Sarah Rankin
Sarah Rankin is an actor educator, and the director of the Fundy Fringe.
Twitter: @sarahrankin03
www.fundyfringefestival.com
Twitter: @fundyfringefest
Transcript
Welcome to episode 142 of Stageworthy. I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast about people in Canadian theatre, featuring conversations with actors, directors, playwrights, and more.
And this episode is a podcast extra for the Fundy Fringe. I’m in St. John, New Brunswick. I arrived yesterday and I got to see some of Third Shift, the one-night festival of public art stuff.
I’m settling in and planning to go out and do some postering tomorrow. But today, I got the chance to sit down with Sarah Rankin, the director of the Fundy Fringe. Monday is kind of the big, big day and it’s only Saturday right now, so I’m feeling pretty good.
We got a lot of tech rehearsals and tech load-ins to get done in a very short period of time, but you know what? I’m surprisingly calm. Is Monday the big day because… That’s when the preview night is. Yeah.
Exactly. So everybody’s gonna shove into the upstairs space and we’re going to be legally over the limit of people we’re allowed to have in that space and don’t tell the fire marshal. Exactly.
It’s all fine. If you’re listening too bad, so sad, ha ha. What is the capacity upstairs? 132.
132? Yeah. How do people usually come up to the preview? How many? Is it like an over-packed house all the time? Yeah, I mean standing room only for sure. We set out about anywhere between 80 to 90 chairs and there’s probably about another 50 plus standing about.
We had one year where people couldn’t even get into the space. They were standing in the stairwell and like down the hallway and you couldn’t move. I had to like create a special little alleyway because I had to get the artists out.
I was like, hey, you have to push aside. The artists have to come through to get on stage. I mean, you know, I mean, there’s definitely worse things than having something be too popular.
Well, yeah, exactly. It definitely is probably the most popular event that we host. It’s one that I think St. John really likes.
One, because it’s free. Who doesn’t love free? And two, the past few years we’ve been able to, with our beer partnership, have free beer available. So that’s always been another big piece that people seem to like.
So free show, free beer. Fringes, there’s a few fringes that do a preview night or a preview day in the case of, in Edmonton, they have a big parade and then they end with a preview. But Montreal does a preview and Hamilton does it.
They really give a nice flavour. Just even as a performer, I’ve seen previews and been like, I’ve got to see that. Yeah, and I’ve seen some festivals that do previews over multiple days.
I think Edmonton does that, where they have previews on several days, just because there’s so many artists, they can’t all squeeze them into one. Well, they are very draconian about their timing. Oh, are they? Okay.
They’re like, you go over, they cut the sound, they’re like, get out. Oh, man. So they’re like, in terms of their preview day, they’re very much.
We said you had 60 seconds and you have 60 seconds. That starts the moment you get on the stage. Oh, man.
So there’s a lot of like. See, ours is about three minutes and all we do is kind of flashlights. When you have like a one minute queue, it’s like, okay, we’re East coasters, right? We don’t dare, dare be cruel about it.
We’ll dance around and be like, it’d be nice if you might wrap it up soon. Like that might be great. I mean, I don’t want to pressure you or anything like that, but if you’d like to, you know, it’s fine.
It’s very maritime, but the whole thing. That’s fine. So, I mean, there’s all the, there’s the, the, uh, the Logan’s and techs today, tomorrow, Monday.
Yeah. What is your job at this, at this point in the festival? At this point in the festival, my job basically becomes, um, you know, just making sure that it all actually happens. And I’m, I’m always been fortunate that I have a Supreme team around me that, that makes my life easier in the sense that, you know, we have a crew loading into the concert hall at the interaction school performing arts right now.
I went down there and just kind of, you know, had my eyes on everything. Do you need help with this? Can I, I can plug things in. I can do that.
But ultimately they’re good to go. So I was able to step out from there. Um, there’s definitely gonna be a busier day tomorrow though.
There’ll probably have to be a couple of things that I’ll have to just observe, but ultimately like the tech volunteers are amazing. The tech crew is amazing. So they’re, they’re making my life easy, which is good.
Good. Yeah. So up to this point just comes a game of promoting and making sure people know about the different shows and that everybody, everything is in order.
Yeah. All the ducks are in there. You guys have a lot of, uh, like I’ve heard a couple of radio, uh, commercials already and stuff like that.
So you guys, uh, not a lot of fringes get have radio commercials. Yeah. I, we’re really, really fortunate, which is, you know, it’s crazy to think that, you know, tiny, tiny, tiny little festival in the East coast and the stuff that we’re able to get promotion wise rivals, some of the larger festivals, which is cool, but we’ve been really fortunate to have a partnership with the 97.3, the wave and with local 107.3, the campus radio station.
And they’re just, you know, we love working with them. And it was, it was a decision a few years ago, because it got to the point where I was going in and recording the ads and like, Hey, come check out the Fundy fringe. And I got to a point where it’s just like, Oh my gosh, I bet.
St. John is sick and tired of hearing my voice on the radio going Fundy fringe. And so I said, I’m sick and tired. Can we get the artist to record the ads instead? And they were like, yeah, let’s do that.
