Tour Whore, November 25, 2012

Ado and Farewell

by Cameryn Moore

As I write this, I have been in Boston for two days. It feels all the more unreal because of the way I left New York City, at 4am on the day before American Thanksgiving. I had intended to leave at 4pm, after finishing my phone hours for the day, but the more I thought about the massive pre-holiday exodus that would slam the entire five-borough metropolis into first-gear-all-the-way gridlock, the more I realized that is not the way I wanted to finish the tour. So I packed up my shit, and creaked quietly down the stairs, accelerated out onto the expressway, smiling the whole way. I wanted to fly onward, fast, go go go, ride the momentum a little further.

There was momentum, still. I didn’t think there would be. I expected a shitty turnout for my one full-length presentation of Phone Whore, and I expected to just come down from that with a sad little thud. It could have been that way, too. There were seven people in the audience, counting the bartender and not counting the technician. But five of those people had not seen it before, which made the Q&A session lively still, even at 10:45 at night. Three of those people I really wanted to see it, Fringe friends of mine who had seen at least one of my other shows but not the first. One of those people was a programming decision-maker at the venue and really enjoyed the show, which meant that coming back to this lovely venue should be easier next year; they know what I can do. So that was good.

Tour Whore, November 18, 2012

Not with a Bang but with a "Should"
by Cameryn Moore

This is how my tour ends, these last four weeks, not with a bang or a whimper, just a “jeezus fuck, really?” Because the tail end of my tour, for the last three years, has been comprised almost entirely of Should Shows. I don’t want to do them, but I Should. Or so says my inner artist, the one who really wants to perform, spread the good word, you know, get Out There. It keeps telling me why I Should…

“You should definitely do X City. I know no one gets audiences in X City, but you’re passing through, you might as well, it looks good on your list of past gigs!”

“You should do Y City, I mean, yes, it’s in, ahem, a very rural state, but it’s a college town, and look, you always talk about how you want to take your shows everywhere, you’re such a fucking missionary, well, Y City is definitely taking it out there.”

Or the one that I never know how to fight, because after three years of touring to many of the same towns, this one is coming up more and more often:

“You should do Z City because you’ve done them already two years in a row. Yes, you had shitty audiences and a slack producer the past two years, and yes, you’d have to rent a venue this year, of course that’s less than ideal. But you know you like to finish the trilogy!”

Tour Whore, November 11, 2012

Poly-Metro-Amorous
by Cameryn Moore

“What’s your ideal living environment, like, your perfect city?”

My Alabama host looks at me expectantly. She doesn’t have renters in her house right now, which is why she was able to host me, and I think she might be missing the regular human company a little, because she wants to talk. She likes people, something she repeatedly mentioned when describing what she likes about her perfect city—New York City. She loves that I’ve traveled so much, she wants to hear all about it, and she wants to make me choose.

I stall a little. I like a lot of the cities that I go to, I say. One of the things that touring has given me is an appreciation for a bunch of different regions and cities that I would never have visited before. I tell her I could make it work living in any number of cities.

“No, no,” she interrupts, “when you say ‘make it work’, that sounds like you are settling. What do you really want?”

Tour Whore, November 4, 2012

It's a NOLA Halloween
by Cameryn Moore

It’s beautiful out here, in the middle of a going-to-wild field, in the heart of New Orleans’ vast City Park, on Halloween.

My billet, a friend from the 2011 Fringe circuit, was throwing a party here. Except for the stone shelter and the lights from the stadium a quarter-mile away and my billet’s friend’s pickup truck with the generator hooked up to it, it truly felt like the faeries had gone slumming in human land for the night: twinkling strands of Christmas-light stars hung from three massive oak trees, leaf-strewn carpets and cushions, and the attire, of course, it’s New Orleans and the folks here take costuming seriously. Later on, the party would fill up with Mexican skull face paint and elaborate gilt spiral-horn headdresses and cobwebby shawls and Italianate raven’s-beak masks, and look, Little Red Riding Hood, it all jumbled together and felt strange.

Tour Whore, October 28, 2012

Pride and prejudice
by Cameryn Moore

Last weekend I was out on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans, just as I will be by the time anyone reads this, plying my trade, as it were, with the Sidewalk Smut. My two-night run of slut (r)evolution isn’t for another week, and sidewalk pornography is bangin’ business here, in the middle of one of the busier nightclub streets of this 24/7 party town. 

