Laura Paduch & Rachel Kennedy
This week on Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby welcomes Rachel Kennedy and Laura Paduch, the co-leads of the Toronto Fringe Festival. With the 2024 edition just days away, Rachel and Laura share insights into what makes this year’s festival unique, including the exciting new partnership with Soulpepper Theatre, the return of beloved venues, and the community-building magic that Fringe fosters year after year. They also reflect on their personal journeys with Fringe, the evolution of self-producing in theatre, and the vital role that Fringe plays in launching careers.
This episode explores:
- What a Fringe Festival is and how the Toronto Fringe operates
- The 2024 move to a central hub at Soulpepper in the Distillery District
- The return and growth of unconventional venues across the city
- The evolution and merging of the Next Stage Festival into Fringe
- Peer mentorship and producer pods supporting first-time creators
- Why Fringe is vital for risk-taking, experimentation, and community-building
Guests:
🎭 Rachel Kennedy – Executive Director, Toronto Fringe
Rachel Kennedy (she/they) is the Executive Director & Co-Lead at the Toronto Fringe Festival. For the last decade, they have had the pleasure of supporting local indie theatre and dance productions as a producer, director and stage manager and arts administrator. Rachel’s love for the arts centres around a passion for advocacy, equity, and bringing communities together through storytelling. Thanks to wonderful collaborators throughout her career, Rachel has learned much about the unique needs of Toronto’s artists and how essential their impact is across the City and beyond. Rachel is thrilled to serve the Toronto Fringe community and can’t wait for this summer’s Festival (join us July 2-13th!).
🎭 Laura Paduch – Managing Director, Toronto Fringe
Laura Paduch (she/her) is the Managing Director & Co-Lead of the Toronto Fringe Festival, a mid-size arts organization that has been a platform for independent performing arts for over 35 years. She is a producer, arts administrator, and advocate, and has had the privilege of serving the Toronto Fringe Festival community since 2018. Before that, Laura was the General Manager of fu-GEN Theatre Company, and ARC, where she advanced the inaugural joint management initiative. Laura’s additional professional experience has included extensive stage and production management, event production, theatre producing, and performance creation. The Toronto Fringe offers a community conduit that enables her to champion mentorship and resource sharing, and re-casting new norms and standards for arts sector workplace practices. She has sat on the TAPA Advocacy Committee, is on the ArtsVote Steering Committee, and the board of directors of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals.
Connect with Toronto Fringe:
📸 Instagram: @toronto_fringe
🌐 Website: fringetoronto.com
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Transcript
[Phil Rickaby]
Welcome to another episode of Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. If you’re listening to the audio version of this podcast, please make sure that you’re subscribed.
Don’t just go to stageworthy.ca but you know, I love that you’re going there, but make sure that for your convenience, you can subscribe by going to your favorite podcast app, searching for Stageworthy and clicking the subscribe button that way. Whenever I drop a new episode, it will be delivered directly to your device. You won’t have to do anything.
It’ll just be there. If you’re watching on YouTube, and did you notice that you can watch most of my interviews on YouTube? And if you’re on YouTube and you, you’re enjoying this, make sure that you hit the like button.
And it would be really great if you would hit the subscribe button as well and click the little bell so that when a new episode is released, you’ll get notified that it’s there for you to watch. This week, I’m going to be talking fringe again. I’m going to be talking to the leadership team of the Toronto fringe festival.
But before I get to that, let’s talk about Patreon. If not for my patrons, I wouldn’t be able to make this show. Patrons back this show for just $7 Canadian a month.
And what they get is aside from the satisfaction of helping me to make this show, they get early access to new episodes, as well as participating in discussions about everything that’s going to happen on this show in the future. Directions that we want to take, um, when there are topics that I want to discuss, I go to the patrons and we’ll discuss maybe what I should cover. My patrons are essentially the brain trust of Stageworthy.
My patrons help choose the direction of this podcast. So if you want to be a patron, if you want to back this show, go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron, as I said, my guests this week are the co-leads of the Toronto fringe festival, executive director, Rachel Kennedy, and managing director, Laura Paduch. We had a great conversation and I can’t wait for you to hear it.
Especially now that as this comes out, Toronto fringe is only days away. So get ready for the Toronto fringe by listening to my interview with the co-leads of the Toronto fringe festival. Rachel and Laura, thank you so much for joining me.
You are the co-leads of the Toronto fringe festival, which is heading into its 37th year. Um, you know, here’s the thing that I, I was, I was considering earlier today was the fact that, um, we have a tendency in the theatre to, to assume everybody knows what everything is. Um, and I, I’m thinking that maybe we shouldn’t assume that anymore.
So, uh, would one of you like to explain what a fringe festival is?
[Rachel Kennedy]
You wanted a tap dance, interpretive version of this. Yes. Yeah.
Right.
[Phil Rickaby]
Preferably.
[Rachel Kennedy]
Good, good, good, good. Uh, no, the Toronto fringe festival is an annual festival happening each July. And what we do is we program as many different productions as we can bring in based on sort of a scalable budget.
We try to plan the next year’s festival to be as large or as small as we can afford to subsidize. Um, this is because we do heavily subsidize every production that comes through. It means that we’re providing tech.
We’re providing the venue. We’re providing box office, marketing, front of house. We kind of create this big platform for folks to come in and play within, uh, to the extent that we also don’t have any curation.
We do not curate the Toronto fringe festival. It is a lottery drawn process. So this is how we get new voices, different voices.
Uh, what we’d like to say is if you have a story to tell, we believe that this is the place to do it. And we want you to come here and do so.
[Phil Rickaby]
And the thing about, about fringe is that it is, um, really often like really independent theatre artists. Occasionally there’s like a, uh, a pro who will like pop in for a bit and they might do a show. Um, but there it’s, some of it is raw.
Some of it is weird, which is often a lot of fun. Um, Laura, I mean, it’s so many things. It’s so many things.