And so it’s just become a tradition now that the artists who are available and can do it, get in the booth and record the ads themselves, because who better to talk about the show than the artists themselves. Right. That’s the thing about fringe.
I mean, most of the art is coming through. I don’t know necessarily much about the show. It’s all, you know, shades of gray to me.
So to have the artists go in and speak to their show is far more powerful than anything that I could do. Yeah, that’s great. How many years has the Fundy fringe been running? This is year six.
Year six. Year six. Have you been with the fringe since the beginning? I have, but not in the capacity of the festival director.
I’ve only been the festival director for five of the six years. The very, very first year, I was what we call a venue captain. So I was in charge of the space room right now, the BMO Studio Theatre.
So I took care of all the volunteers that were here. I took care of all the artists that were in here and things like that. We didn’t have a director that year.
It had gone and changed a couple of hands. It had started out with a good friend of mine, Judd Crandall. He was going to be the festival director.
And then he promptly realized that he just didn’t have the time to take on such a big event. And so he stepped down and they brought in a guy named Shane McGee. And Shane was a dear friend of the two chairs of our board.
And he unfortunately passed away very abruptly and out of the blue at a very young age. And so that first year, there wasn’t a festival director. Our two chairs, Sandra Bell and Pauline Cronin, took over and made it happen.
And then after the festival was done, the decision was made that we need a festival director. We need somebody to hire full-time permanent to do this. And so they asked me.
I don’t know why. I had some previous experience running a children’s theatre festival in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. And I have a theatre degree and I’ve been doing theatre as a playwright, as a director, as an actor for several years.
So I guess maybe it was a combination of having that skill of managing an event, but also the skills of understanding the perspective of the performer, what you guys are going through and how difficult it is to do what you guys do and have some respect for that. Do you remember, I mean, you weren’t running the festival in its first year. Do you know what the impetus was to start A Fringe in St. John? I think there was a couple of different factors.
Up to that point, we had had another festival that we called Theatre on the Edge. And it wasn’t a fringe. It was one where we were bringing artists in.
We were scouring for artists and, oh, this looks like a unique piece. Let’s bring that in. Let’s do that.
So a bit more juried, a bit more of the traditional style, I guess you would think of a theatre festival. And I think it just got to the point where they didn’t feel that that model was going to be sustainable for very, very long. And so they took a year off to reevaluate and it came to the decision of maybe the fringe model would be more in tune with what we need to be doing.
Applied for CAF membership. They accepted us. We did a festival and it’s just been growing ever since.
Much more so than what Theatre on the Edge was. I think Theatre on the Edge was starting to go on a decline a little bit. And so fringe, that model has really lifted it back up.
One of the things that I’ve always appreciated about the fringe model is the lottery. And yes, it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating when you don’t get into them.
And you know, the vast majority of fringes in Canada, there’s a lot of people you don’t get in. However, there’s something super exciting about the democracy of it, that it’s open. Like anybody has the same chance as anybody else to get into the fringe.
And that’s why I love it so much. And yes, the lottery does, you know, it breaks my heart. It really does.
Cause you know, you have, we only have 20 slots, very, very tiny fringe. And then we have like 70 people applying. And so there’s a huge majority of people that just don’t get in.
And I see those applications and I look at them and I’m just like, Oh my gosh, I really hope that they don’t just say, well, I didn’t get into the fringe, rip up the application, throw it in the garbage and get rid of the script. I really hope that those artists take and take it and run with it somehow or reapply later on. Cause you know, just cause you don’t get in one year doesn’t mean you’re never going to get it.
So it is stressful for me, especially with the local ones I find. Cause a lot of them are close personal friends of mine. It should be more difficult when the people that you actually know, because it’s such a small community here, uh, as far as theatre goes, you like, you know, the work that they’re doing.
Exactly. And we’re fortunate though, that there’s, there’s been enough education done on what is fringe that the artists get it. They know that it’s not personal, that it’s strictly a lottery and I have no control over it whatsoever, which I know when I talk to other arts groups in the city, they are always shocked to find out that it’s a lottery and that I have no, I really have no artistic control over what gets put up on the stage.
And that’s why it’s so cool to me. And they are just stunned. Like, aren’t you stressed out? Aren’t you completely freaked? What if it’s all terrible, but it doesn’t end up being terrible at all.
I know, but I mean, it would be rare for it all to be terrible. There’s authors, you know, in larger fringes, there’s a, uh, you know, there’s a, uh, a certain ratio to good versus crap, but that is the exciting thing is that, is that like anybody could get in somebody who’s a pro and somebody who makes their first script. Exactly.
Exactly. So, and that’s, that’s the joy of it too. One of the, one of the local artists in the lineup this year, I I’m just blown away by her courage.
She’s this lovely older lady named Valerie Bauer. Uh, she is, has never performed before. She’s never written anything before she self-professes.
I am not a playwright. I am not a performer. I’m just somebody who has a story that I want to tell.
And she’s, I don’t know how old she is, but she’s, she’s gotta be probably in her sixties, maybe Valerie, if you’re listening, I’m sorry if I’m messing up your age, but you know, she just wants to tell the story about her experiences with her grandfather and how much she loved her grandfather. And he was, I guess, a pretty kooky individual and had some interesting life stories himself. So, uh, I thought, Oh my gosh, this is wonderful.
