Hamilton Fringe Roundup Week I

Brian Morton of Theatre Erebus’ Mary, I have his Pants, Esther Huh (@esthuh) and Dave Brennan (@brennandavidn) of The Tragedy of Othella Moore (@othellamoore), Olivia Fasullo of Referendum Productions’ The Devil in the Details (@referendumpc) meet to talk about the first two days of Hamilton Fringe, promoting at the Fringe, what they’ve seen and looking a head for the rest of Fringe.

The Devil in the Details
https://www.facebook.com/referendumPC/

The Tragedy of Othello Moore
https://www.facebook.com/othellamooreplay/

Mary, I Have his Pants
http://www.theatre-erebus.ca

Stageworthy:
http://www.stageworthypodcast.com
Twitter @stageworthyPod
Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod

Transcript

So, it’s the start of day three of the Hamilton Fringe. Is everybody open? Everybody’s open, right? Everybody’s open. Yeah, I opened last night at 10.30. Yeah, we opened late, too.

It’s a tough opening. First off, I’d already been up for, like, whatever long, walking around, trying to do posters and stuff, which is another thing entirely. And then, like, to go into that and do a show, I’m like, at like 8 o’clock, I’m like, I think coffee is in order.

So, I’m here, and as I say your name, just say hello or say hi or whatever, just so that anybody listening can sort of get a sense of everybody’s voice. So, I’ve got Brian Morton. Mm-hmm.

How are you there? Olivia Fasullo. Hi. Dave Brennan.

How you do? And Esther Huh. Hi. So, how have your fringes been so far? I mean, day two, are you already exhausted? I’m a little tired.

I think the thing is for, I’m not acting in it, so my job is pretty much done. The week leading up was very tiring. I thought, like, postering, making sure you go out, tech, dress, all these things, and just, like, the stress.

Once it’s out of your hands, it’s just like, well, take it away. Well, I saw you when I got to the theatre last night, and Esther was folding all of our programs. So, she’s got a repetitive stress injury of this coin.

And same with postering, you know, with the pole, with the tape around, the circle around the pole. So, you have to watch out for that as well. Yeah.

Wind fringing. Yeah, yeah. You have to watch out for all the arms.

You’re going to end up like the, you know, cashier at Shocking Struggle with the brace on. Yeah. I did, like, about 150 programs yesterday.

The problem with self-producing is you don’t have anybody who is going to be, you fold those programs. So, you’re just like, you’re doing it all yourself while you’re freaking out about your show. I actually got my venue captain to organize all that.

Just dumped them, and then happily sat and colded. Yeah. So, the point is, you can ask your venue staff and volunteers.

What? Well, they actually have an hour. They have an hour between the shows anyway, because, you know, the other show’s in. I have to get there.

Yeah. And nobody, I’ve noticed that nobody lines up here. Like, there is no lines until, like, five minutes before a show.

That would be like a joke. Famous joke. It’s very much like Montreal frames that way.

Nobody lines up in Montreal. Everybody just sort of moseys up, like, five minutes before a show. Well, they do for Nick Wallace shows.

Nick Wallace shows, there’d be a 45-minute lineup. But, you know, there are very few shows that have a kind of pre-demand that you know coming in, you know, that that show’s going to sell out. And that show’s going to sell out from its very first show.

Therefore, you want to get in. And ironically, those are the shows that there are virtually no artist comps for, because artist comps don’t have any standbys. Yeah.

But. Also, they already have built a lineup. They don’t need to pay for a house.

Exactly. They don’t have their audience. Yeah.

How was your first show? How did you feel before the show? Okay. My hands are shaking. Yeah.

And also, like, we’re a really small crew, so I was taking care of sound. And my hands are, like, on the sound. They’re shaking.

Like, okay. Lightning and I see. And your show is, just so everybody hears, your show is.

Double in the details. Double in the details. And it’s at the Players Guild.

And. And your role with that show. I’m the writer and director.

The writer and director. Well, no wonder your hands were. Yeah.

Shaking. No wonder. No wonder.

Brian, your show is. It’s called Mary, I Have His Pants. It’s by a local playwright, David B. Fraser, who is the most often produced playwright in the Hamilton Fringe history.

Going all the way back to the first Fringe in 2003. And David and I have known each other for about 30 years. But ironically, that’s the first time that I’ve ever actually worked on one of his plays.

Brian, you used to work on the Fringe, right? I worked on the, with the Fringe for eight years. As a venue technician, a venue captain. And then my last Fringe, a T-shirt I’m wearing.

Right. Was, I was the festival producer, so I had Jessica’s job, right? And then I hired Claire and did the kindest thing I think I could have ever done for her as I split. I let her.

Yeah. I let her basically organize things the way she wanted to without any. And there were some problems with the organization and by me leaving what I did, it allowed them to kind of put it all on me.

And now the organization’s, you know, has a new direction and a new. You’re sticking with the fall guy? No, but I felt, you know, without getting specific about it, our Ontario Arts Council funding was at risk and Claire had a very good relationship with the OAC. And I felt that was my own feeling at the time that by me kind of choosing that moment to leave, it allowed them to basically make sure that funding was secure.

And since I’ve left, you know, they’ve now got relationships with the Trillium Foundation and the Community Foundation, people that we could never access funding from. And at the end of the day, the Fringe lives and dies on money, right? Yeah. Audience, money, attendance, all of these things are.

So and the growth in the last three years has just been extraordinary. And so it’s kind of nice. I always said I got involved with the Fringe Festival to begin with because I had applied to the 2005 Fringe as an artist and they accepted my check and I was in the Fringe and I was thrilled.