And, uh, you know, every show is different and every festival is different. And in fact, um, in the past few years, we’ve kind of been like running the gamut of different from completely online to like hybrid to like really small.
[Laura Paduch]
And like, just, yeah, just earlier today in conversation about, because Rachel and I are, we’re trying to like rewrite the script. We don’t have to be reactive and just only hanging onto the edge of our fingernails to the work and to the process. We have an amazing team.
They’re so organized. We, the thing is this is 37th year. So some of that, you know, we’ve learned some things along the way about how to make a festival.
And we’re already starting to dream very lightly about 2026. I didn’t talking about that. There was a comment of since 2020, we started adjusting the festival in response to unprecedented events and changes, and we’ve never stopped adapting and kind of like playing with the form to try and meet where we’re at to meet the needs and meet the environment that we’re making a festival.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, this year is a little bit different, um, in terms of the partnership with salt pepper and what that means, uh, for the festival. Um, Laura, what, what, what, what is different about this year? How does it look?
That’s different from before.
[Laura Paduch]
I’m so glad you asked. I’m going to rhyme off everything. That is the 37th annual fringe festival.
So this platform for everyone and anybody to come and discover and experiment with the arts. We are so excited to be launching, embarking on a new chapter of it, a new frontier and moving and building a hub at salt pepper theatre. So we’re coming down to the distillery.
What this means is a festival to Toronto, a fringe festival that Toronto has never seen before. Those that are familiar with fringes across the country, and we’re all in an association with them. Uh, you know, they want that spark and we’re so excited to deliver it here this summer, because at salt pepper, it’s going to be our patio.
It’s going to be our hub and it’s going to be immediately five performance venues all in one place. So that is the hugest sort of geographical and footprint and feel of the festival. But lots of it is still going to feel the same or coming back to the familiar.
We actually have 22 performance venues in total in the festival this year. So no one worry at all. We’re still reaching all of the familiar corners of the city and all of the familiar spaces that we have known for 30 plus years.
So we’ll be at Tarragon theatre. We’ll be at Helen Gardner, uh, playhouse at U of T. We’ll be at Passmore.
I do to pass my ride, um, back at alumni theatre and native first Aki studio, soul pepper. And then we’re really excited to actually continue expanding East. And we’re going to be at video cabarets, Dan Taylor theatre in Leslieville.
Plus, you know, all of our, all of the amazing kind of one-off shows that are in these unique found spaces in what is now called our. Unconventional venue category, which means we have still 10 more cool locations to go and check out.
[Phil Rickaby]
I I’m glad to hear the Helen Gardner. I kind of missed the Helen Gardner. I haven’t seen them in a while.
So it’s always nice to have a theatre, uh, pop up again. Yeah. Um, one of the things that I’m kind of excited about, about the hub at soul pepper is it kind of reminds me.
In a, in a, in a way of the way that, uh, some of the festivals like Winnipeg and Edmonton are localized, um, in a specific area, which makes it a lot, actually a lot easier to get from venue to venue. Uh, you don’t have to run quite as, as furiously. Um, so it’s really, it’s, I’m, I’m really interested to see how that works to, to, to experience the patio.
Um, Rachel, what is different about the patio this year?
[Rachel Kennedy]
I think we’re sort of consolidating a lot of the, the spirit and the hopes and the dreams of the spaces we’ve had before in with this venue to experience and with the productions and the shows. Um, like you said, we’ve had feedback over the years about people who say, Oh, I wanted to see two shows, but I only had one night available. So I had to pick one.
And we’re really making this a one stop shop. If that’s what you’d like to do that day, you can also go to any of our other venues, but the idea that at any given time, we’ve got five different performances that you can walk up to the festival box office, grab your ticket, walk across the hall, grab a drink, and then walk into the venue itself. That’s unheard of.
This is something that we here in Toronto haven’t been able to offer before, just based on space availability. So this is, is really exciting.
[Phil Rickaby]
One of the things about, uh, Fringe is, um, the idea that, that like you, like you’ve been saying about how, um, like anybody could get pulled in that lottery, whether it’s their first show or their hundredth show. Um, and that kind of development is, is kind of essential to a theatre career. Like having the ability to, to, to perform like that is so important.
Uh, but the Fringe also, you know, realizes that a lot of times it’s people’s first show. Um, and there’s a lot of support given. Um, Laura, what kind of support, uh, does the Fringe give to new producers?
[Laura Paduch]
Yeah. You know, that’s such a good reference. Like it’s not just a theatre festival.
It’s not just, we do that. We do it really well. We love doing it.
But Fringe, um, has really started to recognize that we are that starting point for so many, for so many. For artists, for arts workers, for volunteers, for patrons, um, and for staff and, and so many things. And so that’s a, that’s a responsibility and that’s, it’s not a, a service and a duty that we take lightly because the experience you have here can form where you go on into the sector.
So for the artists, um, and the producers coming through, that’s exactly it. It’s an assumption. We’re speaking to you, um, as if this might be your first time ever.
And, and our aim is to create, I kind of call it like a web of support. And those have been developed, all these different sort of like pieces and pillars of support that, um, are for the artists to that, uh, to catch them where they’re at and reach them where they’re at, whether it’s their first time producing a show ever, whether it’s their first time writing, whether they just graduated or they’re coming from another career and sector, or they’re still teens themselves, because we have our teen category and it’s been astounding to see who comes out. Through that.
Um, or whether you’re an experienced producer and you’re coming to a fringe festival for the first time, which is his own kind of beast. It’s his own kind of specific model. So we have handbooks, we have seminars.
We have an amazing team and staff here who are positioned in place to facilitate getting people from their page to the stage and helping them through this process and helping them through the container and the kind of train that is the festival. Um, over the, since coming back from lockdown, we’ve actually begun a peer-to-peer program that we call Producer Pods, and it’s been so great because something, again, we noticed like these things that we learn when we all are forced to be by ourselves on Zoom and doing remote work and playing around with those digital festivals. Haha.
