Review: The Only Bar (Fringe 2011)

reviewed by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I am predisposed to liking the work of this company. I've seen plays of theirs and they've been joyously messy, yes, but also indicative of a group of artists who are willing to take huge risks. Nothing, however, prepared me for the polish of their latest work. For one thing, Alain Mercieca's text is more assured and less gimmicky, the actors are solid across the board (under director Robin Henderson)  and Mercieca's and JP Mortier's music is delightfully brave (reminding me - if you'll allow me to stretch a little - of Alban Berg and the way his operas allow percussive and sustained-voweled words to float away from and back to the music). But the evening is far less challenging than one with Berg. If it can be said that this company can be sweet, then it is sweet, and charming and touching.

Processed Theatre's Journey to The Fringe Part IV

Week 5: Our First Week of EDGES: A Song Cycle

By Nichole Carlone and Christopher Pineda

We are Processed Theatre. Last September we produced a successful “Reefer Madness: The Musical” at Mainline Theatre, and are now preparing for the debut of our second show, blindly hoping that we can continue to produce the quality and popularity of “Reefer Madness: The Musical.” 

So far we've had two sold out-shows, two half-full shows and a show with eight people. We have had press coverage online, in print and on the radio and most importantly, BUZZ! Fringe is a fickle beast where one person’s “masterpiece” is another’s "worst piece of shit ever". That's Fringe baby! No matter how good, or bad, or in between a show is, someone is always going to love it, or hate it, or in between it, and they get to tell the world through the always popular Fringe Buzz. 

Fringe 2011 Profile: Hedwig and The Angry Inch

ANTONIO BAVARO GIVES GOOD HED (WIG) AT MONTREAL FRINGE!

“We are staging it to make it truer to Hedwig’s punk roots by having the perfect environment at Katacombes.”

by Richard Burnett (from Three Dollar Bill, with permission)

“I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch in theatres the week it opened on a first date back in 2001,” says actor Antonio Bavaro (a.ka. Montreal drag queen Connie Lingua). “I have no idea where the guy I was with ended up, but I am still in adoration of [Hedwig creator] John Cameron Mitchell.”

Bavaro stars in the upcoming Montreal production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Montreal Fringe Festival that will be performed beginning June 12 at local punk-rock club Katacombes on The Main.

Theatre For Thought, June 7, Fringe Edition

What to See at the Fringe, Part III

Suicide(s) in Vegas is a Good Bet

joel fishbane

There’s an above-average assortment of text-based work at this year’s Fringe. Some are by emerging playwrights such as Andre Simmoneau, Joanne Sarazen and David Sklar; others are coming from established writers such as John Patrick Shanley, Oscar Wilde and John Cameron Mitchell. Then there’s Evan Placey, whose play Suicide(s) in Vegas will have its official premiere here at the Montreal Fringe. A Canadian / U.K. based writer who once won the RBC-Tarragon Emerging Playwright’s competition, Mr. Placey is now in that grey area between young virgin and old hat. In just a few years, he’s started working with London’s Hampstead Theatre and the Royal National Theatre. Meanwhile, a Hebrew translation of his play Mother of Him will soon premiere in Tel Aviv. 

After Dark, June 7, 2011, Fringe Edition

Random Thoughts as Hardcore Fringe Approaches
Anonymity (again...), accidents, opinions in public...
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

- As you know if you have been following along on these pages, I am not fond of anonymous posting. The Fringe is a festival of anonymity when it  comes to presenting opinions. I see that in the Fringe Buzz Twitter feed, when it comes to opinions already being expressed about shows not even open; I see it beginning here on the site; I see it in the hundreds of places, notably comments-board, where people offer both positive and negative feedback. Often no names are attached. I do like, though, the passion of some of the  comments and, in some cases, the informed nature of them. This is why I put up with the anonymity. But I will say this: the same way some anonymous assholes treat people like shit, so will I feel free to treat the anonymous.