And then eight weeks later, they sent us all a letter saying there’s no Fringe in 2005. Here’s your money back, right? But because we had all applied to the Fringe, anybody that was on that artist list got invited to the AGM that year, the Annual General Meeting of the Corporation. And we watched the 12 member board of directors resign.

There were like two that left. And so it was very clear as Fringe artists that wanted to see this thing survive, that we had to rally to it. We were the people here in Hamilton.

We’re the Fringe artists. And one of the things that was great about the Fringe board for ages was it was full of Fringe artists. And there’s even something in the Bylaws to Constitution that says, being on the board does not preclude you from having a show in the festival.

And that, to me, made us artist friendly. And as a smaller Fringe and when I first went to the CAF Conference in Montreal in 2008, we learned that the magic median number is $1,500. If you can get your median return on the shows to $1,500, it becomes worth, local shows will always tend, because they have local infrastructure, they’re not touring, they don’t have any extraordinary costs.

But if I’m coming from Montreal or Halifax, I need to know that I’m going to make $1,500 just to make it worth coming to Hamilton. And because we’re opposite Winnipeg, which is by the largest Fringe in the country, we kind of became the default. If you don’t get into Winnipeg, well, you can always buy Hamilton, right? And also, when we were able to move the dates of the festival, because we used to follow London, which would put us into August, usually right after the Festival of Friends.

And when the Fringe initially started, we were at the very beginning of June, the beginning of the tour. But our sweet spot, where we’ve been for about eight years now, is immediately following Toronto. If you’ve got a show on the Toronto Fringe and you want to hold it over, or even better, you didn’t get into the Toronto Fringe and you still want to do your show, Hamilton becomes a really attractive thing, right? And then there’s this little mini-tour that can develop.

Ottawa, London, Hamilton, Toronto. And you don’t even have to leave Ontario and still kind of give it some work in the province, right? And I didn’t get to you guys, your show is? The Trousers League of the Soul and More. That’s sort of a retelling of your solo.

We make it a media version where the cheerleader is an animal if anybody cares. So there’s cheerleaders and there’s girls. Does anybody care? I don’t think anybody cares.

Because what’s funny is that I see the poster and I go, mean girls. Even if there are cheerleaders. They were, well, Lindsay Lohan was a mathlete, I believe.

Yeah. So they wore no cheerleaders. You know that because we attended to promo the show, this mean girls trivia night at CLM.

At CLM. People know that. Oh my god.

I don’t know. I even saw the movie within a couple months. I saw it the day before and I’m like, I have no idea what this is.

They were like, with Lindsay Lohan’s boyfriend in the movie, Aaron Samuels, or the guy she likes. They were like, what is his football jersey number? And we were like, what is going on here? These are the hardest mean girls questions. What does the German teacher say in English in the montage? But it was hosted by these wonderful gag artists and people knew it.

They were like, yo, over here. And we had a good night, but we did not win. Winning is everything.

Winning is everything. It’s how you play the game. People like that.

They really know it. Yeah, and I mean, what we capture from mean girls is the meanness of the girls. Yeah, but that’s in Heathers too, right? Oh, yeah.

Mean girls is Heathers without the murder. And no Christians later. But this murder’s in Othello, right? Well, I mean, no spoilers.

And how was your open? It was good. So this is our second run of the show. We did a run in April.

So since then, we made some changes. We had a cast member drop out, so we replaced him. And so, yeah, it’s really interesting going from one run to another.

This is not for him. I’ve done before. And I guess I thought, whatever.

We already rehearsed it. It would be so easy. It’s okay for me to think that as a producer, but it’s not okay for the performers to feel that way because once you get comfortable, something lacks.

So I think getting an audience was really good for the caster of like, oh, yeah, this is funny. This is new. This is interesting, right? Because people reacted really well to them.

Like, oh, yeah, you didn’t know that we’d be doing that? Because we did it before. It’s funny because it’s hard when you’re in rehearsal because it’s really funny at the beginning and then about halfway through rehearsals, you start wondering. You’re like, I think it’s funny.

What are we going to do? And you’re like, oh, it’s funny. It’s funny. I want to give a shout out to our new tech, Maya.

So she stepped in pretty short notice and talking with the cast after the show, it was like, were you thinking about tech at all? And everyone was like, no. Isn’t that a nice luxury? Because most of my Fringe experience was with my sketch comedy group, The Imponderables. And eventually we just were touring with like a fifth member who was a technician.

But you can really have a hard time. I remember the first time we did Montreal opening night, nothing’s going to go smooth. But of course, the reviewer from Winnipeg is in the house and there’s going to be tech issues in this.

So as a performer, when you know you’re in good hands up in the booth. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, confidence.

I give her all credit. She did a great job. Being in the booth is so important.

Especially if the show has a whole lot of tech. Yeah, our show is very tech heavy. So I’m up in the booth as well.

You did okay. Yeah. Voice of God.

As far as you remember, you could turn on the lights. Yeah, there’s like eight more of these? Yeah, okay. And at 60.01, they will.

Hopefully a slow fade. You know, a 30 or a 40 second fade so you can kind of wave goodbye. I got yelled at at the kickoff party, the preview show, when I knocked on the microphone and the tag was like, don’t hit the microphone.

I’m like, don’t heckle the hosts. You’re part of the show. Don’t mess with the masters.

It would be, right? They could cut your mic at any point. I got my mic cut at the Hamilton Arts Awards. Sunbeam at the Scottish Rite.

I remember, he was there. Were you saying something particularly offensive? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.