We shall not speak of those. We needed to do them, but we want to do live theatre and that’s what we’re here to do. Um, was this like realizing like, Oh, what can, how can we, we know we’re a central point, how can we help foster community and connection and network with the, with the participants that are already here?
And more than just, uh, there’s a discord that they’re all on, um, that they can connect with one another, but peer-to-peer pods have been so great to make those connections. And, and we actually bring in every year, some seasoned, um, fringe veterans, we like to call them. And they actually become fringe mentors for the year.
And they’re there just a sounding board, another adult. Who’s like, that’s a great idea. Keep with that.
Or like, you know, it’s probably more important to worry about your poster design right now. And then like, you can figure this part out later and just helping, keeping everybody through this pretty regulated and intense kind of a one-on-one crash course into producing a show from nothing to sold out seven performances, patron pig winner at the Terragon theatre, for example.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think that’s so important that both the mentorship and the pods, because there’s so many times in, in seasons past where people are, you know, they’re in their own performance and then they show up at the fringe tent ready to do a thing and they don’t know anybody.
[Laura Paduch]
That’s right.
[Phil Rickaby]
And fringe thrives on community, both for the performers and the audience. So it’s so important. It’s so good to have that set up for people and to have those connections in advance of the festival.
Because quite honestly, a fringe festival is a gauntlet. I don’t think audiences often realize how much work it is. Rachel, as the, as the executive director co-lead of the, of the festival, what does that gauntlet look like from a performer’s point of view?
[Rachel Kennedy]
Oh, that’s a great question. I always say, I feel like I came to the fringe at this amazing time because I, my career and so many of us at the fringe on staff, we all came up through the various programming that Toronto Fringe Festival offers. For me, the last time I did a show, I came in with Gay For Pay with Blake and Clay when they mounted their second production, which had been picked up after their first fringe by Crow’s Theatre, got a Dora nomination for it, for Best New Play, came, or sorry, Outstanding Production.
I should, I should say the title, right? For Outstanding Production. And then came back with the, with a sequel to the work and this feeling of every day getting to come into a space where everybody was being celebrated.
And we were sort of like kind of crusty people were like, oh, you know, you’ve done the fringe a bunch of times throughout the years and it wasn’t our first rodeo, but every single day when you walk into the fringe tent, it feels like it is because there’s this new energy. There’s a different group. There’s always somebody there who you’ve kind of heard about, but you haven’t met and you want to go and talk to.
And that doesn’t change based on the place in your career that you’re in. I will feel that way this summer. I felt that way the first time that I came and did a fringe show back in 2013, 12 years ago, I did my very first fringe show.
Yeah. It always just feels like this magical community space that we had a great testimonial from one of our beloved producers last year that said Toronto Fringe is the one time a year that the theatre scene all comes together and celebrates.
[Phil Rickaby]
Well, there’s many people who refer to it as theatre Christmas, right? That’s the that’s the thing is everybody gets excited for theatre Christmas to unwrap whatever show is going to be their favourite that year or favourites. Another thing that’s new this year is the merging of the of the next stage festival into the fringe festival.
What precipitated that and how does that all relate to to the fringe?
[Laura Paduch]
Yeah, I mean, how much time do we have to unpack the economic realities of the non-profit theatre organisations in this place, in this sector? You know, we could we could go down that road, but I don’t think I don’t think it’s an unheard or an unknown story, not story, experience and truth and reality that that the sector is facing. And we are running a non-profit organisation.
We here, Rachel and I, are stewarding this platform and it has a legacy that’s bigger than us. And so it’s our job to constantly, that is the skill, that is the job, is adapting, is looking for the ways to sustain and be consistent and offer the experience and offer an amazing and enriching platform. And this important, important sort of stepping stone and gateway in the sector that everyone has come to recognise and see as an important level and layer.
But also in a time where the budgets are the budgets, the revenues are the revenues, the realities are the realities. And so how do we get creative and economic realities are necessitate, you know, what is that? I’m going to mess up that quote.
Someone, we can insert it here. But, you know, being creative and innovative and so we put so much resources, there’s so much funding that we can raise around the Fringe Festival. There’s a lot of resources.
Our team is like four times the size of our year round team at this time. That’s where so much of our resources get mustered around. And so that was a theme for 2025, was mustering resources more centrally and bringing in, so being able to bring in the next age scenery, bringing in the to be able to take advantage of all of that and bring audiences that are coming up to the festival already.
And we bring last year over 40,000 tickets sold. So we know they’re coming to be able to bring these elevated works that are amazing creators, amazing works that deserve the spotlight and are ready for the next stage of their careers. I’m sorry.
It was like our predecessors invented it. And it is right there. It is in the title.
It’s in the name. Can’t avoid it. So we’re so pleased to be able to have this, to offer this, to be able to still showcase and still bring them an elevated platform, still a producing platform.
Everyone is independent producers and we’re providing, to Rachel’s point, the container, the supports and these things, but and the attention and helping bring the attention to them and centralize it. And again, with the hub and being in one place and getting to have exactly that more festival, more opportunity, it was such a dream of ours to make an accessible, a walkable, a very reachable locale so that you can fit more festival on your dance card every day. So, yeah, that’s, you know, that’s the boiling point is it’s economically our financial sort of realities.
How do we still provide what it is we provide effectively, safely, consistently and not sort of compromise on their experience, on their potential success in producing their shows? And this is how we that’s what started that conversation.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I know that the festival moved to the fall a few years ago, but I also will say that I don’t I will not miss huddling in a tent in the cold in January. So I feel like summer is an even better opportunity for this festival.
[Laura Paduch]
Yeah. It had a charm to it, Phil.
