years back, though the misquitoes haven't set in and it's in the daytime.

It's just a neat little show that's worth the time and money (and especially since most performances are at 2:15pm, check the sched, so it doesn't get in the way of the ON shows). And bring the kids.

I saw Shoshinz and Cherry Typhoon staying up to do it. Those maids seem familiar, if I'm remembering they were in a film in the Hanakengo show last year. Again, I am intriged by the mesh of culture here, North American culture taken to Japan where it is filtered and adapted and then brought back to North America. That was definitely tap dancing I saw, not just loud shoes on the stage. And someone stripping (down to the pasties) to "Minnie the Moocher". What does it tell us about Japanese culture? Or North American for that matter? I don't know, because I'm not sure which starts where. A trip to Japan might better help to define it all. The show seemed a bit shorter than the 45 minutes in the program, but have forgotten already. It is a light show, but fun.

I also saw Degrassi! The Musical. The venue is down just below Sherbrooke Street, but it sure beats going way up the venues way up there last year. Waiting outside, people actually arrived in costume, lots of fedoras but lots of hair too. I timed it as 35 minutes long, shorter than the time in the paper program. Someone dismissed it when I said I was going, but you don't go to a show like this for High Art. You go because it is a familiar show, and you are looking for something lite. Yet it is enough in the past that it's not something you saw lastnight. As the characters came on stage, they were immediately recognizable (except for one, hanging out with Joey and Snake, it turns out a woman plays Wheels). Arthur's hair and Yick's mannerisms, Spike's hair too, and Shane gets a helmet. I must say though that we didn't go all the way with Stephanie Kaye, she did strip but not by much. It is a musical, the songs are the highlight. It was a fair size crowd, and it's bound to do well.

Just for Without Annette here is a picture of the Mitchell Brother's porn theatre back in 1980. It's a bad picture made worse by digitalizing it, but I think the dolphins are apparent. I took the picture because of the mural, not knowing it was a porn theatre until my friend Annie told me. The marquee even says to call Mayor Feinstein for the schedule. I do not know the story of how such a neat mural got on the building.

The Lost and Found really does work. We went to move beer kegs, and when finished I returned the keys to the fence. But then later, I realize I still have them, in a moment of senility I handed in my own keys. A quick check and they'd been treated like lost and found, and I got them back. Of course, it doesn't work if someone doesn't find them to hand them in, or the owner doesn't go looking for them.

June 14, 2008

A performer from Hanging by a Branch sits and waits for the crowd to come to the show. It assembles at the Beer Tent, and then everyone walks over to the park.

J. Kelly Nestruck of Symposium fame (back in 2001) is in town until Thursday, as mentioned on his blog here.

Some troupe did their laundry after coming off the road. Actually, it's a string of socks acorss across the entry to the Beer Tent, a promotional tool for Time to Put My Socks On.

I saw The Gate (the one that replaces The Green Zone in the paper program's index and grid). Note: They have 2for1 coupons around that will get a free extra ticket if you buy at the venue (starting 1 hour before the show).

It's a collection of short dance pieces, with only two of them live. But the filmed pieces are intended for film.

The standout live piece is a cheerleader piece, obviously getting the cheerleading down pat but it's nothing so simple. I've actually seen the piece three times in six months, at an independent show at Studio 303 and it really stood out. I'm pretty sure I had meant to say something about how it should be shown at one of the regular shows at 303, though that might have been another piece. I know there was something there that I thought Miriam should see. Then it did get onto one of the regular Danse-Vernissages, and again at the Fringe. It is wonderful to see, though it loses some of its potency with repeated viewings.

I can't stand dance on film, it takes a three dimensional art form that begs to be seen live and makes it flat. But, some choreographers are working on a fusion, where rather than merely documenting a dance piece, they are making dance for film. And that works a whole lot better. There was a Fringe piece a few years ago (and I'm too late at the moment to look up the title) where a live dancer danced to filmed footage, in essence a duet. These films in The Gate are in that vein, dance that couldn't exist as a live performance. The camera becomes part of the movement, the editing becomes a part of the dance, and you realize the actual dancing couldn't have been done in one continuous motion from start to finish. Not only do you get outdoor settings impossible with an inside venue, but things like water can easily be integrated into the piece. But the sum is greater than the pieces, this is creating new dance that can't really exist otherwise. And this is one thing the Fringe is for, to sample new things at a relatively low cost.