It happens to me. He turned off his mic. No, I got yelled at.

And I don’t know. People have a thin skin sometimes. But I would say the caliber of acts, especially seeing the Mandarin smorgasbord at the kickoff, it was great.

People really had their stuff together. I thought people really did a good job of selling their show. That talks to my favorite metaphor around the Fringe, that is a buffet.

The whole idea is, not everybody’s going to like everything, but you find the bit of the buffet you like. The jelly cubes. For me.

It allows you to kind of taste stuff, right? And the hope is, too, particularly Hamilton’s theatre scene is kind of fixed. There are certain groups that are known for doing certain stuff. The Staircase, at least, they’re touring stuff in, so often you see shows at the Staircase that you probably wouldn’t see otherwise in Hamilton, right? But in this 11 days, you see more theatre in Hamilton than every other company does all the year round.

And the Hamilton Fringe, in its 13 years, has produced more original plays than Theatre Aquarius has in 40-plus years of existence. And I particularly, because I think that’s one of the key demographics for us, is writers. Writers getting a chance to actually get their work on stage.

And the other is actors that always wanted to play a certain role and no one would ever give it to them. I used to have a line that, only in The Fringe can a 60-year-old, 400-pound man get to play Hamlet. That’s right.

Nobody else will ever cast him. That’s a great point, yeah. Go ahead now, please.

I was just saying, I can’t wait to be a Hamlet in this, though. There was a one-man Hamlet that toured the circuit for quite a while. I remember seeing it on Bravo.

Yeah, it was. I just remember seeing it on Bravo, but it was in Toronto Fringe for a long time. Yeah.

In terms of, you had your opening, what was your promotional, how was your promotion for the show? I know for me, it was a lot of trying to get, find places to put posters. Posters have been really frustrating this year, and particularly at some venues. I have to, won’t even let you put the poster up.

It’s like, wah? And I understand people are sensitive about their walls, but again, in my day, we would have these big plywood boards that would kind of, I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know, because there’s, I mean, my venue has no posters. Mills Harbour has zero posters.

They don’t, eh? Zero. They have a little bit over the drinks area. I didn’t even see that.

No, no. Because nobody’s going to see it when it’s over the drinks area. The best postering so far I’ve seen is the Baltimore House.

I’ve seen more posters of the Baltimore House. The Baltimore House, they were like, come put up your poster. They even gave us the tape.

Yeah. That’s wonderful. Thank God.

I spent Thursday walking to almost every venue. Yeah. They had a show.

I didn’t get out to the staircase, but I got out to every other one. And trying to find a place to put up posters, and the only place I could put up posters was at Hampton Fear Inc. Yeah.

Yeah. It was really frustrating. Yeah.

Because my audience is people who are going to other shows. That’s it. And actually, so I’ve seen fringe posters everywhere.

So my logic is, you know, the fringe’s job is to get people to come out to the fringe, and my job is to find those people that are already committed to seeing the fringe to decide to see my show as well. Right. And we used to track the button sales divided by the total number of tickets sold, and you could figure out what the average number of people per button were buying.

Right. And in my day, it was three. So for each one of those buttons, they would buy three tickets, and that would balance off against diehards like Tom Surakowski that sees every show in the festival, and you’ll see him diligently going from show to show to show to show.

He does. It’s astonishing. He works out his schedule well ahead, and you know, if he, because he also does the Toronto and London fringes, often he’ll know a show that’s coming to Hamilton and he’ll catch it in London instead, right? It seems like a lot.

It seems like it would be almost impossible to see every show in a 47-show schedule. But there are people who do manage to see every show in every show I believe it’s called A Beautiful Mind. Yeah, Marathoning.

Yeah. Derek Chua in Toronto saw every show in a fringe. Every one of them.

150 shows, huh? Yes, they are at the same time with the fans. You just sit with the schedule and work it out. And if I do nothing once a night, you start here and then I go just kind of get from this place to this place and then go to this place and then work it out.

Particularly useful are the Saturdays and Sundays when you’ve got six or seven shows in a civil venue. So you could pick well I’m going to see every show at HTI on the Sunday, right? And then you kind of work it out. The gallery shows are an added complication because they’re and often Puzzle very well.

Yeah. And so often the shows that I tend to miss each year are the gallery shows unfortunately, right? And then the BYOVs are a whole new thing as well. And particularly now that there are really strong BYOVs.

Edmonton, half the shows in the festival are in BYOVs theirself. And it’s a way to get around CAF’s rules about no artistic direction. Well that’s I mean the BYOV is the exception to the lottery.

Yes. You run a BYOV you curate. Now in Edmonton there are people who would take a BYOV show over a show that was chosen from the lottery.

For sure. Because it’s curated. Exactly.

So they have an assumption of quality over that. Stuart Lemoyne that runs one of the venues and again the reputation that he has on the shows that are in his venue which comes from what they call the Edinburgh model. Edinburgh’s like that too.

The assembly rooms if you’re in the assembly rooms you’re going to sell out because people know that the caliber of work in that space and what you know the Edinburgh Fringe which has 2,000 shows and 400 venues and it’s it’s a free-for-all. We did Edinburgh in 1990 and we were playing to about 20 people a show in a 100 seat venue and I was the production manager and we had budgeted a third for 33 people a show as our break even or something. So I was kind of killing myself with our 20 people a show and they were patting me on the back and jumping up and down and saying God you’re doing so well because what they don’t tell you 3,000 miles away is that the average audience is four.