[Phil Rickaby]
I know it had a charm to it, but it also had the effect of like sometimes in January, you’re like looking outside and you’re like, do I want to go outside in this cold? That’s right.
[Laura Paduch]
And coming back in the 2020s here in this decade that we’re in, you know, that’s we’ve all we’ve all been changed for better or for worse. And all of our behaviors have been changed and and different. And so that’s that’s, you know, and even like a more of a micro model of how we have to be looking.
We have to try. We have to adapt. We have to try things out.
And so exactly what we’re like, we we were programmed in 2022 to have an in-person festival. And then that was the final lockdown. Everyone might not remember the exact dates, but I do, because it was January 3rd.
I was like, I first came back in office and then we’re like, oh, this is a very different staff meeting that we are having because this news was like live updating. And it was like until at least January 31st. And we’re like, oh, OK, perfect.
We just had a festival just within those dates. And so it was with with that for so many reasons, it was like, OK, this is the moment. This is the moment it’s graduating.
It’s growing up. It’s got to grow into a new place. And and then we found that fall moment and have had a wonderful experience working with buddies, like talk about a partner, talk about other sector collaborators who are like, we know what we’re all doing here and we understand that we have to like share resources to be able to do what it is we’re all here to do, which is make these opportunities, get these artists on stages, reach audiences.
And and that was a magical, magical partnership. But it’s not forever. Maybe, you know, everything.
This is the thing we’re trying it and we’re really happy with the success so far and to be able to know that we’re providing still a great opportunity. But if anyone out there is like, I want to give them a million dollars to be able to sponsor a festival. Yeah, perfect.
We’ll take it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yes. If you’re out there with a million dollars lying around and you wanted to donate it to the fringe, that is an excellent, an excellent use of your million dollars.
[Rachel Kennedy]
Yeah, we’ll take it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Speaking of partnerships, we’ve talked about about the logistical what what the Soulpepper partnership brings this year, the the space, the walkability, the hub. But what intangibles, what else does the partnership with Soulpepper give to the Fringe Festival?
[Rachel Kennedy]
Right now, I think one of the most exciting things for us is we are talking three years down the line in one space, which is something that, again, is unheard of. Yeah, I think that we’re trying to build more collaborations like this where we’re coming together not just with Soulpepper Theatre, but with Obsidian, Bad Hats, Musical Stage Company. And we’re really trying to make sure that we’re working together again.
As Laura said, we’re mustering resources. We’re coming in and saying, hey, we can’t all be flailing about at full force all year. So how do we come together and say, oh, you know what, actually, there’s a duplication of work here and we can share some resources.
And over here, you two could share some resources. And we all have these values in common. And it just sort of becomes this really beautiful, I don’t know, lately I’ve been thinking of it as like a well-rounded plate of food.
I don’t know. I’m hungry all the time. I have a newborn.
OK, guys, everything revolves around food. But this is it. It’s like I think we have all the different nutrients for such a healthy plate sitting in front of us when we all get together.
And it’s it’s really exciting. So it’s not yes, this year, this fringe, we’re seeing a really tangible sort of collaboration happening with Soulpepper. But we have dreams to really expand that to to have all five of us working in tandem and really exciting and still totally separate ways.
We all maintain complete independence, but leaning on each other and in good faith. It’s really, really exciting. And it’s 100 percent what this sector needs.
[Phil Rickaby]
One hundred percent. I remember a number of years ago, I thought to myself, why is there not an umbrella of of theatre companies that work together and share resources, keep themselves separate, but like work together to build audiences together, which is exactly this. And the other thing that’s interesting is I remember years ago being at the Montreal Fringe and one of the performers was like, there’s audience enough for everyone.
And I was like, oh, my goodness, we’re not in competition. That’s right. There’s audience enough for everyone.
And I’ve talked to people at the Toronto Fringe. There’s some performers who are like, no, no, no, we are absolutely in competition. I’m like, no, you’re not.
No, you were absolutely not. You’re not stealing an audience. You’re you’re sharing an audience.
And so the more excited the audience is, the more excited they are to see your show, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
[Rachel Kennedy]
That’s exactly it. And it’s so fringy. I mean, I remember doing producing work and half of the thing was waiting until everybody was announced and then going through and saying, oh, we should shout out these guys at the end of our show.
Like it’s built into the Fringe experience. You shout out other shows that you think your audience would like. It’s not saying, no, come back here a hundred times.
[Laura Paduch]
I mean, so it’s like you hear the things that we say to the participants directly, like the producers in the seminars of like, we’re not in competition. We’re all on the same side. What’s good for your show?
What’s good for the festival is good for everyone. One successful show drives and it brings them in. And we like to think it’s a very not scientific metric that like every year, about about 50 percent of the audience that are showing up are built in.
They’re the Fringe audience. And then 50 percent are the new. They’re coming with these new shows, these new artists, these new to Fringe people and folks.
And that’s like the magic. But yeah, it’s it’s all it’s all of us together working for each other and just making joy and making community. Chef’s Kiss.
We love it. We’re here for it.
[Phil Rickaby]
The community of the of the Fringe family is always such a such a magical thing. By the time you a performer, a producer has finished a festival like. These are your people, the people there.
These are I remember being on on a Fringe tour. By the time you get to the end of a Fringe tour, that is a family. And even years later, that’s still a family.
Right. And and even just the end of a festival, one festival like the Toronto Fringe is like you’ve gone through it. So you’re together.
All of your successes and all of your all of you, because it is a roller coaster as a performer. Some days are great. Some days are not.
And so it’s just a magical thing to get to the end of. And and it’s it’s always a celebration at the end. Yeah, I I would love to to.
We’ve sort of alluded a little bit for each of you about what your history with the Fringe is before coming to a leadership role. But I’d love to to talk more in depth with each of you about like what was your first exposure to Fringe and how did you end up here in these positions? Rachel, why don’t you go first?