As usual, tourists from around the world are astonished, in that loud, tipsy way of people given license to drink on the streets. They are amazed at what I do, and proclaim it a marvel of this debauched city. “Only in New Orleans!” they yell appreciatively and stagger on down the street, narrowly missing the puddle of puke that one of their debauched colleagues has neatly deposited in the gutter. When a partier does stop and talk, I will happily correct their assumptions and tell them that Sidewalk Smut in fact happens anywhere that it’s warm enough and I have time enough on my tour. But if they don’t stop, I let them roar and let the mistake go. Let them think I’m from here. I’m fine, in fact I’m kind of flattered, about being considered part of the local color, a quick Instagram on a score of smartphones, a drunken tweet featuring my tits and the typewriter.

Tour Whore, October 21, 2012

I’d call it networking, except...
by Cameryn Moore

It is exceptionally easy to get stuck in Producer’s Mind out here: How many tickets have I sold? How the hell am I going to get those posters up, and where? Who is my tech person for Austin, Nashville, New York? Even on the Canadian Fringe circuit, when these questions are easy to answer, or are already answered for me, I get into it, crunching the numbers, plotting the schedule, doing the interviews, hell, finding the great Secret Parking Spot. (Oh, yes, they exist in every Fringe, in every city. I haven’t found them everywhere, but that just means I haven’t spent enough time in that city yet. I’ll find them.)

These are important questions. I would never want to ignore them. But I have noticed that when I pull my attention back a little, away from the micro-management, room opens up for some truly serendipitous stuff. I realized a few days ago that I’m experiencing it more this year, probably because my Producer’s Mind feels a little more comfortable running as a background loop. Or I’m more comfortable moving it to the background. Whatever it is, it frees up the rest of my consciousness for connecting.

Tour Whore, October 14, 2012

The Tour Whore FAQ
by Cameryn Moore

As I’m nearing the end of this year’s tour, it seems a good time to get some questions answered. Some of it is kind of a summary from previous columns; some is fresh, just for you. I know y’all are responsible enough to hang onto this for next year and come up with other questions.

Where are you from?
My car, the Toyota Corolla over there. Most recently from Boston; I gave up my lease there in April and have been travelling ever since. My winter clothes and my cat are in Montreal, so that’s obviously where I’m going when this tour is up in five weeks. The rest of my shit is in a storage pod somewhere in central Massachusetts. I was born and raised near Portland, OR, and spent 10 years in and around San Francisco. I identify most strongly with the East Coast, but I am rapidly becoming a citizen of the world. I am having a sampler made for the ceiling of the Deerinator: HOME IS WHERE THE KEYS FIT.

Tour Whore, October 7, 2012

Booking (The Process)
by Cameryn Moore

A lot of Fringers, both audience members and other performers, are kind of amazed by my touring itinerary outside of the Fringe. I tell them about TLoTH, that I’m barely getting by, and sometimes it’s just more of a pain in the ass than it’s worth, but they still are impressed. “Do you have an agent?” they ask. “How do you find your venues? Who handles your bookings?”

I don't, obviously. A professional agent wouldn’t make so many mistakes.

I make fewer mistakes than I did at the beginning, or at least have learned how to research so that my misadventures are at least well-educated ones. But holy shit, y’all, YES I BOOK MY OWN SHOWS AND QUITE FRANKLY I WOULD LIKE TO BE DONE WITH IT.

“How do you find your venues?” is the next question that comes, even if I’ve tried to head it off  by rolling my eyes, screaming, and/or frothing at the mouth in response to the first inquiry.

I see where this is going. You wanna know the whole process, don’t you? You think you’re going to do that for yourself, right?

Sigh. Okay, I will give you all of it.

Tour Whore, September 23, 2012

What the Fuck Just Happened?!
by Cameryn Moore

At this time of year, especially, my FB feed dies down a little. It’s not that all my Fringe colleagues ran out of shows to promote; I personally have gigs upcoming in eight different cities. No, I think it’s because everyone is taking time to assess what the fuck just happened. 

It’s a valid and legitimate part of the touring model: there needs to be some post-mortem. Or pre-vivem. I need time to figure it out, process it, make it fit into my future plans for global domination. Or not fit. That’s okay, too. For sure there were mistakes and glitches and bad luck, and things that I hope to God will never happen again. (Getting the artificially jaded reviewer in Calgary, or developing laryngitis opening weekend.)  But mostly we are all in a quiet moment, the calm before the storm whips up again.

As I write this, Vancouver Fringe’s Pick of the Fringe holdover programming is winding down, early-bird deadlines for the Orlando and Montreal 2013 Fringes have come and gone, and those touring artists who flung themselves out past Edmonton to the last Canadian Fringes of the tour—Victoria and Vancouver—have begun the annual … migration? Diaspora? I don’t quite know what to call it. 