The Processed Theatre Journey to The Fringe Blog, Part III

Journey to the 2011 Montreal Fringe
Processed Theatre – EDGES: A Song Cycle

Week 4: Fringe is Here! (Kind of …)

By Nichole Carlone and Christopher Pineda

We are Processed Theatre. Last September we produced a successful “Reefer Madness: The Musical” at Mainline Theatre, and are now preparing for the debut of our second show, blindly hoping that we can continue to produce the quality and popularity of “Reefer Madness: The Musical.” 

While the 2011 Montreal Fringe starts on May 30th with the Fringe-For-All (which rocked!), we all know that things don't really start getting funky until the beer tent opens. This year, there are more events, companies, and OFF venues than ever. Being in an OFF venue has the advantage of us getting to do as many shows as we like, with the disadvantage of providing everything ourselves (venue, tech, "staff,” volunteers, etc). We are in Venue D, which is upstairs from the MAI, and is essentially a room with a big pillar in the middle of it. 

Fringe 2011...WE'RE OFF!

Tonight our reviewers begin to deploy to the actual shows in this year's Fringe

Theatre for Thought, May 31, 2011

WHAT TO SEE AT THE FRINGE, PART II

or WHEN IS A ONE WOMAN SHOW NOT A ONE WOMAN SHOW? 

joel fishbane

There’s never a lack of solo shows at the Fringe; indeed, they’re so ubiquitous that I suspect one couldn’t survive without the other. When performed by a T.J. Dawe or Nicola Gunn, the solo show is a theatrical gem. Done poorly – insert eighty percent of all solo shows here – then the solo show becomes little more then a performer using the stage to exorcise their demons. 

Predicting where a particular solo show will fall is a tough task for any Fringer - fortunately, performer Veronica Russell, who will be presenting her solo piece A Different Woman at this year’s Fringe, has given us all a heads up: the last thing she ever wanted to write was your typical one woman show. 

Video: Sights and Sounds from Fringe For All 2011

There will be full coverage of the event from Valerie Cardinal later, but here is your first taste of the noisy, messy, happy event that is the Fringe For All.

For full coverage of the entire Fringe go to the CharPo Fringe Aggregator

Processed Theatre's Journey to The Fringe Part III

Week 3: The Theatre Space
In a market so full of artists and patrons, it’s always been sad to me that more venues haven’t launched to serve this massive need.

By Christopher Pineda

We are Processed Theatre. Last September we produced a successful “Reefer Madness: The Musical” at Mainline Theatre, and are now preparing for the debut of our second show, blindly hoping that we can continue to produce the quality and popularity of “Reefer Madness: The Musical.” 

I’m the General Manager at Processed Theatre. Niki thinks this post is too business-y, so she made me preface it with that. You’ve been warned.

One of the greatest headaches in any young theatre company’s journey is the struggle to find a suitable place to rehearse, perform, and conduct business. Especially in Montreal, the spaces available to artists like us are not exactly inviting to those who are operating with basically no capital on hand. In a market so full of artists and patrons, it’s always been sad to me that more venues haven’t launched to serve this massive need. My guess is that it’s too hard of a business model for artists to run successfully, and not lucrative enough for those on the business end to invest their energies into. What do you think?

Sunday Feature: Interview with Amy Blackmore

The Machine in Full-Metal Mode

"It’s sort of like being brought up in to the festival from the inside right away."

by Émilie Charlebois

Photos of Fringe HQ by Mainline Ghost

As the 21st edition of the St Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival fast approaches, the Plateau-Mile End neighborhood is gearing up for its annual surge in cultural activities.  The Charlebois Post took this opportunity to talk with Amy Blackmore, who is succeeding Jeremy Hechtman as Festival director, in order to find out what to expect after 21 years of Montreal Fringe.

CHARPO:

You’ve been involved with the Fringe for a long time now, starting as a volunteer. What do you think your experience brings to the table now that you’re the Festival director? How has it helped you so far? 