[Rachel Kennedy]
Sure. Yeah, I I love telling this story because it makes me so excited. I feel I’m obsessed with the Toronto Fringe Festival.
I don’t know if you can. They really are. I really am.
I remember I grew up in Kingston, Ontario, came to Toronto for school. And I remember calling my mom going into. Must have been the summer going into third year, fourth year.
And I remember being so nervous because I had to tell her I wasn’t coming home to Kingston this summer. I had to quit my longstanding summer job. I would come home and be a little car rental agent.
And I had to call and tell her that I wasn’t coming home this summer. Love you so much. She’s the best.
I got into a Fringe show and I was so excited. It was the cohort of a year above me in school was doing a production. They got in.
I was in the sort of devised theatre program at York and some folks who were just graduating got in and they asked me to stage manage. And it was my first time ever officially stage managing. And I’m so excited.
And it was an incredible opportunity. It ended up being with some of the folks who now do Potato Potato presents. The sketch troupe.
Lovely. Oh, hey, guys. Lovely people.
So that was my first Fringe experience. And we were at St. Vladimir’s and it was nice and it was close to his walking distance from so much else going on. I knew nothing about downtown Toronto and walking around and handing out posters and trying to talk about the show to anyone that I could help me get to know Toronto itself.
So that was kind of my first step in the door. It was that after that show, we came back later and we got in for a dance production. A friend of mine who was coming out of the dance program at York got in and asked me to come in and produce and stage manage.
And we came in with, oh, gosh, we were breaking ground collective eventually, but we did breaking ground. It was a like urban hip hop. We had whacking.
We had popping. We had everything. Everyone on that stage was so much cooler than I could ever be in my life.
And they had Tarragon main space, sold the hell out of it because it was just energy, energy, energy. And we ended up actually getting selected for next stage after that a couple of years later. So I get when I tell you that my career and my willingness to stay in the arts in Canada is completely due to the Toronto Fringe Festival, that’s just true.
I then went on and kind of as I was doing next stage in that I wound up at the Toronto Arts Council and Toronto Arts Foundation doing their stakeholder relations management and a lot of sort of advocacy profile, talking to artists, talking to politicians, talking to audiences, figuring out what makes the arts tick in Toronto and what makes it work. And it just kept coming back that the programs like the Fringe, these platforms make it possible to keep people from moving to Hamilton. Not that we don’t love Hamilton.
But it’s taken all of our artists because Toronto is unaffordable. So that when I saw the position come out for the Fringe, for the executive director and co-lead position, I. It was an absolute no brainer.
I needed to get in there. I needed to harass them until they gave me an interview. And I’m so thankful that they did.
And that was just sort of how it all came to be. And I had done a bunch of indie producing on the side. That’s how I got to know Curtis and the Gay Prepay team and how they looped me in.
And as I said, we got that Dora nomination for that last show. And and now somehow they let me come and sit here and hang out with you guys.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I mean, you think they’re just little things that you mentioned in that you mentioned St. Vladimir’s, and I remember so many years going to see a show there and being handed a blanket. Yeah, because I think they fixed there. They fixed the air conditioning.
So the blanket wasn’t needed anymore, but it was a freezer for so many years. Yeah, absolutely. That’s that’s I love that story.
I love that story about how, you know, you the exposure to Fringe early and now being a co-lead. Laura, what is your how did you what was your first exposure to Fringe? And how did you end up here?
[Laura Paduch]
Well, I was born. I’m kidding. Well, I will say, though, that I didn’t figure out that coming to theatre, the theatre was where I was going right away.
So I mistakenly did a degree in science first and then spent most of my time. I grew up dancing. So while I went to the University of Western Ontario for my first degree, showed up, UWO, I don’t know, but I go, whoopsies, I don’t even know.
Good thing I’m in theatre. But then there I spent all my time running dance teams. I was just talking about this earlier today and like, yeah, running dance shows and being like, hmm, I think I am not in exactly the right space.
Everyone here is really cool, but they have plans. And I just care about these shows and about being backstage and about theatre. So I moved to Toronto and enrolled at TMU.
You don’t need a degree to get into theatre, but TMU then and still is just land you right in the thick of it. And people are teaching, but they’re working and they are offering new jobs. And that’s exactly what happened.
I was just like immersed in this like rich world. And so many very amazing people were coming to speak to us. Instructors bring in all these guests, artists.
And the person who came and spoke to a class I was in was actually Claire Wyndeen-Bless, our longtime communications manager. She’s with Fringe until 2021. And she had come and spoken about this magical thing where, you know, you’re in theatre school and everyone’s like, get into Fringe, do a Fringe show, work on a Fringe show, work on a summer work show.
Like, here’s how you you want to get experience. You want to meet people. You want to start learning or exploring your skills.
And it’ll come back and enrich your education here. Go work on shows in these amazing festivals in the summer. And so a series of amazing events led me to meet people.
It’s a funny sort of like someone I worked with on a show introduced me to someone and they got me a job and then they were like, hey, now that we know you, do you want to work on this project? It’s a next stage show. Oh, my goodness.
I’m now going to blank on everyone’s names, but it’s a show called Memorial that Mark Crawford wrote. Oof, I failed it. And I was the stage manager on that.
And that was like, we can do this. We can meet these people. We can have this magical, special thing and be at factory and be cold in the tent, but also cozy in the tent and we’re in this very hot building.
And what’s happening? Oh, all these people are here in the dead of winter to do this. And so that was it.
It was like a real like throw in and immersion into the theatre scene, the Toronto theatre scene, the independent theatre scene right away. And that’s what you need is that spark. You find your people and you’re like, oh, we’re all nerds for this together.
And how cool is that? And I’m just going to keep chasing that. I was on a track of stage management and production management.