This is so cool. People are going to love this. And the fact that she’s inexperienced, I think is what draws me more so to it because I want to see what an inexperienced person can do given the right environments and circumstances, right.
You’re putting someone inexperienced in an environment with professionals and with tech in a theatre space, what’s going to happen? I’m so stoked. Sarah, what is your theatre origin story? How did you, how did you get to here? How did I get here? I don’t remember. I woke up this morning now.
Do you remember what was the first interest to you in the theatre? I think, um, I can remember my mom egging me on in middle school because for the longest time, when I was super little, like elementary school age, I was crazy shy. Um, and then something happened in middle school and I just turned into this like crazy teenager and hormones were coursing through me. And I just had suddenly developed a personality.
And my mom thought, you know what, you should try some theatre. Cause I had already, I had, I had done a lot of like choir and vocal stuff. I sang for years and years.
And so mom thought, okay, let’s get her into musical theatre. And so that was kind of my launching point was a high school musical. I did bye-bye birdie when I was in grade nine and I just, something about it just lit a fire under me and I became addicted.
And I did like two, three shows a year and then ran off to Mount Allison and got a theatre degree and did four shows a year there. And it’s just been going ever since I, I don’t, I can’t even really put my finger on it. What it was that initially hooked me in.
I don’t know if it was the community of being around other people who thought and felt the same way that I did about the arts. I don’t know if it was, yay, people are going to stare at me for a while. And I get that attention because we have to be honest as performers.
We love the attention. Oh yeah. I love it.
Um, so, I mean, there’s probably that part too, that, you know, the attention seeking aspect of being a teenager and wanting someone to pay attention to you and feel special. Right. And I think theatre provided that for me at a, at a crucial time in my development at an age where, you know, you do need that a little bit more attention, I guess, you know, and attention in the right way, getting positive and getting attention for things that are good for getting up on stage and having that courage to do something outside the box and to sing a song or to do a dance or to take on and put on a crazy costume.
Right. Um, getting that positive praise for stepping outside the box and stepping outside your comfort zone. I think that’s a really good way to get positive attention.
Right. When, when you, uh, got your theatre degree, where did you go from there? Did you come back to St. John? No, I got an education degree. Okay.
Yeah. I went off to Presque Isle, Maine and I got an education degree. Um, mostly because in the Maritimes, there is this idea, I think that great, you want to be an actor, you want to do theatre.
That’s fantastic, but you gotta have a backup plan. And so education became my backup plan. Right.
And I was kind of inspired. My dad was a teacher, um, uh, a friend of mine now, Pam Halstead, who, uh, runs, uh, the playwright Atlanta resource centre. And she’s an actress as well.
Same thing. She got herself an education degree as well and did some supply teaching here and there. And so that’s what I did first.
I went off and I got an education degree. I don’t think it’s uncommon. I don’t think it’s just a Maritime thing where people are like, that’s great, but get a backup plan.
There’s a lot of parents that say that to their kids. Um, so you got your, your, your education degree and then what happened? And then I started teaching. Yeah.
I went and theatre became more of a hobby that I did in the evenings and did with the community stuff, which, you know, for a while really frustrated me. Cause I thought, Oh God, community theatre. Who am I? I’m an actress.
I am better than this, you know, very Norman Desmond about the whole thing. Um, but acting is acting, you know, whether or not you’re getting paid for it doesn’t suddenly diminish the quality of it necessarily. It doesn’t necessarily diminish what you can bring to the table.
So I, I think that was, it was enriching to kind of have that moment to step back and realize, okay, yeah, sure. You’ve got a theatre degree. Yeah, sure.
You know what you’re doing, but don’t get an ego about it. And so I think doing that little bit of community theatre for a while was a, a nice kind of a healthy slap in the face, healthy slap of reality. We’re kind of funny about community theatre in North America.
Um, it, I know in the great Britain is like, that’s how you, a lot of how a lot of people start their career. It’s like, it’s part of the fabric. Everybody does the community theatre.
That’s just the thing that happens and people go to see it and things like that. And here we’re, we’re, Oh, it’s amateur theatre. Yeah.
I hear that so much in St. John, so much that, Oh my gosh, where I was at. I was having dinner with my husband, I think. And, uh, they were talking about a production that had recently been done at the Imperial theatre.
And I had to listen in because I could not, couldn’t not listen. They’re starting to talk about a production that I had friends in. Yeah.
I’m going to listen in what’s going on with this. And they were like, Oh, you know, it was good for an amateur production. And I was just like, I just want to launch myself out of my booth right now, go over there and be like, tell me more, tell me more about this amateur production.
You must have a theatre degree. Do you, do you do theatre that, that bothers me when people who, um, you know, they think they can, they think that amateur theatre is somehow of a lower grade than what is professional theatre. I’ve seen some really bad professional theatre.
Let me tell you say some terrible professional there. And I’ve seen some beautiful, wonderful, amazing amateur theatre. So I think it’s just, it’s so cruel to diminish the amateur because they’re not getting paid.
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. I agree with that.
