Review: God is a Scottish Drag Queen (Fringe)

by Janis Kirshner 

I had been looking forward to this show; it came with good cred from previous performances. I could see that Mike Delamont is a veteran stand-up comedian with wonderful audience rapport and a quick off the cuff wit. There’s a great opening voice-over. However, perhaps an off night when I saw it, the show never really took off for me. I love the concept - God has come down to earth wearing a women’s power suit from the 80’s and no shoes. There were some very good lines, notably: “I should have stopped at monkeys”, “I made a mistake with redheads - they’re either beauty queens or garden gnomes” and “The bagpipes - leave it to the Scots to make our national instrument out of our national food.” But most of the jokes just didn’t seem fresh. Mind you, he doesn’t always get through all his material and does go off on tangents, so perhaps other nights were more on the mark. He is however a likeable performer and his sincere, tender farewell put a smile on my face.

Tickets

Rating:

Review: Hippolytos (Fringe)

by Rebecca Ugolini

Greek tragedy probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “Fringe Festival”, but Oimoi’s production of Euripides’ classic tragedy Hippolytus is anything but traditional. Translators Carina de Klerk and Lynn Kozak’s  modern English version of the play meets with an eclectic soundtrack including electronic music custom-made by Virek (Nick Donaldson), a mini-drag show by Antonio Bavaro’s alter-ego Connie Lingua (as Aphrodite), and rap/spoken-word performance by Lindsay Wilson (as The Chorus). Supported by the play’s cast of seriously talented actors, these modifications are welcome variations on some old themes: lust, shame, and fate.

First-Person: Kirsten Rasmussen on Tough! (Fringe)

Writing a solo show is Tough!

Fighting it out for the Fringe

by Kirsten Rasmussen

If you are alone in a living room writing a solo show, and you laugh at yourself, does it mean it’s funny? 

One week before I put Tough! up in Montreal for the first time this February, I was sitting on the floor of my living room in my apartment. I was finishing off my second pot of coffee of the day, and decided since it was after 8, I better switch to wine. (Ooh a delicious Dépanneur red, how becoming.).

I was staring at what used to be my living room floor which was now a thick carpet of paper. Scrap pages, loose leaf, journals, post-it notes, binders covered the floor, all with the word Tough scrawled somewhere on them.  In the middle, a large piece of paper with the title TOUGH TIME LINE written on the top, and an arc drawn across the paper. The arc of a story which is the visual metaphor of the cathartic journey the writer hopes one feels when watching her play. 

"Seven days," I thought to myself and tapped the pen on my noggin as if I hoped it would unleash the creative genius needed to craft all this mess into a play.

The Upstage Interview: Jane Gilchrist on Out of The Fog (Fringe)

I am an iconoclast; I am breaking a form. If theatre doesn’t do that, it doesn’t grow.

Upstage Host Eric Sukhu spoke with playwright Jane Gilchrist  about  her play Out of the Fog being presented  at the 2012 Fringe Festival. Below is an abridged version edited by Estelle Rosen, CharPo Editor-in-Chief.

UPSTAGE:  As I look at your bio, it seems to me you’re an icon in Canadian theatre! You’ve done so much.

GILCHRIST: Well I’ve lived a long time so I’ve managed to do a few things over the years that sound pretty good. I think the most fun I had was when I wrote a clown show. It wasn’t meant to be a red nose clown show but I met a red nose clown who loved it so he did it that way when we presented it at the Alumni Theatre in Toronto in 2003.

It was such fun to hear my words said by clowns. I hadn’t written it with clowns in mind. I had written it with the idea of women doing a vaudeville show, but add the red noses and it gets really funny. 

A fellow in the audience came up to me and said red nosed clowns never speak Ms. Gilchrist, you have violated a rule of theatre. He was serious. I told him I am an iconoclast; I am breaking a form. If theatre doesn’t do that, it doesn’t grow.

First-Person: Anna Fuerstenberg on Triplecross

FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE MONTREAL FRINGE

Triplecross comes to the party

by Anna Fuerstenberg

Why would anyone want to direct a play at the Montreal Fringe, let alone a play one had written, and (yikes) at my age? I have directed in Latin America, in Toronto, in Colorado, in Nashville Tennessee and even at the Centaur. So what in the world am I doing with a brand new theatre company in the Fringe? It means starting all over again and investing money that I can ill afford, and yet…There are two other women playwrights who are self-producing this year. Perhaps it is a trend?  Maybe I just miss directing, TRIPLECROSS is a farce, definitely Fringe material.

First-Person: Elizabeth Blue on A Week With The Shaman (Fringe)

My show is my teacher

A Fringe newbie returns to Montreal…With a show that she wrote just so she could return to Montreal.

By Elizabeth Blue (photos by Eric Michael Pearson)

Note to self: Be careful when creating an intention to write the DEEPEST, most ENLIGHTENING show in the world.

Because there’s nothing like trying to write something enlightening to discover how completely unenlightened you are.

Montreal, there is something so, so special about your Fringe Festival. Maybe I am biased, because it was my very first time. And because the Montreal Fringe Festival is the BEST THING IN THE WORLD!  

I didn’t expect it to be so non-stop amazingly, purely FUN! And inspiring, enlivening, and many other beautiful adjectives. 

Richard Burnett on Gay Fringe

Bugs and Mado

Fringing with Richie Bitch 

Some pretty amazing stand-up comics have come out of Montreal over the years and one of the best is legendary drag queen (and Fugues magazine columnist) Mado La Motte, so-called because patrons at Poodles’ nightclub on The Main in Montreal way back in 1987 thought she was so ugly they dubbed her “The Mutt.”

by Richard Burnett (reprinted from Fugues with permission)

Thus, Mado ‘La Motte’ was born.

“She looks like a clown!” my six-year-old brother Skye told me as he pointed to Mado at his first Gay Pride parade in Montreal over a decade ago.

When I told Mado about it afterwards, she replied, “He’s right, I am a clown!”

Mado – a.k.a. former UQÀM theatre student Luc Provost, who quit university two credits shy of a bachelor’s degree – got her start as a shooter bitch and cigarette girl at Poodles and Club Lézard. The rest, as they say, is history (or in Mado’s case, Herstory).

Review: Some Frenzied Killing Games (Fringe)

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Aphasia, the dictionary tells us, is an impairment of language ability. It can be caused by dementia, brain trauma (a car accident, say), a tumour or an infection. Théâtre Aphasique is a social reinsertion program for aphasics and here they are at the Fringe with this wickedly titled (bilingual) show which arises from texts by Ionesco (whom, in passing, I do not like). No doubt about it, they've set the bar high for themselves.

First-Person: Amy Blackmore on The Fringe (Fringe 2012)

Ms Blackmore as Lady Gaga

(photo by Cindy Lopez)

Here we Go!

The Fringe starts well before The Fringe

by Amy Blackmore (photos by Tristan Brand)

[Ed: With this article The Charlebois Post - Montreal is launching its Fringe 2012 coverage. Please note there is now a special aggregator at the top of each page, under the site title, for all of our articles on this edition of the Fringe.]

From my windowless office, something has always felt a little strange about prepping for a summer festival when there is still two feet of snow on the ground. All the talk of tiki lounges, beer tents and sangria never seems right. Nevertheless, as of the date of publication of this feature, a little less than three months until the start of the 22nd edition of the St-Ambroise Montreal FRINGE Festival.