And again, I’m just going to keep praising, you know, the program, the theatre program at TMU, because another instructor was like, do people in here know that you can be an arts manager and you can run the finances and the business and all of these skills and all your obsession with spreadsheets can be put to use? And I was like, that’s something we could be looking at. And that was one Mitchell Marcus, who was the artistic at the time, I believe, artistic producer director was his title at the then called Acting Upstage Company.
Yeah. And so helped set me on a path towards understanding that general management, arts management. This was something where all these skills I could bring.
And and I did a Metcalf internship with Acting Upstage. Shout out Metcalf. Shout out Metcalf internship.
Never go away. It has changed so many people’s lives. And it is such an important, important thing in our sector in a sector that is underfunded for that kind of supportive career development.
We’re just jamming them all in here, Phil. We just got to get all the shout outs in. Never go away, Metcalf, please.
But they know it. And I we praise it all the time. Fringe, since being here, we’ve benefited from I think five Metcalf interns.
We’re so, so lucky, so fortunate to be able to just work with and help launch these incredible people. Anyhow, yeah, set me on that path. And and it was interesting, you know, working there and figuring out where I was going to go next.
I was like, you know, I there’s something there’s something about the reach that a place like Toronto Fringe has and impact the immediacy, the autonomy, but also this like this ability to support so much and so many of volume of it was just it just drew me. And I was like, oh, it’d be really interesting to like end up there one day. Like, I think that’s where I’d like to, you know, like find my way.
And not having, you know, having worked on just shows in the festival I worked on a show called The Flanders, Sofia Fabili’s wonderful, hilarious show. I just kept getting like picked up by like some ace people. I worked on Agamemnon, Nicolas Bion in Next Stage.
Like I like not even knowing the sort of like Canadian iconic, you know, artists and creators that I was getting a chance to start to work with and cut my indie teeth with. And and then I actually within my internship with Musical Stage was able to be a part of the Life After the first premiere at the Toronto Fringe when Life After won the first inaugural Adams Prize for Musical Theatres in 2016. We all were trying to look this up and remember it.
And yeah, Robert McQueen said, I think you should you should work on this with us and let’s let’s do this together. And so I joined that special team. This is meandering.
These are all my like first encounters, but like, you know, like everyone Fringe to to keep saying how we all are explaining this joyful, unique, like there’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like being through a Fringe. I think it’s the density.
It’s a Christmas. It’s a holiday feeling, but it’s like a camp feeling like it’s more than even like that show sort of like show camp and show love and everything that you bond. But it’s like so intense because it’s so piled on and it’s so like all at once.
And so I’ve been so fortunate to be part of not just always these such amazing people, but really successful shows. And so really like talented and like heavy hitter shows. And that in itself is another sort of like nails in this.
That’s maybe the wrong way to go. But the bolstering of this feeling post my internship, I I went to Fujian. I was actually working with David at Fujian.
And it was a year where he and one Chris Stanton now showed up executive director of Hamilton Fringe at the time was the artistic producer of Arc of the Actors Repertory Company. And we forged a sort of co-management structure where I took on co-general managing both Fujian and Arc. We can talk another podcast about the success or learnings of that.
And then this the job for managing director came up. Kelly Straughan moved on from Fringe and then Lucy Evely was putting her hand up for executive director. And it’s funny, I had seen her that summer and she was like, I think I’m going to apply.
And I was like, in my head, I was like, oh, if she does like. I will apply for the managing director job, and I would love to join that team and be a part of a team of incredible people, badass people, women led a group that that were running the Fringe. And then that happened.
And then I did. And then they were like, this is a no brainer. And I was like, what is happening?
And here we are. And it’s been a blink. It’s been both so much.
And then also, so I’ve been with the Fringe fortunate to be stewarding this place and facilitating this platform since 2018. Next is 2018 was my first ever festival. And no festivals have been the same in that time.
And yeah, and now to be at this stage where we’re on a new chapter, this chapter of co-leadership and and being able to face the like time that is 2025 and beyond, but side by side with the amazing partner that I have in Rachel Kennedy. We’re blessed. We are absolutely blessed.
[Phil Rickaby]
It is as you guys are telling me the stories of how you came to Fringe, I’m kind of reminded of of I went I was in theatre school in ancient times. It was the 19. There was 19 in front of the numbers there.
So a very long time ago. And when I was in theatre school, they essentially were like the idea of self-producing was not on anybody’s radar. It was, in fact, discouraged.
Don’t do that. Don’t do that. But now.
It is an essential part of any theatre career, the self-producing, the self like like creating your own work, and that is in large part due to the Fringe Festival. I don’t even think when I start, it’s possible that when I started theatre school, there was no Fringe Festival in Toronto.
[Laura Paduch]
Well, you don’t have to out yourself, but Toronto has been around since 1989.
[Phil Rickaby]
So, yes. So it was just a baby. Then, but like so it was so new.
But as Fringe has grown in importance, it’s become a central pillar of of a theatre career. Would either of you like to talk about what it gives to a career to be creating your own show and and and and to be part of the Fringe in that way?
[Rachel Kennedy]
I’ll speak a little bit about it, I think. The biggest thing is confidence. The Fringe is this soft landing space where you can try things, take a damn risk, do a bad show if you’ve never produced before and somebody asks you to come on and you think, I don’t know how I’m going to sell this.
Try. Try. You will not go into debt doing a Fringe show.
We have so much subsidies coming up and supporting you. And we have a community that if you get panned, you’re going to sell at least 10 tickets from a bad review because people are going to say, I can’t be that bad. I’m going to come check it out.
There’s always a landing spot at the Fringe. And I think that’s the most exciting thing for folks who are starting to to get out there and produce and try. I learned a lot as a producer by co-producing Fringe shows with folks.
I got in with Aaron Jan pretty early on. And the things that he taught me about venue selection and really strategic sort of sales and marketing, it was great. It was wonderful.
And it truly helped change my scope as a producer. Same thing with Curtis Tabrink. Same thing with Izad Ademady.