When did you start, did you go from teaching to, did you find your way back to, uh, being an actor more or did you teach? And then it’s when I, when I decided to move here to St. John, I, I basically decided that, you know what, I have to get out of this home space. I have to get out of Charlotte County. Um, and a big catalyst for that was my husband.
Actually, I started dating him. He was living here in St. John. I just said, screw it.
And I moved to St. John and I moved in with him after three months of dating him. And it was from there that, you know, started to connect with people here in the art scene. And, you know, a friend of mine, uh, Cass was writing a play and it was like, it’d be perfect for it.
Let’s get you involved. And so I did his play. And then suddenly somebody else was like, Hey, you want to be a part of this? Yeah.
I do want to be a part of that. And suddenly somebody else let’s be a part of this. And it just spiraled really quickly.
And it went from doing a silly little two hander show in a tiny little, um, a festival that we call script happens to doing main stage productions at the Imperial. And then suddenly it was touring. I’ve, I’ve done two shows that I’ve toured with the St. John theatre company.
Uh, every good boy deserves favor and of mice and men. And so both of those opportunities have been just fantastic, you know, to finally see a paycheck for acting. It’s, it’s mind blowing, right? It’s mind blowing that first, I mean, the first paycheck I would have got for acting would have been when I was still in university.
I was part of a touring theatre troupe there called Tintamar. And so that first paycheck that you get as an actor, you just want to like photograph it and frame it and be like, I can do it. I can be paid for this.
Yeah. Um, and so you’ve been the, the, uh, the director of the Fundie Fringe for five of it, six years. Um, what is it that keeps you coming back as a executive director? Yeah.
I was asking myself that the same question the other day, like, why do I keep doing this? Cause there are definitely, there are the ups and downs, I think with everything there’s ups and downs. And I think that that was the piece that I had to keep telling myself is you’re always going to have ups and downs with any job that you have. And so I think what keeps me coming back to the fringe is, you know, the artists themselves and this wonderful network of people that have suddenly become part of the fabric of who I am now, you know, over these, you know, even the six years, the year I wasn’t a festival director, I was just a venue captain.
Um, and I made some really good friends from Ontario, uh, who were doing a show called Wolves are greater than boys. It was a Corey Thiebert and, uh, Tony, I forget his last name, unfortunately. Um, and they brought me cupcakes, my last shift that I did with them.
And I was like, why, why’d you bring me cupcakes? And they’re like, because you’ve done such great things for us. And I was like, okay, this is cool. These are, these are cool people.
And so having that network now, not only the artists, but all the other fringe festival directors and just this wonderful family that ties it all together. I think that’s what keeps me coming back is, is that family of artists and people that really make the festival happen. Have you done any fringe festivals or seen any fringe festivals before you started working with fun before? I hadn’t been in any, but my friends and I, because I would go to Mount Allison and Halifax fringe starts right at the beginning of the school year.
Right. And so the tradition was always get yourself moved into your apartment. Classes are going to start in a few days, few weeks, everyone hop in the cars and go down to Halifax fringe shows.
So I’ve been to the Halifax fringe quite a few times. I’ve been to the Island fringe a few times, Toronto fringe. Yeah.
And it’s, everything has their own little flavour. And I try to like beg, borrow and steal as much as I can from some of the other festivals. It’s tough with the bigger ones.
I wish I could borrow some things from the Toronto fringe, but there’s just no way to make them happen on the scale of St. John. But there’s definitely things that I’ve seen, Halifax fringe do that I’ve borrowed, stolen, what have you. Um, and I hope that, you know, I hope that they can take stuff from us too.
I just actually ran into the former chair of the Halifax fringe, uh, on Thursday night, he was in St. John visiting his family, ran into him at outside of a bar. And I thought, Oh my gosh. So we got to talking and he was like, I can’t believe the presence you guys have here.
How did you get this? And I’m thinking you run Halifax fringe. You want to know how I’m doing So that was kind of a neat feeling to think, Oh, we’re doing something cool. I feel like you, your, your, your presence that you have on the streets is pretty, uh, pretty good.
And not something that I have really even seen in a Toronto fringe, something that I might see in a Winnipeg or Edmonton. Really? A lot of the, you have a lot of the street post banners. You’ve got the big sign at the top of the park there.
And, uh, yeah, generally you’ve got a lot of, a lot of visibility, which I think is super good. Yeah. Well, we try to be visible because the, my logic was, well, if I can’t get them to understand what fringe is, I’m just going to throw it in their face.
And I think there’s a lot of people who attend the fringe who still don’t know what a fringe is. Um, but I’ve noticed that especially in new Brunswick and it’s, it’s clear that whatever we’re doing, we’re doing something right. Because there have been more situations in the past year where as an organization is calf, we’ve had to send out letters to new Brunswick based organizations who are using the term fringe without being a fringe festival.
Right. And because it’s copyright, we have to kind of be like, Hey, you can’t use that word, um, without talking to us first. And so there have been more instances of that in new Brunswick than any other province so far, which is both, you know, kind of a problem.
Cause it’s kind of annoying to have to write up those cease and desist letters, but it’s also really cool. Cause that tells me that word about fringe is getting out like wildfire on the East coast, which I think is going to be really healthy. I would love for someday for the East coast of Canada to rival what the West coast has for fringe festivals.