Four people. That’s why they say that you have people who make money at the Edinburgh Fringe or the venues because you have to buy your venue. Olivier, you as somebody from Hamilton this is your is this your first production in Hamilton? My very first production in Hamilton.

Congratulations. Yeah. Prince Virgin, right? Yeah.

In terms of how did you come in how did you approach the festival in terms of your promotion? Do you have a plan going into it? Yeah. I came at it a little bit differently than most people in the Fringe because I’m coming from a different background. I was approaching it more from a social media business kind of standpoint because that’s my background.

I’ve already been doing social media for business before so I made sure that we had videos and then I the thing is the best investment you can make is like a $7 investment on Facebook for sponsoring your videos because you can tailor your audience and then have it play. So I had it tailored to people who like theatre in the area people who like people who like Fringe in the area and so I got a really good response with that but also making connections with artists because I’m a virtual unknown person and really trying to cross pamphlet with other artists because if they’re already at another show I’m not taking away from their audience but we can both get more audience from one another. So and I did a bit of postering and we didn’t went down to James Street North and that kind of stuff like can I put your postcards in that kind of stuff but I really was focused on the social media aspect also because my audience was a little bit younger a little bit one from the Mac scene so… Well the highest grossing show in Hamilton Fringe history was a McMaster production back in 2007 when we used to be in the Downtown Arts Centre we had a 300 seat theatre at that point and people used to say oh that’s unfair to go to 300 seat theatre yeah but the audience is still 30 so whether you get to play to 270 empty seats is really no advantage but that particular show which was connected to Mac and again had come out of the Arts Performance Series you know was playing to 280 people a night and they think they made like $7,000 that’s still the record right? That’s so rare but it was a Mac connection and they and we know from the button sales that they didn’t hang around to see anything else they came and they went so that’s the thing the hardest people tend to be the out of towners you know the poor guy from Brazil who has no friends or family and thus is has to kind of generate and always the heart breakers for me I particularly remember a three person version of King Lear that came from Winnipeg and I remember the board of directors we basically all had to rally audience for them because there was one performance that nobody came that’s heart breaking right? and even they accepted the fact okay we’re not going to make any money you know let’s at least pay for the houses and play to an audience that had some fun wow I’m starting to feel better about our four people in the crowd and we played 9-11 here in Vancouver yeah why did we do that? because a lot of people cancelled we didn’t know the volunteers were going to do a moment of silence the best thing I can say is at least afterwards we were like well there’s a famous second city story in Chicago when Kennedy was killed and they came out and they said well we won’t ask you why you’re here if you don’t ask us why we’re here Neville having done the Tragedy of the Fallen War before was your approach to promotion for the show different than it would have been if this was a complete like the first time you were performing it? yeah so the thing about The Fringe is that you have people who are looking to see shows and so with a run that’s outside of The Fringe you just have to convince people to come yeah and so in order to like break even with costs you have to charge more for tickets all this so we had a very short run but what was nice was that we had we didn’t have a lot of competition there wasn’t much one out of eight though yeah so we got the cover of The View which was so great and so I’m like posting it now but we we got some really good promotion I don’t think it would have helped as much if we got it now right it’s right now people are like what did you do? yeah but yeah I think it’s just really that there’s so many shows that’s just trying to rise up above the noise yeah I mean now there are we did poster a bit and try to give out cards but it’s it’s a different landscape it’s an equal it’s like Coles yeah I had a funny moment I was I did like sort of the Lock Street beat and but I went back into there’s a great coffee shop Democracy and when I put our poster up there were like a dozen like fringe posters already I went in the other day they were all gone yeah same thing’s going on with posters we’ve seen that on you know whether it’s something against the fringe or just whether the poster Nazis have decided that these are outsiders yeah I had a funny moment too I was like I was just on a whim I went into the Starbucks on Lock Street and they’re like you can put it up but their corporate structure you can’t have a price on it so they’re like well you can take this marker and rub out how much tickets are I’m like sure and then I looked up and then there was the official fringe poster and it had the button and it was oh X out or circled out zoom that bugger because they like to view themselves it’s like a community bullshit no no no price tags no advertiser I doubt it’s out still I mean you never you never know what’s going to happen with the posters I mean I went into a couple of places and they were like well our wall’s full but you know if we decided we’re going to take one down we’ll put yours up I’m like why would you take another one of the others down they’re still running yeah you know it’s funny it’s so weird how much this is my first Hamilton fringe even though I’m from here and have performed here for a really long time but it doesn’t is there a lot of flyering at shows you know I’ve noticed that one of the things that’s kind of missing from this fringe is lineups all right people don’t see the lineup for frantic right it’s kind of like Montreal nobody lines up for a show in Montreal they just sort of like one rosy up about 10 minutes before the ticket and walks right in right so in Montreal you can hit everyone up at the they’ve got the best beer can forget the beer part the 13th hour which is the rye party that’s where people that’s where everybody’s liver really takes a hit that’s Montreal in general yeah in terms of in terms of like the we discovered when you were there the best way to flyer is from people coming out of shows and I’m thinking that might be the way to do it here because of the lack of lineups to sort of show up when the show’s about to let out and then get them because then they’re cutting out on gas instead of like being that guy who’s hovering around if you’re hovering around you’ve got your hand postcards everybody knows what you’re there for and they won’t look you in the eye and they’ll be like don’t show me I don’t know who you are Phil and I attacked the one lady that was standing inside one after another and she was very nice because she had done the Toronto Fringe and she knew what was coming and she was very nice and polite about it and you have to have that 30 second elevator pitch right What is this? Well, it’s a ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba- ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba I don’t like those poor people.