Like you just you get to produce alongside these brilliant people who probably don’t yet know that they’re brilliant. And you just absorb. And if you make a mistake, it’s OK.
You’re in a safe sort of held position. So I think that’s a huge benefit.
[Phil Rickaby]
It is. It is kind of huge. You know, I know people and I’ve been in bad Fringe shows, but nobody’s career has been ruined because they took a risk at Fringe.
There are people who have had their careers made at Fringe, but no one’s career has been ruined because they did a bad show at Fringe.
[Laura Paduch]
You know, there’s something that it’s it’s so remarkable because, you know, we didn’t we didn’t build this, but we have the privilege of stewarding it. And they’re the legacy here of of we all are benefiting from whoever those people back in the whenever in that and borough who are like, we got to make our own. And what’s reached Canada, what’s reached us is this non-juried, a hundred percent non-censored thing.
And having all that means like, oh, we know the parameters. We know we know how to play within this. And so I love that that observation of like, you can’t you can’t.
I mean, you could try. Like, I don’t want to challenge anyone to try and ruin your career, like see if you can prove this, prove us wrong. But because it’s like the expectation is built in, audiences are coming, knowing that they’re not confused by like what like, oh, we had a show here that like this is so confusing to happen at this time.
And like we’re at the Fringe Festival, which means we don’t know what we’re going to get, but we know to expect the unexpected. It’s probably written on one of these posters behind me. Expect the unexpected.
Take a chance. We that’s one of the mottos. The audiences take a chance.
And having that be a part of the experience of coming to Fringe means like that’s that fosters that’s that cycle. That’s like that means an artist, any artist can take a chance. They can try it.
And there’s something about the like the immediacy of the reaction, the immediate how quick it happens. It’s it’s a wild ride and it’s it’s a lot and you learn a lot. But you have you’re going to have no choice but to learn something and also experience it and feel it and see the response and see if I made that decision and will it work?
We’ll find out immediately if it’s going to work. You know, these aren’t these elongated, truncated experiences. And that’s save that for, you know, the big companies, the big, long professional productions.
This is something that you can try it out. You can get it on feet. You can try out producing things.
You can try out marketing things and you’re going to find out so fast. And there’s something about that that is contributes to, I think, that like that that gets you in, you know, when you say what what are artists getting when they’re like coming here for the first time or when this is an experience that they get to have early on or at any time? And then what brings them back?
And I think it’s it’s elements of all those things. And and then and then the realization you can take a risk because the realization that the community are just here for you. There were just it’s just a celebration of of storytelling and of connecting and of art for art’s sake.
And everyone’s like, hey, you tried, you got up, you did something like like kudos to you, because it’s brave. It’s brave to make art right now. It’s brave to be doing it.
It is brave to commit to this life, this vocation when humanity absolutely needs it. But capitalism have made it in. Rachel tells us like we shouldn’t, you know, we shouldn’t be doing it.
And yeah, the machine of it, the fastness of it. Like we didn’t invent it, but we’re so lucky to continue to steward that and help just make that reach more, be more accessible, be bigger, be funner, be safer, be consistent and just be great and be able to deliver that opportunity in that container is is so cool.
[Phil Rickaby]
I often think that that, you know, you’re talking about celebrating people. You did the show like that is that is such a thing to be to be celebrated for everybody. Like it doesn’t matter if you were a hit of the fringe or not.
You did it. And and sometimes I think you can get caught up at the end. And we didn’t do as well as I thought we might do or what I hoped.
But like, but you did it. And that’s the important thing. The other people who do it, the people that I always love are those people who take a risk in the early days of the fringe.
They don’t wait until the final weekend to see what the hits are. They’re out there from the time the fringe opens for the first few days into that first weekend. They’re experimenting.
They’re taking risks on shows like they don’t know what’s going to be a hit yet either. So they’re just like seeing a show that might be lightning in a bottle. And I love those early audiences.
I think they’re the I think they’re the they’re the pioneers of the fringe. They’re taking risks.
[Laura Paduch]
Yeah, I think there’s a high to chase of being one of the first to discover. You know, there there are layers on layers of a fringe, fringe identity and fringe personalities who are who’s the audience. That’s like the volunteers who are a volunteer audience, one in the same.
And they are some of those early. We’re trying it. We’re here.
We’re so proud of these artists for trying it. But also we’re chasing maybe a magical Easter egg of discovering being one of the first to see this show that just goes off to the races and launches right to the end to that final Sunday. I think that’s absolutely a game and something that people are coming here to seek and to be one of the first to be like to discover it here and say, I was there in the beginning.
I saw I saw those early. I saw that show where that wild thing happened and the lights went out. But that was so much fun.
And then the audience all just turn on their phones and and we finished it out. Like, yeah, everything.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Laura Paduch]
So magic.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, I I still talk about the time that I saw Kim’s convenience in its first like that fringe, like and that’s a show that like it was hard enough to get tickets to that. But like it was exactly what everybody said it was. And those are the moments where you could still talk about years later, about what it was like sitting in that theatre before anybody knew what it was.
As as we’re sort of like coming to the end of our time. Rachel, this is your second fringe festival as as the executive director. Laura, this is not your first rodeo as the general director.
This what are you both most looking forward to of this fringe festival? It doesn’t have to be a show. It can be just one of the things you’re happy to see come together.
What is it that you’re most excited about?
[Rachel Kennedy]
Can I give to you?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, there’s the rules here.
[Rachel Kennedy]
No, I love rules, though. OK, so I think my two are kind of linked because they go to something that happened last year. We had a musician who had never done a show before, got in the lottery and came through with Bull, Brown Boy Bull.
And this show did so well. It got picked up by Best of Fringe Orangeville. And it went up, sold out the houses up there as well.
And now they’re looking at touring it. And this is somebody who had been a musician, but had never done verbal storytelling on stage. I’d never thought to meld these worlds before.