Cause the West coast fringes are so huge, right? Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, they’re massive, massive festivals. And all the artists seem to, once they get to Toronto, they pack up their bags and they go straight West. Well, the, I mean, the, the, yes, it has always been an East to West, um, journey.
Although after Edmonton, I see there’s always, there are people who go, there’s like two splits of people who are going to go East and people who are going to go West. Um, and some people just finish it at Edmonton because it’s summer’s over. Hit the big ones.
So now I’m going to go. Um, is there like, what would you, if you were to try to describe what is different about the, about, uh, the Fundie fringe, what is it that makes the Fundie fringe unique? I think it’s, it’s the fact that we’re so small that we can really be more, um, present for not only the patrons and the volunteers, but for the artists. And that, I think that’s the thing I hear the most.
I was actually talking to, uh, Franny, the Kev Bennett the other day, and she was saying, she’s like, Fundie fringe is my favourite, favourite fringe. And she’s like, you’re crazy. And it comes down to the fact that, you know, the, the people that make up the festival are so welcoming and really open their doors and their hearts to the artists that we have.
Um, we have really a really strong team of reviewers. We have really great media partnerships that help to get word out about the shows as hard and fast as we can. And also, you know, stuff that they can take back with them, you know, reviewers who are giving, you know, fantastic reviews that people can take away with them.
And I think that’s kind of what Fundie fringe will be is that incubator fringe. It’s the kind of fringe where you’re, you may not come here because there’s going to be somebody sitting in the audience that runs a major theatre somewhere that wants to pick up your show for production in their main stage. But what you’re going to get here is an environment where you can throw stuff at the wall and make mistakes and people are still going to love you.
And you’re going to walk away with a product that you’ve worked hard on. And you’re going walk away with, you know, some reviews that you can add to your media packages. You’re going to walk away with those lovely little Laurel things you can put on your poster because you got patron pick or you got fan favourite or you got outstanding production, whatever it might be.
You get to walk away with those after only five days. I think that’s why people like Fundie is that they get to walk away from an incubator where they’ve worked hard on a piece and they get to walk away with a few things that are going to propel them further forward. Do you have, I mean, I don’t want you to, to, to, is there anything you’ve seen in the past six years of fringe that you still think back on and think, no, that’s a show that I really loved? Oh gosh, that’s tough.
Cause there’s always like one or two every single year. And then I’m just like, I loved that show. Oh my gosh.
I think of Al France did the quitter. He did the quitter here. He’s doing a, I just saw him and I think that I’m dead.
Yeah. I saw that one last year, Halifax fringe. And, and Al has an ability to just rip me apart and leave me in tears on the ground, but also laughing at the same time.
So yeah, watching the quitter, I think was such a joy. And there was the very, very first year of fringe and it’s almost become a tradition ever since Tim Turnell, who does a radio show. He had a show in the very first Fundie fringe and the show was called I get naked in the end.
And that’s what he did. He’s, you know, took on all these different characters and these different personas. Um, and as he kind of revealed more stories about his own life, he would shed a layer of clothing into the end.
He was completely naked on stage and I had to watch that show five times. So I got to see Tim Turnell naked five times in a row. But I mean, that stuck with me because it’s the risk-taking aspect that, you know, Whoa, this is, you know, as risque, well, probably not as risque as you can get, but it was, you know, for me in the very first year of the fringe, here we are, someone’s getting naked on stage.
Like, okay, this is happening. This is real. Um, so that has really stuck with me.
Um, and, uh, I mean, obviously Franny did her show smashes last year that I just adored. And I thought was exactly what a fringe show should look like. You know, it was this exploration.
It was a bit, uh, gritty. You could tell that there was, uh, some aspects to it that were designed in a particular way so that it would work in a fringe. So I, and I just, I love the idea of going back and forth between reading this diary and then her own experiences, anything where the artist gets to reveal something about themselves and really open themselves up, uh, Peter Aguero, daddy issues.
Okay. That was another one, really any show where the artist is burying their soul on stage. They’re really, it’s a confessional almost.
You feel like you walked into confession with them and you walk away knowing them better and hopefully knowing yourself a little better too, because you’ve been so ripped apart by their own soul and their story. You kind of walk away questioning like, who am I as a those kinds of shows really speak to me. Yeah.
When the fringe ends this year, after you’ve taken however much time to take to recover, what does it, what does the life of the executive director look like? For me, it doesn’t stop. That’s the thing. Cause the, the way that, and it’s an unfortunate schedule really.
It’s, it’s a perfect storm. The moment that the fringe ends, I have one month to get our biggest, largest grant together and submit a final report and then go right into the grant writing. Cause our biggest funder is, uh, is the building communities, arts and heritage grant, uh, that is federally done and it’s due at the end of September.
Okay. So I don’t stop the moment that festival is over. I go straight into getting that final report submitted, getting a budget ready for 2019, getting the grant applications ready for 2019.
So there’s no stopping. And then once that’s done, I guess you’re getting ready for your laundry room. Exactly.
