Tour Whore, July 1, 2012

The process...

by Cameryn Moore

So, I want to let you in on a little bit of process. (Theatre people are all about process, right? How we got here, and how we work with our director, and how we decided to tackle this character from a post-colonialist neo-transcendental perspective, rather than take the classic—one might almost say “hack”—nihilist tone with the back story. Right?)

Since starting this column I’ve been giving you not-insignificant access to my touring process, I think, how I make decisions about costumes and print orders and what to eat. But I want to zoom in a little further, to answer the question “how do I decide what to write about in this column?” It’s simple, really: it’s whatever is up. And what is up right now, after the closing weekend of the Montréal Fringe, is this: SEX.

Montréal Fringe pitches the woo harder than any other Fringe I’ve been to. Or maybe I’m making that up to match the stereotype. Does that exist, here in Canada, the stereotype that Montréalers are sex freaks? Do you want to know the truth? THEY TOTALLY FUCKING ARE. Then you mash that up with two weeks of great accents and skimpy summer outfits and after-hours dance parties and the Beer Tent, which is essentially a camp-out for grown-ups with beer and great music and other artists who, if we aren’t all conventionally attractive and young, are all radiant from artistic passion and fading sunburns and the soft sheen of sweat layered with glitter. And there it is: SEX.

Okay, sex isn’t ACTUALLY going on right here. (Not usually.) It’s all the stuff leading up to it.

Every Fringe festival has at least one place like this, where the physical atmosphere and the booze and lots of artists, it all gets concentrated into a relatively small space. It’s a pressure cooker for pheromones, a distillery for previously vague desires. Anyone who goes into THIS joint knows what’s going on: SEX.

Okay, sex isn’t ACTUALLY going on right here. (Not usually.) It’s all the stuff leading up to it. Under the table covered with rain-dampened flyers, someone’s hand is sliding up someone else’s leg, each has one hand on their reusable beer cup, keep it casual, but two hands of the four are conspicuously hidden, we can tell, kids, we know, but we don’t care. On the walk home from the late-night cabaret in Calgary, two people keep bumping their bare shoulders up against each other, they’ve been talking and walking together all week, but now it’s late and they’re tipsy and bump, there it is again, bump. In that sketchy back courtyard behind the King’s Head in Winnipeg, who cares about the bar-backs loading out that night’s bottles, someone is consensually pressing someone else up against the crumbling bricks, WHAT, don’t look at me like that, you know it had to have happened at least once, and I’ve been eyeballing that spot for a couple of years. It’s the prelude to SEX.

Or if not the actual foreplay, well, the foreplay to the foreplay, the furtive looks and scoping out and leaning closer together and the tentative all-purpose research line, “so… what’s the deal with … ?” Oh, yeah, that shit is happening all over. Between artists, and between volunteers, and sometimes between staff members, and then throw in audiences and fans, and think of all of the different ways you can combine those groups, and in spite of the fact that we have multiple shows to do, and flyering has to happen and someone’s got to handle the box office and we’re trying desperately to get out to shows, we are wallowing in it: SEX.

the average age of Montréal Fringe artists has dropped by at least six years, which is a little bit robbing-the-cradle for me

I am not always getting enough of it out here as I want, to be honest. This year’s tour has just started, but it’s not off to a great start: Montreal has been a little dry. Last year around this time I was soaking up some good loving from a local French-Canadian performer and feelin’ real fine. This year, I don’t know, the average age of Montréal Fringe artists has dropped by at least six years, which is a little bit robbing-the-cradle for me. Or perhaps that now makes me a little bit dating-Grandma for them. Maybe people are afraid of my hardcore public persona, maybe they aren’t ready for my jelly. Hard to say, but I’m already ready to move on to the next Fringe and get me some SEX.

It’s a delicate proposition, though. I want a good hook-up in each city, one I can rely on to be there NEXT year. I want a long-distance, long-term relationship with someone I see once a year. I want a fuck buddy who is intelligent and conversational, I want to talk first, spend hours wowing each other with words, and that takes time. Time is one of the things in short supply out here on tour: it’s opening weekend, and then closing weekend, and then on to the next one. But laced through it all, shaking through our feet and up through the spine like the persistent beat of house music in a dimly lit club, is SEX.

Every Fringe is another chance to play with possibility

Sure, there are those whose Commitment to Art, or to Making Ca$h, seems to leave no room for the extraneous flailings of libido. There are those who are less socially apt and therefore more likely to stand aside, watching, it’s the junior high school prom all over again. There are those couples that Fringe together, married or engaged or otherwise intensely coupled, whose connection seems to have no openings for other people’s stray bits to brush against. But I’d be willing to bet all the Canadian pennies on the floor of my car (that’s already a considerable amount, don’t scoff) that even those “untouchables” have felt the tug, gotten that little jolt, playfully sat on someone’s lap or enjoyed the look that someone gave their deeper-than-usual cleavage, have said “wow, he/she’s cute”, or thought it, at least. 

I’m usually in that category; it’s not easy for me to find the right kind of playmate. But I’m willing to wait, and in the meantime I watch and feel it all out, breathe it in, soak it up, the gentle eddying currents of appeal and repulse, the dance of risk and recovery and “why the hell not?” Every Fringe is another chance to play with possibility: that the object of one’s desire has a “what happens at Fringe…” arrangement with their sweetie back home; that they have never fucked in a car; that they are killer Scrabble players; that they are not at all what they seem to be on stage, or that they are exactly what they seem to be on stage; that their breath smells like rum and coke but tastes like the salt of your sweaty skin. 

I’ll be coming back to this later, I’m sure. I’ll be coming back to it all tour long. SEX.

Cameryn Moore will be at Zoofest and at the Winnipeg Fringe July 19-29

camerynmoore.com