And that success and that audience reaction of, no, we want this. We want to hear your story. That’s what I’m looking for.
I want to know who is hitting the stage for the first time this year and is going to discover something completely new about themselves. And in addition to that, on the note of the Best of Fringe Orangeville, I can’t wait to see that come back. I know last year they began selling tickets for their picks of Best of Fringe Orangeville before selecting the shows.
They sold one third of the house out before they had even announced what the shows were, because the community up there was like, oh, well, we we trust their choices on Best of Fringe. We want to see these shows. And due to that success and the way that all of these programs are going, we’ve actually got a return to Best of Fringe North York.
So we’re partnering with T.O. Live again to also do a holdover series there. So it’s just this like incredible homecoming, more opportunities for these artists. I can’t wait.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. I love the Orangeville Best of Fringe, having been selected with my show a couple of years ago to do that. I love the opportunity that they provide for shows.
And I love how it’s grown in Orangeville, like for them to be able to sell out a third of the performances before even announcing the shows. That shows that that audience up there trusts the choices that they’re making so much. Laura, what are you looking forward to?
[Laura Paduch]
I’m going to try and keep it to one. Oh, and oh, there’s so many. I have our hot off the presses program guide right in front of me.
I know. And I’m like, oh, she did it. I was like, should we tease it?
Well, it’s out there. They’re coming. They’re landing.
So I don’t even because there’s 108 shows. How do we even start to decide how to point out? Look at them all.
Everything’s great. What I’m honestly, yes, yes. And to everything Rachel just said, because that magic is magic.
And I’m really excited. More on the word magic of this hub. We don’t Toronto.
Toronto hasn’t had this yet. And I’m so excited to discover with everybody for us all to be in this joy together of of a being of discovering the feeling of having a hub and five venues at our fingertips and then like ancillary venues, just like a steps away, like really building this central piece for Toronto. Toronto as a city.
So difficult. So spread out. So traffic, so busy, so much going on.
And so I think there’s going to be some just like the joy in realizing like this is we have this and we’re offering this and we get to have this at Toronto Fringe and everyone gets to experience that and and go from check out this kids show and check out this solo show and then go into the Michael Young and see a huge musical show and then all be steps away from our patio and in the courtyard and the hub in the cafe.
I think that is what I’m I’m just looking forward to like. That Christmas alighting us all up and being there and really feeling all this all this work that we’re putting into it and all this anticipation and excitement and arriving and welcoming everybody in and meeting everybody that is in distillery, but also bringing all of the Fringe community down there and just, yeah, bringing Fringe to that corner of the city.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. On the topic of that, that program, which you teased. I don’t know of anybody because the the video version might people might not see it, but I saw it.
I for me, the printed program is the thing like I love the printed program so much. I you know, you could I’ll browse on the website, but it’s not Fringe. And I haven’t made my picks until I’ve held that book and gone through it.
It’s such an integral part of the show. So or of the whole festival. And so I’m really looking forward to getting one of those in my hands as well.
[Laura Paduch]
They’ll be landing. I’m just going to say quickly that they’ll be landing. And we try to also indicate if you’re like, where do I find one?
You can go to our office. We’re at 100 Broadview Avenue. Currently available to people to stop by and come pick up a program.
But also we share a list wherever they go. We share that list on our website so you can always check out there. And that’s when you’ll be first to know where they’re landing and when they’re landing and how you can get your hands on one.
They’re still warm. They’re still fresh.
[Phil Rickaby]
Wow.
[Rachel Kennedy]
And for the first time this year, for people who don’t want to travel out to one of the places that we are placing them down around the city, we are going to offer them for purchase and shipping out to you personally on our website so you can come for free. Come to our office. Come visit us.
They’re available right now there. We’ll have volunteers distributing them soon. And then, yeah, if you want to buy one on our website, we will make that available.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. Absolutely. Laura, I’ve been sort of obsessed with the the the posters behind you, partially because there’s the the Honest Ed’s themed poster that’s right behind you.
And that was one of my favorite patios for years was I felt like that was a particular period in the fringe where it felt like a like like a home for a number of years. And I just sort of like I love watching the history of the of the fringe in poster form just any time that we get to see glimpses of it. It’s like a wave of nostalgia each time.
[Laura Paduch]
Truly. Yeah. Yeah.
I’ve pulled out these. I’m going to change my angle. Hopefully that doesn’t mess anything up too much.
And these are all I think these are from the I call them by like their executive director era. So the Gideon era, I believe, is this logo by the people, for the people, right? We didn’t know that Fringe is a socialist festival.
It is. Yeah. More rootin tootin than highfalutin.
[Rachel Kennedy]
Very Gideon.
[Laura Paduch]
And then there’s no theatre festival like this. Such an honor of of those Honest Ed’s days. 2016, that’s the life after year.
I have more on the other side. I won’t I won’t make us all nauseous by flipping my camera around. But exactly.
I love I just love this curated like glimpse into this like kooky, amazing, creative history because the posters are as varied and as like different from one another as there are shows in the festival. They they and it’s just such an interesting like what was cool. What was funny?
What was like the thing at the time? And and I love that. I love that example of of an essence of a feeling of like the personality of the festival and how it it’s it’s still here and it’s still as important and has such a strong personality as ever and and and has such a strong identity and feeling.
I’ll continue to tease it because, you know, this is the the look of it. And still look at these cool people.
[Phil Rickaby]
I’m not only going to point out the cool people, but I love that that phrase that you have on the front, the place for indie theatre and performance like that is that is the essence of Fringe as far as, you know, like we’ve been talking about. So I love to see that on the on the front of the program as well. Rachel, Laura, thank you so much for taking some time to talk to me today.
I really appreciate it. Anybody who’s listened to this show before knows how much I love the Toronto Fringe. So thank you so much for giving me time today.
[Laura Paduch]
Thank you for having me. Oh, my gosh, it’s been such a treat.