I can’t do this. I can’t do this. People with door lights, circling, flyers, I don’t remember where to put them.

Yeah, I felt that way after Cadell. Oh, I know. Oh my god.

Was it in Asuka? I didn’t see it. It felt really bad. It was like a gauntlet.

It’s hard to know because, I mean, you’ve got… Just hanging somebody with a flyer isn’t enough though. You have to… You do have to talk to people. You have to give them the pitch.

Because it’s the personal connection that’s more likely to get them to come out. But that’s a skill set. There’s one artist from Toronto about five years ago who shall remain nameless.

I don’t want to out them, but he used to do his flyer thing in desperation. Please! Please! Come see my show! And it was a wonderful show, but that just turned people off. They all went, oh my god, let’s not see that one, honey.

So it’s a meeting of mutuality. I’m doing you a favor because there are a lot of shows that suck and mine don’t. So I’m doing you a favor by letting you know that my show is good, right? Have you guys ever seen… You guys know Generals? Oh yeah, legendary.

You ever seen Generals’ flyer? He’s like Alexander Hampton. The man is non-stop. He does not stop.

He will just start a circuit. He will go to every band he has a line. He will talk to every single person in Nassau.

He’s got that germy accent. Yeah, he does. He’s got that English accent.

Does he have a show? He just does it. The one I saw him do was about the poll tax riots in London. And again, bare stage, nothing.

Just walks on stage and does the show. He’s a phenomenal spoken word artist. He’s the other show I saw in Montreal last year.

I told my girlfriend, I’m like, oh, he says spoken word, you’re going to love it. But he was doing this completely new show about Leo Szilard. The character was this physicist and basically helped keep the A-bomb out of the Nazis’ hands.

Wow. It was amazing. I couldn’t believe.

He’s the most talented man probably in fringe history. And you know, that’s… A completely new topic. And fringe is basically how he makes his living.

For sure. And the Canadian, he goes home to England, he writes his show. He comes to Canada and he does the circuit.

He tours right across Canada. Because the Canadian circuit is more lucrative than the ones in Britain. In Adelaide.

In Australia, because they make more money here than on the Australia fringe. Sure. And it’s simply because there’s a structure to the Canadian model.

TAF has American festivals in it. It’s not geography. It’s the model of fringe festival, which is based on Edmonton.

Edmonton’s the first Canadian fringe. So what Edmonton set up, we have now exported across North America, right? Yeah. And also, at least in Canada, the word fringe is actually a trademark.

So in order to be a fringe festival as opposed to a fridge festival or an infringement festival, you have to basically follow the TAF rules. And those four rules are very precious to me. No censorship.

Right. There was an incident in Montreal that a show, the Gazette, hated. And they were faced with the awful situation of losing their Gazette sponsorship or kicking the show out.

And they kicked the show out, right? But that’s the only instance I can think of in TAF history. And there have been a number of infamous productions, including one called The Happy… The Happy C-Word. This is a podcast.

There’s no censorship. It was called The Happy C-Word, folks. And again, it played Edmonton and Calgary and was notoriously explicit.

And I remember particularly Jeremy, who used to run the Montreal Fringe, saying, you know, if you want to have sex with a goat on stage, this is your opportunity. Because we will not stop you. Jeremy was swinging a bottle of Jesus at the time.

Well, we won’t stop you. You know, the police may stop you. The audience may get up on stage and stop you.

But the festival will never say, you can’t do that. I’m sorry. And that’s a unique experience.

The other one, too, is the lack of artistic direction. And that, to me, is so precious. Because every time in my life I want to do a play, there’s somebody reading this and going… And also the fact that a first-timer, or R.H. Thompson and Eric Peterson, they all get treated exactly the same by the festival.

The media will not treat you exactly the same. The audiences will not treat you exactly the same. But the festival itself will provide the same amount of infrastructure and support to each of them.

And that, to me, is so precious. Because you never find it anywhere else. Yeah, it’s true.

The first time I did the Montreal Fringe, there was a solo artist named Cameron. And God, I’m blanking on her name. Basically, the day before, she does a seminar, like how to promote at the Fringe.

She does it at all the Fringe festivals that she goes to. And the first thing that she says is, you’re not competing. Forget you’re competing.

There is audience enough for everybody. You just have to let people know about your show. Your audience is already here.

They’ve already had enough of the show. So we are not a competition. And generally, when I was on the Fringe tour, everybody took that to heart.

I mean, if I’m talking to somebody and they can’t make it to my show, I will help them find another show. Especially one that I’ve seen. Speaking of shows that you’ve seen, have you guys had a chance to see anything yet? No, yeah.

I’m just playing. Four? Yeah, for you. Awesome.

What have you seen? In no particular order or in the order of things that I really liked. Should I start with the stuff that I think you should go to? Why don’t we talk about the stuff that you really liked? Let’s not talk about the stuff that we didn’t like. Let’s talk about the stuff that we liked.

I haven’t disliked anything, but I have particularly liked something. And a lot of it comes back to what I call my cup of tea versus not my cup of tea. I recognize that there’s an audience for each show, but I’m not personally fond of musicals.

I’m an alternative theatre guy, so give me something like Sarah Cain’s Psychosis 458, the suicide play. Because Sarah Cain doesn’t get done in Hamilton, right? And therefore, I want to see something that isn’t part of the theatrical landscape. Dirty Girl that’s doing really well at Staircase.

Michael Karras, a local playwright with a really great reputation. He did an interesting piece last year, which was not well attended. And he’s basically written the whole play again, but this time from the women’s point of view.