Tour Whore, September 16, 2012

Hardcore
by Cameryn Moore

Hardcore Fringer. Any artist who has more than one Fringe city under their belt falls into this category, in my mind.

It means that you have been in at least one city where you don’t know anybody, where you are sleeping in a stranger’s house. It means that you have had to take special steps to unplug yourself from normal life, asked for time off from work, possibly had issues with cell phone access, been apart from your lover for at least two weeks or more, and you have modified your life seriously in many other ways—expectations, planning, supplies, wardrobe—to accommodate your Fringe tour.

I am not saying that companies or artists performing only in their hometown are not having an awesome and legitimately challenging Fringe. I’ve never had that experience, though. I find it much easier to get along with other artists who live or have lived through that same rootlessness, for however long; they have had that same experience of being out there alone and not alone at the same time. I can bond better with them, because we have many of the same experiences. We are Hardcore Fringing.

What else goes along with that? I asked my cohort of touring Fringe artists for their thoughts (credit given where appropriate). But you know, a lot of these came up on their own, in my tour-fevered brain…

Tour Whore, September 9, 2012

Gifting (or: The road to goodwill is paved with sweets and pastries.)
by Cameryn Moore

There is a delicate gift economy out here on tour, circulating a steady stream of largesse among the performers and the volunteers and the staff and the technicians and the patrons. There are no rules, it’s not predictable in the slightest, and yet it’s there.

Obviously some gifts are traditional, simple etiquette of long-standing usage: do something nice for your billet, give your technician booze. The form of the gift is not of the essence, just the gesture. So, for example, when I have been broke—which has been most of this year’s tour—I have simply cooked extra dinner one night and shared with my host. It really is the thought that counts.

(Booze for the tech is somewhere between a gift and a bribe, actually. Or a gift and deliberately sought-after goodwill, in the same way that my signature peanut-butter fudge gets made and circulated at least one day during most Fringes, or that my monkey bread makes an appearance at a special pre- or early Fringe brunch. The road to goodwill is paved with sweets and pastries.)

Tour Whore, August 26, 2012

Night of the Living Deed
by Cameryn Moore

I don’t like to make sweeping generalizations about Fringe artists’ experiences. We have different ways of living and working and playing out here on tour. But at this point on the tour, I think I can safely speak for us all:

We are all sleep deprived.

It’s worse for me, I think. I have to sign in for my phone shifts at 7am Pacific time, which means when I’m on the East coast, I don’t have to even crack my eyes open until 9:55am. The further west I travel, though, the earlier I have to get up, and that doesn’t change the fact that Fringe makes me stay up hella late. Not “makes” me, scratch that. I’m a willing participant. I don’t really deserve any sympathy, because I lose my own sleep, I toss it right out the fucking window, of my own free will. 

Tour Whore, August 19, 2012

I've Got Shit to Do...
by Cameryn Moore

I’m still out here. There’s still about a month before the Canadian Fringe portion of my touring is over for the year, three and a half months before I finish my 2012 tour. I am developing a podcast, planning a revised edition of my book, enhancing my two websites, MOVING TO MONTREAL. I have at least thirty-five presentations of my three shows to get through before then, plus preview appearances, Sidewalk Smut sessions, workshops, panel discussions, radio interviews, special guest appearances, and five minutes at the Fringe Bar Gong Show at the Vancouver Fringe, during which I will teach the entire, gradually endrunkening crowd (increasingly inebriated? I like my word better) how to do the Cupid Shuffle. 

I’ve got shit to do, in other words, but that’s all right. For the last month, at least, I’ve been an active participant in a collective conversation that spreads around every Fringe, a conversation that hinges on one seemingly innocent question: “So, what are you working on for next year?”

Tour Whore, August 12, 2012

It's Touching
by Cameryn Moore

Two days ago I was flyering a line here at the Calgary Fringe, and I came upon a young-ish, hipster-ish straight couple hugging each other, arms wrapped tightly around each other while looking into each other’s eyes. “I’ll come back when you two aren’t so busy,” I said, making a sex joke out of it. “No, no!” they exclaimed, opening the hug. “There’s room in here for you!”

Now, I approach flyering the lines like improv theatre: don’t leave blank time and say “yes” whenever you can. So of course, I stepped right into their arms and had a hug threesome with these strangers, for easily 10-15 seconds, which is a LONG TIME for a full-body hug with a stranger, let alone with two. We smiled and made “mmm-mmm-mmm” snuggly noises at each other; the people around us in the line were completely charmed and a little bit envious, I’m sure. Of course I handed the couple my flyer and gave them my pitch, and they followed up by being in the front row of the next show. Clearly that moment worked as a promo encounter.