One interesting thing, and I didn't look at the program until after the show, is that one of the filmed pieces, Surfacing is based on or a variant of Teoma Naccarato's Upstream that was at the Fringe, I think in 2005. It's been too long to remember the piece, but it would have been interesting to see the two together.

There's been no word on whether they actually throw gnomes in Lance de Nain/Throwing Gnomes but they do have a gnome sitting at the table at Tangente, at least when tickets go on sale for the show.

June 13, 2008

The dance acts seem to be getting better at promotion. Time was they slipped in under the cover of darkness to put up their posters, often arriving to late to find good space. Legendary volunteer Maev Brennan once conjectured that the dance acts thought it below them to do Fringe promotion, which then often resulted in low audience turnout. But some like Influxdance have been showing up in costume in recent years, and maybe raising the bar. Last year, someone in one dance show did the infobooth the first night so she could hand out her flyers, and some worked the Beer.

Yesterday, one volunteer that had helped out turned out to be involved in Diverge though I missed that fact until she started leafletting in the evening. Carmen Ruiz, doing Traces was guarding the Beer Tent this evening, a chance to hand out her flyers.

NOTE: The Gate on page 25 of the paper program, is a last minute replacement. It's missing from the index, and from the grid. So every time you see The Green Zone, that's when The Gate is playing. Be Warned.

Cat Lipscombe appeared at the Beer Tent, she having done the two Mange Mes Pieds shows at the Fringe (and this year her studio is being used as an OFF venue, a nice convenient location on Pine just half a building west of St. Lawrence Blvd). I've not seen her since last Fringe when she was rushing off somewhere. She's in the Piss in the Pool show, which causes real problems since I don't want to use up two hours of Prime Fringe Time. The show has always done well the week after the Fringe, putting it in the Fringe is a bad move. And the website, www.wantsandneeds.ca doesn't seem to have anything about the show. Talk about lack of internet strategy, I shouldn't have to depend on a chance meeting to find out who's in the show.

Fringe Old Timer Allan Brown appeared, actually he was around the night before but I missed that, along with Elaine Fiddes who I think now qualifies for the Old Timer's Club.

Influxdance has tattoos once again. I saw one on the back of Jeremy's head the other day, and thought he'd disfigured himself permanently. Then I saw one on one of the rovers, and thought there might be a movement. I thought when I asked that she'd said it was permanent. But then I saw Influxdance applying them, and that explains it. I'm sure they'll give you one if you ask.

The balloons at the Joytoyz tent did not multiply overnight, instead they deflated. I guess nobody applied the vibrators. Rumor has it there'll be brownies there later, to test which is better, chocolate or sex.

Indeed, because I was thinking of skipping the Fringe, I have been undecided about cookies this year. I missed the window to make the dough ahead of time, not wanting a freezer of dough if I wasn't making the cookies, yet not wanting to have to make it during the Fringe. But a few people were asking today, so they will be coming, at the expense of sleep.

One neat thing about Hanging by a Branch: a circus-theatre Fairytale besides it being free, is that most of the performances take place in the afternoon (ideal for kids, though I don't know about the content), avoiding the clash of most OFF shows where every performance takes away from the shows that won a real slot in the Fringe. The time is missing from the paper program, but according to their flyer,

Fri June 13 2:15pm
Sat June 14 6pm
Sun June 15 2:15pm and 5pm
Tues June 17 2:15pm
Thurs June 19 2:15pm
Fri June 20 2:15pm
Sat June 21 6pm
Sun June 22 2:15pm

June 12, 2008

Back to the Beer Tent. The actual beer was arriving "between 11am and 1pm" and I got there at 11:20 just as the Beer Truck arrived. Lacking the mass of volunteers from the day before, it was less fun, though it's not so bad since you can roll the kegs.