And my own feeling was, the male character is the weakest of the bunch and the two women basically make this thing sing. And most recent show I saw, when we were outside in front of it, was Faith, which was the play that won the Fringe Playwriting Award this year. And again, it’s a really articulate and well-written script with some really nice performances from the two people involved.

I thought especially that Lindsay was pretty good. I mean, it’s mostly her. It’s mostly her.

She’s referred to him as the movable prop. Yeah, the one woman’s show with another guy there who has a few lines. That’s what I felt.

She’s fucking amazing. Yeah, intense. And it was really great.

She also picks one person out of the audience that plays a particular part of the scene too. And for whatever reason, I was the person she picked. So, you know, this huge, intense kind of, you know, yeah, you want to fuck me, right? And it’s coming straight to me.

And I’m going like, oh, fuck! It’s a really awesome performance. Yeah. I saw an old friend from back in the day who’s like Second City and stuff.

Crystal’s show. Sitting inside. Fantastic.

She had that audience in the palm of her hand. She does, right? I just recommend it highly. The worst thing about trying to get too much praise or review to a comedy is you just end up spoiling the punchlines.

No, you don’t want to give her the dress. No. I have.

I saw Oasis Love on Thursday. A play. A show.

Musical. I have a, I studied musical theatre. So, I understand why people don’t like it.

No, there is an audience for it. It’s just not necessarily me. I actually think there’s more audience for musical theatre than there is for alternative theatre.

There is. It’s more commercial. I do relate to why people find it unpopular.

I think it’s bad musicals that get you to think of that makes them not like reason. Oh, as we have forgotten. It never happens on Mars.

Yes. Exactly. Bad musicals are bad.

Well, it’s also that there’s a kind of a commercial sense deliberately built into at least the American model. So, it’s like I always feel as I’m watching certain musicals that the producer is basically lifting the money out of the back of my wallet. And that this was the whole point, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Have you seen a few things? Yes. I saw The Commandment, which I absolutely adored.

It was amazing. I met your director, Ian. Very, very nice guy.

And I saw Unoriginal Sin, which was well done. I really loved their multimedia parts. They have a plot, and then they have multimedia where it kind of deals with miniatures of hookup culture.

It’s really amazing. You should see it, especially for those parts. There’s that plot that’s going through, but the moments where I don’t want to give anything away.

They use dating websites for advertisement. And you’re like, wow, okay. Or just consumerism with hookup culture, doing it together is really interesting.

So, I would recommend. Cool. And I saw Faith, and it was really great.

Cool. Yesterday, I was going to see your show. I was like, okay, 7 o’clock, I think I can manage to see your show.

But it was my opening, and I was on my way to see the show, and I was like, I cannot put my head into somebody else’s show right now. I was feeling too much, both excited and also that I wanted to throw up. So, I just was like, no, I’m not going to do it.

So, I’ve seen your show, which was a lot of fun, and I saw Faith. Those are the two shows I’ve seen. When I say your show, I was indicating Olivia, who stands on my left.

And I’m hoping to see, well, I want to see as much as I can, obviously. It’s funny, Dave said at the launch that we had buzz, and I’m like, we do? The thing is that you don’t know that you have buzz until sometimes it’s performing. We were very fortunate, and so far, it’s the only real decent media we’ve got.

We ended up with an article in The Spectator, and that’s based upon a 30-year relationship with the guy who writes for The Spec. Which is nice, but so far, that’s the only real hit we’ve had. And we’re all kind of waiting patiently, hopefully for the reviews.

Vue does everybody. The online reviews should start happening this weekend, and I think Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the few shows that the guy from The Spec saw will start to percolate. The interesting thing that I find about The Vue is that they don’t seem to publish, I was looking at their website, and they don’t publish the newspaper in its entirety.

That’s only recent. That’s only been the last year. It used to be there’d be a separate article, which would be fringe reviews, and my problem with The Vue, and I know this because I used to work for them, although again, because of my relationship with the fringe, I’ve never actually reviewed fringe shows, right? Because there was a rule that you could never review anything that you were a part of or affiliated with, right? So my job was to find other people to review the shows at the fringe.

But it’s the fact you only get a paragraph. And what is kind of nice is they assign the critic to basically see all the shows in the particular venue, and then you get this little thing called Critic’s Pick. The one show of The Seven I saw in my venue that I had to cover that I liked.

And so often Critic’s Pick of The Vue magazine comes up because you were the best of the seven. Now having said that, all the shows in that particular venue could have sucked to you, but who knows? But it’s kind of nice that everyone could have been wonderful and they agonized over which of the seven to pick, right? And there’s no way to know. But it’s a tiny little paragraph that basically, it’s like the elevator pitch.

This is kind of a show about this. There’s two things that I want out of a review. Aside from it being a positive.

Actually, they are before the review is even published. Number one, I don’t want the venue captain to tell me that there’s a reviewer in the house. Nope, I agree.

You do not want to know. Yesterday they did. After the fact.

Yesterday, no, they did before. So here’s my media kit information. She said, oh good.

That’s great because we have, I said, don’t tell me. Hang out with the reviewer from The Vue. I was like, okay.

And the second thing is a moment of silence before the show. No. No? What I want is for that reviewer not to sit in the front row.

With a notebook. Diligently strolling all the way. He was sitting right there in the front row.

Right there in the note with his notepad. Taking notes. When he put his notes aside.

I was like, is that good? Is that bad? He’s finished, man. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to see you.