BLACKMORE:

I think that the fact that I started off as a volunteer is probably one of the most important things that I am bringing to the table. The fact that I’ve spent ten years there, and I wasn’t just a volunteer. I was a volunteer, then I became an artist, then I started as the assistant to the producer (Jeremy Hechtman). It’s sort of like being brought up in to the festival from the inside right away. It might mean that I lack, to a certain extent, the experience of just being an audience member, but I think it’s interesting because I was brought in to the community right away. The values that the Fringe Festival holds, which are of community, neighborhood  and togetherness, were instilled in me right away. That’s what really attracted me to it and that’s what I hope to share with everyone else.

Feature: Tales From The Fringe

Fringe is year-round in Edinburgh, where it all began

(photo: Bruno Lajeunesse)

TALES FROM THE FRINGE

a (truly) personal history of Montreal's most important festival as we head into the last month before the 2011 edition 

joel fishbane

I’m standing in the beer tent, on the receiving end of a partially-thunderous applause. It’s the 18th Annual Montreal Fringe and I’ve just been named the worst playwright in Montreal. The event is called Dramaturkey and calls for playwrights to submit their worst material. Quickly, it has become clear to me that I misunderstood the assignment. In preparation for the event, a lot of writers purposely wrote bad plays. But I had just printed some old file from my computer. 

The prize, provided by Playwrights Workshop Montreal, is a little tin bird. I am told that it isn’t mine to keep – I have to hand it over to the new winner the following year. This means that for a whole year this gaudy trinket has to sit on my bookshelf. It’s as cheap as it is ugly. People who visit me stare at it in wonder and I am not be able to decide whether to tell them the real reason it’s there or if it’s better to let them think I simply suffer from a sublime lack of decorative sense. 

* * *

First Person: Keir Cutler on The Solo

Why Solo?

by Keir Cutler

Rant Demon, which will be remounted at the 2011 Wildside Festival at Centaur Theatre in January, is my eighth original solo show.

I have performed my monologues so often, in so many places, it seems that one-man shows is all I ever intended to do.  But in reality, I started out wanting to be a playwright of traditional plays, to be performed by multiple actors.  I even got a diploma in playwriting from the National Theatre School.  For years I sent out my writings throughout the English-speaking world.  Occasionally, I would receive back a nice letter of encouragement, or someone would arrange a reading. Nothing ever got fully staged, but I do have a nice collection of letters from artistic directors asking me to be sure to send them my next play. 

CharPo Sunday Feature: Patrick Goddard's Personal History of The Montreal Fringe

GODDARD AS MY WITNESS

For the 2010 edition of the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe, Hour asked a few us to contribute to their Fringe Fanaticism blog. Jeremy Hechtman agreed to do a year-by-year account of his experience with the festival. This inspired me to do the same, albeit with a twist: I'd look at the evolution of the Montreal Fringe by reviewing a single show from each year. So here, collected for the first time in one place, is how I've seen it...

1993: DIARY OF A MADMAN
1993 was my first Montreal Fringe. I had finished my first year at Concordia Theatre and was volunteering my ass off in order to see free shows. Volunteering gives you a very different perspective when it comes to choosing Fringe shows: something may look great in the program, but then you meet the performer and decide they're a dick unworthy of your Fringe Bucks. And then there was Rush Pearson. Rush was doing a one-man adaptation of the Gogol story and had come up from Chicago with his partner and his dog; they were the darlings of the volunteer crowd. His pre-Fringe promotion campaign became legendary: he faxed the media constantly before coming to Montreal, with a series of increasingly incoherent messages. And the show rocked. Fringe solo shows often seem like they were created that way out of financial necessity rather than for artistic reasons, but this needed to be done solo to truly convey the madness of the narrator. Rush had crafted a very solid adaptation of the text and was an engaging and warm performer. Diary of a Madman was funny, sad, sharp, and touching. 4 Bucks out of 4.