Tour Whore, August 5, 2012

What would you do if there were no stars?
by Cameryn Moore




What would you do if there were no stars?

You’re a theatre-goer, an avid one, you pride yourself on seeing as many Fringe shows as you can cram in. When you talk to your friends who are less theatre-going than you are, you talk it up a little, how quirky and idiosyncratic the Fringe is, and you know that, therefore, by extension, they are going to admire how quirky and idiosyncratic you are.

You read the filler stories about the Fringe, take in your friend’s show (you hate it, but you can’t tell them that), make your preliminary lists. Maybe you even have a spreadsheet printed out in your notebook. But there are a lot of empty boxes in that chart, and you keep them empty until Sunday night of that first weekend, when the local mainstream daily paper has promised to finish all of their reviews. They helpfully organize it by the number of stars and you arrange and re-arrange the five-star shows until they have all fit in. And then you take the four-and-a-half star shows and try to wedge those into the remaining spaces, and you buy up tickets for all of them. You sweat hard over this process, so you feel justified in looking just a little bit weary on Monday afternoon, when a hard-working performer approaches you, smiling and holding his postcard. “No more, I’m done.” That’s right, you’ve settled your course.

Tour Whore, July 29, 2012

Hard Times - Strap in and get out the tarp
by Cameryn Moore


First of all, I should say that Winnipeg Fringe is not a bad Fringe, objectively. I would not have kept applying to get in over the past two years if it was a bad Fringe. In 2010 and 2011 I made decent money here, sold out at least one show each Fringe, and oh my god, for a loudmouthed flirt like myself, the line-ups here are HEAVEN.

But this year in Winnipeg has been hard for me. And while I don’t think I’ve been all sweetness and light up until now, I haven’t had a Fringe like this in a long time, if ever, in terms of grinding me down. So in the interest of giving y’all a full-spectrum sense of the touring life, I’m gonna share. Strap in and get out the tarp.

Tour Whore, July 22, 2012

“Hey, have you been out to see <world-famous local museum> yet?”

by Cameron Moore

“Hey, have you been out to see <world-famous local museum> yet?”

“Why don’t we check out <scenic nearby region> this weekend?”

“So, what do you do for fun?”

Answers: no, meh, what?

You look at the map where I’ve been on tour, and it looks amazing, right? I’ve probably seen a lot of great shit! I mean, 34 cities and more in this sprawling loop around North America, passing through or by some amazing natural wonders of the world and major centers of art and culture and civic importance and obviously I would have taken it all in!

Tour Whore, July 15, 2012

The presence in the Hall

by Cameryn Moore

Behind the curtain at my venue, the crowd noise is diffused and muffled, so I didn’t know he was out there until the show started. But then I knew he was there. 

He laughed loudest and longest and first at all the laugh lines. He laughed at the lines that were poignant and uncomfortable. He laughed at most of the lines that contained either the word “cock” or “asshole”, and then groaned out loud at the lines that described what was being done with “cock” or “asshole”. At the end of my first “call”, after I’ve hung up and then say my first line to the audience—“I bet you wish I’d put those calls on speakerphone”—he yelled out “Fuck yeah!” And judging from the sounds that I could hear, he knocked over his beer at least twice. 

He wasn’t quite over the line into aggressive, and certainly he wasn’t heckling, but good LORD, he was present and affecting the feel of the house the way a shot put distorts a rubber sheet in that physical metaphor for black holes in time and space.

Tour Whore, July 8, 2012

Here is How I Go to Sleep

by Cameryn Moore

Here is how I go to sleep:

Stretching my legs long under the cool sheets, feeling the answering throb in the tender soles of my feet. They’re sore from 8 to 10 hours of walking around Fringe. I walk for fewer hours at smaller Fringes, or places that have smaller line-ups, but I still move around a lot, and my feet feel it. I’ve got Birkenstock heel cups in my boots, that helps a lot, and it gets easier with each passing week of Fringe. Still, I don’t stop asking around among volunteers for a trade of foot rubs, and every night when I ease the boots off my feet, let them breathe and slide against the sheets, ahhh…

Here is how I go to sleep:

Saying my lines in my head. My show Phone Whore opened this week at Zoofest, and even though I have performed that show over 120 times by now, I still have to revisit the text from time to time. Last night I drifted off somewhere between my favorite ass man and the regular who calls me for two hours at a time, two or three times a month. (He was a regular at the time that I wrote the play, but no longer. Man, I miss that guy.)

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.