Oh, it could be worse though. There was one reviewer, thankfully, who isn’t around anymore, who used to diligently wait at the end of the show where everybody’s madly trying to rip the set down and all the rest and asked to take a photograph which would invariably take 10 minutes while you’re madly trying to do the changeover, right? And if you wouldn’t let him do that, he would get mortally offended and it would show up in the review. And I was like, ah, my god.

Just as we started to think about wrapping off, what are you guys looking ahead? Since we’re just starting day three of The Fringe, what are you guys looking ahead to? Do you have any plans? Things that you want to see? Things that you want to do? What are you hoping for? I think it’s at four today, taller. I know Dave Tomlinson, another guy from way back in the day, through Sketch, but it’s a local story, so I’m quite curious. Skye Gilbert, who was founder of Buddy and Buddies at the time, who moved to Hamilton about 12 years ago and was actually on the Fringe board for a while.

Again, he’s just such an amazing writer. He’s written so many plays and they’re all different. He’s also, he found a little theatre company called Hammer Theatre, which was in a couple of Fringes.

He did Crack in 2007 or 2008, off the top of my head. But he wrote a series of plays that are essentially Hamilton-centric and that will never play anywhere else. They’re not designed to be at Buddies or in Toronto.

They are specifically for a Hamilton audience and I admire that. I think there was a bit of a controversy about theatre careers cancelling one of those Hamilton-centric shows. I wrote a big article in View about it and I still think that was a really unfortunate choice.

There was a show based on a real crime that had happened which was still before the courts and the crime reporter, not the arts reporter, the crime reporter basically had gotten the chief of police to basically say this play is going to get these criminals off. They were threatening to charge him with obstruction of justice. Imagine this, putting a play on, you’re obstructing justice.

And I went, well, unless he had interviewed them, had gotten witness statements and was refusing to give them to the police, he basically read an article in The Spectator, the Spectator was running this bigger than anybody else because the line about them making him eat feces was in every Spectator article. All he did was read an article in Spectator and imagine what might have happened. That’s what artists do.

What might have happened. Similar incident. There was a play that was… The Terrorists.

I was in a playwriting class with her. Her son went mad with it and started taking it everywhere and talking to people in the… They lost their funding. They lost their funding over this.

They almost did. They got it back. They did get it back, but it was like the son blew it up out of proportion because nobody had seen the play yet.

So… That’s also one sentence you have in your program. That was my voice. The way the son was taking it and was saying Federal money going to this pro-terrorist play.

That’s the… Esther, what are you looking forward to in the next few days of The Fringe? I don’t know. Settling in the show. I want to go see some things.

I want to see Commandments today. Can I come? Yeah. What time is that today? That’s at 2 o’clock.

By the time this goes up at noon, I will be already getting Prep Mom. Do you want to be on the list? Yeah, I’d be good. I’ve heard a lot of good things about bathtub girls.

Yeah. I’ve heard a lot of that. Those girls can cut a rug.

Baltimore House, after they were up there on the dance floor. Yeah. Young energy.

Yeah, they have energy to spare. Columbia? I’m looking forward for a Fillmore. It’s really sick.

And bathtub girls I really want to check out. Marigolds, pins, all the plays that are in my venue, for sure. Christmas at the Jewelry Hotel.

And then see what else fits. I’m trying to… My concentration, I’ve got to crack the self-promotion in Hamilton. Since I’m not from here, I don’t know The Fringe very well.

I’m going to try the end of shows for Flyering and stuff like that. Do you know what I found really good yesterday is that the lobby of the staircase fills up very nicely. People just sitting, eating.

Staircase is a great team staircase. It has food and drink. They just hang out there before their show.

I know, I know. You could literally lose yourself in staircase for a while and just come out of a show, grab a coffee, grab a drink, go to the next show and just stay there for a day, which is great. It’s a bit of a hike.

It’s an island, yeah. On Thursday, when I was traipsing to every show, I was going to see your show, but I went to Theatre Hamilton Inc. first, thinking that that’s where it was, because I got confused in my brain.

I was seeing Faith there later. And then I had 35 minutes to get to your show and it’s a 25-minute walk. I got in the wrong spot.

You should take a SoBeat. I should take a SoBeat. I should take a SoBeat.

There’s a station right outside there. It’s really reasonable. I was thinking of, for promo today, flyering the 115 Ghostbusters at Jackson Square.

It’s a little fringe show called Ghostbusters. And don’t forget, Paul McCartney’s coming to town next Thursday. My God, there’s going to be 20,000 people there.

Looking forward for a show. Yeah, you know. Hey, did you know that in Toronto, Neil Patrick Harris went to see Freeform? Yes, he did.

I know. It’s astonishing. Do you guys know how that rolled out? Yeah, Twitter.

Cass Sandler, who was doing Bright Lights, she tweeted, because Neil Patrick Harris was like, I’m in town shooting. What should I do tonight? And she was like, come see my show. My friend was like, go see her show.

There were other people who… But she was basically first. So two days later, he DMs her. She gets a DM from Neil Patrick Harris.

And it works out that he can go in now. Her show was sold out. MacGyvered him in.

And then he said he wanted to see two more shows. He liked it. He wanted to see two more shows.

So maybe Paul McCartney will come and see some. Wow. If he’s not doing a show.

I’ll yell at him. I’m going. Good for you.

It’s our one night off. The only tickets are the $900 ones. They’re the only ones left.

I have a question. I have a question about… And this is something that I’m noticing. I’ve been to the Baltimore House a couple of nights after the show.

After people are out. And I’ve noticed that it’s not very full. Because I didn’t really want to be there.