Yeah. Once all the grant writing is done, then, uh, usually I have most of that done and organized by the end of October. Then it’s off to the calf conference.
And by that point, uh, November, December, it’s a little quieter by that point. Cause we don’t open our lottery until January. We try to, the way I’ve been trying to explain it, I guess, is, uh, we try to get Edmonton sloppy seconds.
You know, if you don’t get into Edmonton, apply for funding, come to the East coast. We’re definitely not as big, but we’re fun. You know, Marie, you just likes to call us a boutique fringe.
That’s a good name. Is it? I’m confused by it. Cause it makes it sound like we’re really expensive.
We’re not, we’re so cheap. Okay. It’s like, Oh, it’s a, a small kind of really kind of special kind of fringe, but not like, I don’t think it, I don’t think of it as particularly like upper class or expensive, but we are not upper class.
We are not expensive. We’re probably one of the cheaper festivals on the, uh, on the circuit for sure. Yeah.
I’ve been, I’ve been told several times that you really should up your prices. You really should up your performer fee. I’m like, why, why would I do that to anybody? I mean, the question is, do you need to, I don’t think that would be the only reason to do it.
I don’t, they feel like we’ve ever needed to, we get, we’re pretty healthy when it comes to the grants and things like that. We get, we get good funding there. Um, and we have, you know, one or two private sponsors that help us out quite a bit.
Um, so I’ve never felt the need to go any higher than 250. Um, and I’m often blown away by some festivals that are really expensive. Like, I don’t know how artists can afford to pay 700, $800 and then go and do their show.
And I mean, I don’t know how much you’re going to make it those festivals and hopefully you recoup those costs, but it can’t be much money left over once, once you put your money into your marketing, you put your money into paying your fees, you put your money into any sort of props or things that you need and travel like accommodation, food, how much money could it be left over after that? There are a lot of factors and it depends a lot on, um, like how big is your show? Like how many people are in your show? Yeah. That’s why so many people are solo shows written, directed and performed by. Although I have seen, I suspect Peter and Chris do okay.
And they’re just a duo and they travel. Oh yes. Yeah.
Um, but, uh, and since they don’t have like, they almost never have props or anything. Um, it’s pretty cheap for them. Yeah.
Um, yeah, no, it’s like you can do okay, but it has to be like really small. Exactly. Um, yeah.
Some of those larger productions, like I think of some of the dance shows that come through or, I mean, we’ve got a couple of shows in our lineup this year and thankfully they’re local, but they’ve got, you know, four or five people in their cast and they’ve got a set and they’ve got a director and they’ve got a playwright and everybody wants their slice of the pie. Right. Yeah.
So I mean, you’ve got, there’s one company from France. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, and that’s gotta be kind of exciting there because they’ve been doing a bunch of different fringes. I think it might be ending here or going on to, they are going on to Halifax. They won the calf lottery.
It’s how they got in. And that was, that was the first time ever that somebody had applied to the calf lottery and had selected fundie fringe. And I was just beside myself.
I was so excited. I felt like I was sitting at the cool kids table for the first time. Like I’m cool too.
Yay. So, and I was, you know, I was just really honored, I guess. And, uh, from what I can tell, the show sounds amazing.
And, uh, any conversations that I’ve had with Elliot who, um, see who seems to be coordinating it. He’s just seems like an absolutely lovely person. So I’m really excited to meet them.
We have a couple of shows, uh, in our lineup this year that are part of like a larger touring circuit. So like, I know you’re going to Halifax next. Yeah.
And then I think that’s the end of their tour. Oh, they were in London. Yes.
So yeah, I think they’re, they’re done after us. I think they’re going to head home afterwards. Um, so yeah, it’s, it’s kind of cool that people are hopping the circuit and they feel like funding is a valuable part of that circuit.
I mean, people talk about fringes that they’ve been in and people talk about fringes that they’ve enjoyed being in. Right. Um, you know, I talk to people on the podcast all the time and sometimes when the mic’s off, I’ll talk about fringes that were not so awesome and I know not to go there or whatever, you know? So like if people enjoy your friends, they’re going to come back and they’re going to tell other people to come back.
Exactly. I was actually kind of surprised because when I heard about the fringe, the Fundie fringe, I was expecting to do three performances. Oh, cause I heard, I heard that it would, since it was a short fringe, it would only be three performances.
So then they got my schedule and I was like, Oh, I’m performing every day. Awesome. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, we try to max them out. Like I’m, I, I get really worried for artists that want to do fewer than five shows because it’s, it’s hard enough to build momentum in five days.
You know, if we were a much longer fringe, it wouldn’t be a big concern because by the time, you know, let’s say you’re a 10 day fringe, by the time you hit day 10, you’ve had some momentum. People are talking about you. It’s great.
But with a five day fringe, it can be hard to build that momentum. And so when people tell me, Oh, I’m just going to do three shows. I’m like, Hmm, you may want to think about that.
And sometimes they can’t. Sometimes they have to be somewhere else. They have another show booked.
We have a couple of shows like that this, uh, this year, unfortunately they can’t be here on the Saturday, which was like, no, Saturday is the best day. Well, Saturday is the, you’ve got the bazaar, which sounds, I’m trying to figure out how to get to that flyer and get people out to my show. It’s going to be tricky for sure.