Joytoyz came by to set up their tent near the Box Office, lots of pink balloons that they hoped would multiply overnight. I am reminded of the time I once stayed at someone's house in Toronto, and then later discovered the owner was one of the founders of Lovecraft, the famous sex shop in Yorkville.

They have the cutest fish shaped vibrator with bulging eyes, the perfect thing to relax after two days of putting up the Beer Tent, as shown when applied to the back of my neck. If anyone's embarassed about buying a sex toy for relaxation purposes, I'm sure one can say "I'm only buying it for sex" and they'll wrap it in a non-descript wrapping so nobody will know you are buying for non-sexual purposes.

The performers, maybe more in costume than usual, started lining up about 4:30pm, waiting expectedly for the opening bell. Some did use the time to prepare their posters, some sticking flyers together to make a wall. I expected someone at the front of the line to be crushed by the mass behind them, but I heard of no accidents. Unusually, I missed the exact opening, something requiring some very last minute attention.

Then Tristan aka Chasing Blue needed help putting up his posters for See Bob Run, he being on his Fringe job. He has posters that were half the size of a normal sheet of paper, which had the advantage (obviously planned) that it would fit in where others wouldn't. So after the first wave of posters were up, there were still places for Tristan's. My first thought was "why hasn't anyone thought of this before?" but in retrospect it has happened, just maybe not enough. The play was staged at the Fringe once before, back in 1997 when Julie Tamiko Manning took the lead. There are rumors that Big Time Producer Tristan has oversold shares in the show, think of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, but those are likely just ugly rumors.

Then I ended up postering for Elison, her show being The Sputniks. By then, not all that long after opening but long enough, much of the real estate was postered, leaving less than optimum locations. Anyone who came later would have big problems finding space.

I skipped the out of town Fringe For All, wanting to go home and sleep.

June 11, 2008

The Beer Tent went up, me deciding it was too much fun to miss. We had a good selection of volunteers, and the arrival of things was well timed, unlike the years when the beer arrives when the chairs are being unloaded, or whatever. We were really glad it hadn't been Tuesday, it would have been horrible to be doing things in that rain.

Early June 2008

The Fringe For All was Monday June 2, though all I saw "out there" was the ad stuffed at the back of returning sponsor Hour.

I didn't go, the I Ching warned me "If you forge ahead now, the situation will worsen". Last one I skipped was 1995.

On May 31st, 1978, John deMercado came to the Montreal Amateur Radio Club meeting to tell of changes to licensing in Canada that would embrace digital communication. First demonstration of amateur packet radio. Wham, first time I heard about arpanet; deMercado had experience with Alohanet. But then, Byte was talking about Community Information Exchange (which did have a tiny reference to Arpanet) and a few months later would have an article about the first computer BBS.

Which means that when I was as old as the Fringe is now, I first heard about computer networks. And while I didn't forsee it at the time, I already had a model (The Diggers in San Francsisco in 1967 issuing broadsides with the infamous Gestetner machine, and science fiction zines in the late thirties), and a reason (March 1978 I know there is a demonstration somewhere, but no details about time or location. After digging to get the information, I show up and mention how hard it was to find the info. "Well, you can join our mailing list".) for how I'd approach the internet almost twenty years later.

Utah Phillips has died. He was a good Wobbly and more or less a Catholic Worker. I saw him twice, at the Golem sometime in the early eighties, and then at the Yellow Door in the early nineties, shortly before he had to give up touring to a heart condition, but his name was so common on the radio here in the early seventies. I later realized he barely did music that second time, his stories were so good that I didn't notice he spent most of the time telling them. He's likely to be mentioned on CKUT on Thursday morning on the folk music show, but for certain Mike Regenstreif will be remembering Utah on the show on June 12th

Yes, that Ira Dubinsky that keeps appearing on CJAD to speak on political issues is Scooby, who started out as a Fringe rover and then did the Fringe website and then did the computers for a few years, becoming an assistant the year of the Murder Mystery and then fading away. There's a little bit in the November 28th, 2007 edition of The Suburban about Ira Dubinsky starting to work for the NDP, readable here. Actually he's worked for them for a while, but that was about him becoming Jack Layton's executive assistant. You can hear Ira on CJAD most Friday mornings, talking politics.

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