Maybe I’m just not there late enough. Because I don’t stay up very late. Because I’m an old man.

But it’s such a great venue. I would think that people would go there. If that venue was the Toronto Fringe Club.

People would just pack that place. Is there a reason why people don’t seem to go? Again. I… This is my first Fringe that kind of… I’ve been hanging around the Baltimore House.

And… The Art Word, Art Bar, which is a venue now. Was the Fringe Club when I was involved. And it was a much different vibe.

And you tend to find all the artists were always at Art Bar. And I can’t comment. Because, again, I wasn’t here.

I don’t know what it was like last year. I can only see what’s happening this year. I do notice that it seems like all their programming is at 10 o’clock.

And so, therefore, there are shows… There are… No, not 10 o’clock. 9 o’clock. They’re all at 9 o’clock.

So, anybody that’s catching the last show isn’t there. So, I think the 10 o’clock start at the end of the last show probably would be… I mean, the weekends, they go to midnight and all that. But people would be going there after their shows.

But I went after my show and almost nobody was there. Yeah. I mean, for us last night, they did a show they always do at Stiltcase called Camera Night Live.

And so, they did an 11 o’clock start. And this was great. Matt Serena hosted.

Clifford Myers was the headliner, but they were in their pajamas. Because it was a late night show. And so, for us coming out of our show, it’s like, well, if that wasn’t going on, maybe I would have been at the Baltimore House.

But I was like, well, there’s a date show here already. Because the album sounds a little bit like 13th Hour in Montreal. So, it’s like 1 o’clock in the morning.

You better have a nap before you… But nobody naps in Montreal. I agree. I feel like a lot of the people that I’ve seen later in the shows are older.

So, not necessarily the people who would be next. And it’s early. It’s early.

This is the weekend, right? People that have to work aren’t going out until 2 in the morning on a Thursday. So, maybe we’re going to see tonight and tomorrow being a little busier at the Fringe, but I do know that they’ve put the volunteer sign-in thing in front of the Baltimore House. So, at least the Fringe… The Fringe signage is there, which is good.

And you can buy passes. You can buy buttons there, which is good. Is it especially close to any venue? Actually, it’s pretty much right in between the Mills Hardware, Hamilton Theatre, Inc.

But the venues used to be much tighter. You know, one year you had the Bank of Montreal space. You had what’s currently the Absinthe space, which was a venue.

And you’d have two venues at the Downtown Art Center, which is on Rebecca Street around the corner. So, we were much further concentrated. And I’m finding more and more of the Fringe… The Players Guild’s first year, it’s been an official venue.

And we, too, are kind of at the halfway point between the staircase and what traditionally used to be the center. Anyone who doesn’t have a car who has been walking from venue to venue? No, I know, I know. My… My legs have been… You know, I don’t… I walk regularly, but this is a lot of walking.

And in the past, we had had two venues at Theatre Courts instead of one. Although the costs of using that facility were expensive, right? But there’s a logic that says it’s great to have two venues on the staircase. You’ve got three, right? So, it’s the idea that it’s like a multiplex of the cinema.

Ah, that interests me. No, that doesn’t interest me. But therefore, I can kind of stay in one place and see the shows.

So, that was perhaps a better model. The thing is that I think that the venues are all walkable. With the exception… I mean, you can walk to the Pires Guild.

Um… You know, I’ve done it. You just need the time. You’re in a rush.

That’s my biggest thing is that I’d like to see more shows, but I go from the Pires Guild to another venue. It takes so long that I can’t stay for the next show and then go. The real key is the nights you’re off.

I was off Thursday, so I caught shows Thursday, right? And I’m off Sunday, so Sunday’s wide open for me. I’ll catch shows. Yeah.

Also, again, the importance of the artist comps. In the old days, it used to be festival-wide. There was a lanyard system.

And if you were an artist, a show could opt out. Many shows frequently did. But the default was that if there’s an empty seat and nobody’s paid for it, that you may as well stick an artist in it.

I will always give seats to artists. That’s something from… Because we’ll tell people about other shows, I think that other artists are as good at selling my show as anybody else. So I want people to see my show.

And also, it’s part of a true brotherhood and sisterhood. You want to see everybody’s shows. Alright, so who’s on Twitter? Alright.

So, Esther, what’s your Twitter handle? The show has a Twitter handle. Okay, so what’s the show’s Twitter handle? It’s athelamore. Are you personally on… I am, personally.

Would you like to share that? Sure. That’s E-S-T-H-U-H. Esther.

Okay. I’m at Brennan, B-R-E-N-N-A-N David N. Cool. Yeah.

I’m Olivia. And I just have the election company at Referendum PC. And what about websites? So, I’m at PhilRickeby at StageworthyProd.

Those are those… People listening to this probably already know. I’ve been looking at all this in the show notes. Perfect.

What about websites? Just my Facebook page. It’s click.com slash AthelamorePlay. Same Facebook page.

Referendum and then, as well, they will lead you to us. Cool. And we actually have a web page which is www theatre- arabus, E-R-E-B-U-S .ca And I’ve got thecommandment.ca PhilRickeby.com StageworthyPodcast.com and all that stuff.

So, we’re going to do this again next week. Esther, you won’t be here. You have a pre-release engagement.

Dave will sit in and he will do both parts. He will play both you and himself. I’m looking forward to that.

It’s going to be awesome. Me too. Dave’s understudying for Esther next week and also playing himself.

So, this should be… He’s going to be so awesome. It’s going to be great. So, we’ll all meet back here next week at 10 o’clock.

Thanks a lot, you guys. Thank you.