Because the way that the moonlight bazaar works is it really is kind of the, the angel on top of the tree. It’s that star at the top of the fringe tree at the very end of the festival is this wonderful giant moon that people just go. And I mean, I can remember last year, I felt really bad actually, because we normally have our dance party and kind of post, you know, post fest celebration on the Saturday.
Um, and so we had our awards and then we had a dance party, but at the same time there was this big moon thing happening. So I’m sitting down here and I’m kind of doing like final paperwork before the gala and all that kind of stuff. And people are coming in and saying, have you been down to this moon yet? It’s like, no, I haven’t been down yet.
And so we did the awards, had a bit of a dance party, and then I said, okay, I’m going to go check this out. So it went down and I was blown away and immediately started like texting people, you need to get down here. And so I ended up unfortunately ditching my own dance party that I had coordinated to go and be at this thing.
So we ended up, uh, changing our schedule a little bit more this year so that our dance party is actually taking place on the Friday. And then Saturday we’re going to have our awards and so I’m going to be great. And then we’re going to say, go to the moon and get out of here.
Well, and it’s, it’s not even really competition. So because it happens at such a late time in the day, there will be shows happening at the same time for sure. But I think you’re going to see a lot of this come and go of people.
Like they’ll go down and see things down there. Then they’ll go see a show and then they’ll go back and they’ll go see a show kind of move in and out. I’m hoping so too.
I’m hoping. And, you know, there’s also this idea of, you know, um, maybe, and hopefully that because people know that they’re more educated on fringe, they’re more educated now on what the Moonlight Bazaar is that there will be a smoother kind of transfer between the two. So I think people were shocked last year by the Moonlight Bazaar because it was such an unexpected thing.
Yeah. Everybody that I’ve heard talk about it, it’s like very, like they talk about it as like this thing, like they can’t forget like this amazing experience. Yeah.
And it’s not an overly complex thing that they’re, that they’re doing. They have some vendors set up, they roll out some, uh, grass. They had this big glowy moon that sits in the middle of it.
And there’s a DJ that plays late at night and people just go down there and they dance. Yeah. That’s basically it.
So it’s kind of like, there are people who have been like, last night was their shift. Um, and so it’s like a late night art installation. And because there are people who still talk about things they’ve saw, they saw the first year.
Like the number of people who’ve mentioned the, the, the, the orchestra that there was like, there was a wandering orchestra one year. Yeah. Go in, you put on the jacket, pick up the baton.
Oh yes. That was last year. The UB, the conductor kind of thing.
Yeah. People have talked about that like crazy. Um, uh, so that like this fringe falls in between like these really two cool things.
Yeah. And even the week before a third shift, there’s a, a big indie music festival that happens to call quality walk party. And then the weekend before that is area five Oh six, which is a really large music festival that happens.
We had July talk and all that kind of stuff. So August and St. John is just nuts. Yeah.
It starts with area five Oh six. And then it ends with the fringe and moonlight bizarre. Have you just generally in terms of attendance, have you seen that like grow pretty steadily over the past few years? Yeah, for sure.
What was it like if you could, if you were comparing the first year to last year, like, is it like a shocking increase? It’d be more than double. Yeah. Okay.
Wow. Yeah. I would say the first year of the attendance probably was somewhere in like the 1500 mark and then last year we, we went over the 3000 mark and that for me, like that was my ultimate goal.
It’s like, I just want to hit over 3000. I just need that please. And so it happened last year.
I was like, Oh, finally. So, and I, I, I think that’s a combination of, you know, knowledge people are more aware of the festival now and it’s becoming a part of the St. John look in the summer, you know, people, people want to be out. They, they see August as this big festival month.
And so fringes is now a really important part of that. That’s good. I mean, the number of cities that I’ve been in for fringes, um, where if you just say to somebody, and their response is no, no, there’s only a couple of cities.
There’s only really Winnipeg and Edmonton where if you say you have a show in the fringe, everybody knows what it is. Yeah. Um, and if you can get to that in St. John, then you’re doing pretty well.
Well, and we’re still struggling with that. Like there’s still people that will be like, what’s the fringe, you know, and it’s gonna, there are going to be those people. They just, they’re the type of people that they wouldn’t even be our audience anyways, because they’re not the type of people that go out.
They go to work, they come home, they sit on the couch and they watch hockey. That’s obviously not our market yet. Um, and so, you know, it’s, it’s hard to bust into someone’s living room and turn off the TV and say, go see a show.
Sure. But you do want people who are going out to the, the third shift, the Moonlight Bazaar and all those other things. Exactly.
And we’re starting to get more people too, who come down from Moncton and Fredericton too, because we’re the only fringe in New Brunswick. And we have, we’ve had Moncton performers in our line before we have Fredericton performers in our lineup. And so they bring their friends down.
There’s a whole pod of people in Moncton who love fringe and love what it is. And they make their pilgrimage every single year to come down and see fringe shows. And they come for, you know, two, three days.
That’s great. Yeah. What are you most looking forward to for this range? It can be a show.
It can be something that’s happening at the hub just or in general. I’m really looking forward to, um, we’re having a, a dinner on Thursday. That’s being hosted by a local group called Sankara.
And, uh, Sankara is this wonderful collective of chefs who have all come to Canada as either refugees or immigrants. Um, and so you name a country, there’s a representative from that country and they prepare a dinner and people get to enjoy that. And so we partnered with them this year and they’re hosting an Ethiopian dinner.
And I think that’s, I just think that’s the coolest thing in St. John. It’s really hard to get food trucks. Um, yeah.
Uh, there’s a lot of pushback from some of the local restaurants on it. They, the, the BIAs want it. The tourism bureaus want them.
The restaurants don’t because they think it’s unfair that they’re taking patrons away from them, but they don’t have to pay the tax levies. So that’s always been a bit of a, of a problem. I would love to have food trucks here.
Um, and so I thought, well, what’s one way that I can kind of get around that? And so talking to Sankara and having them come in and set up a dinner inside of our hub, I thought, well, let’s start with that. And so I’m really looking forward to seeing how that plays out. Um, I’m really looking, obviously I’m really looking forward to seeing your show.
I mean, anything that brings up atheism is a K with me. My husband’s looking forward to seeing it too. He just loves that kind of like, you know, we’re challenging kind of stuff.
So definitely look forward to seeing your show. I’m looking forward to seeing Franny again. I want to see what she’s doing with bar star.
Uh, it’s our first time kind of doing more of like a pop-up style, almost BYOV venue. So we’ll see how that plays out. What is the BYOV venue? What’s happening Well, what happened was when Franny initially was talking to me about coming back, she really wanted to reapply for Fundie Friend.
She said, are you going to do BYOV applications this year? And I said, no, we’re not doing BYOV yet. I’m, I don’t have the faculty to coordinate that. Um, and then she said, well, I really want to do this show that I’m writing, but I’d really like it for, to take place in a bar.
And I said, well, just put that in your application and we’ll make it happen. You don’t have to tell me that, you know, I need this. I need that.
Just tell me what you need and we’ll make it happen. We’re small enough that we can kind of do those things. And so when she did get in, I was like, okay, I got to find her a bar.
So, um, Jody Clifford, who also coordinates the Moonlight Bazaar, I went to him and I said, we’ve got this show. I think the Five and Dime would be a great venue for it. He hosts all sorts of other events similar to it.
So let’s see how it plays out. And I’m, I’m keen to see how it does play out because I think, uh, you know, if that becomes a success, then that will drive us to say, okay, this can work. So let’s start thinking about not necessarily a site specific, not necessarily BYOV, but more of the, you know, having some flexibility on where the shows can go.
Sure. Well, that’s kind of exciting. Yeah.
I’m looking forward to how it plays out. I’m always worried about putting shows in bars. We had an experience one year where we put a show inside of, uh, uh, uh, it was a room that was kind of set aside, almost like a private room in this restaurant.
And I thought, okay, this could work. It’s a private room. It should be fine.
So put the shows in there. It did not work out. Uh, it was too noisy.
There was too many servers going by the door, yelling orders and things like that. And it just became such a distraction that I was kind of burnt on the whole idea of staging anything in a non-traditional venue. And I thought, okay, nope, this isn’t working.
Stick with, stick with the venues, you know, don’t do this. You’re just ruining people’s lives. It can only really work if the venue is completely on board with it.
Exactly. Right. And is willing to almost shut down for an hour while that happens.
Exactly. Otherwise you get servers yelling, you get the whole noisy thing. Exactly.
And it was interesting because it sounded, you know, with that original experience, the owner of the restaurant definitely was on board. He was thrilled. He was excited, but I just, I don’t think that the information and the excitement got trickled down to the people that really needed to know which were the servers and the bar staff and things like that.
Yeah. So I don’t think that information got trickled down. Um, but with, with the five and dime with Jody, he’s such a supporter of the arts already.
He’s hosted similar events before my fingers are crossed that it will work out really, really well. Awesome. I’m a little worried about noise from the street, but I think Franny is a champ.
I think Franny can do it. I know that she was like, when we’re talking about doing the friend roundup, she’s like, I really want to talk about this because I’m doing something I’ve never done before. So yeah.
So she’s looking forward. Yeah. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve put her in another very unique venue last year.
She was actually in the Imperial theatre, uh, in their upstairs balcony. And yeah, it was kind of cool to have this upstairs kind of lobby area that has its own bar and there’s a big chandelier and all these kinds of, it was really fancy looking, but it’s also got this rotunda that’s completely open to the downstairs. And we had big signs everywhere, like show in progress, no talking, right.
You know, um, all of a sudden, and you would think people don’t know how to read because there’s still those one or two people who come in and they’re just like, Hey, what’s going on? And originally I was like, Oh gosh. And it happened during her show. I was watching it.
Somebody came in and started talking really loudly. And I just was like, Oh no, she just turned around and leaned over the rotunda down inside. I was like, Hey, I’m doing a show.
You want to come and join? You’re the best. Nice. Yeah.
Well, Sarah, thank you so much for talking with me today. It’s been a lot of fun. This has been great.
I had a blast. This has been a homebody productions production.
