Fringe: the go-to place for art and heart

The Edmonton Fringe Festival attracts performers from across the world, but in 2015, there appears to be an uptick in improv, music and dance productions.

“Dance has found its way into the Fringe,” artistic director Murray Utas said. “We’ve noticed it’s come across the country. There have always been a lot of pop culture references at the Fringe. But in the last while, a lot of full cast shows are moving in that direction.”

In this non-juried festival running Aug. 13 to 23, where performances range from raw and scruffy to sublime and polished, the program includes 214 productions and 42 street buskers entertaining crowds.

As a regional festival it is a global giant, the largest in North America. And its openness to diversity has attracted everything from satire and romance to sweeping musicals and alternative theatre.

This year’s theme is SupercaliFRINGEilistic, a salute to the marvelous Mary Poppins (Mariann Sinkovics) who dropped in on stilts and fired up the imagination of all boys and girls – young and old.

“For me musical theatre references are an amazing part of what theatre is about, and this year amazingly enough, we have a ton of full musical casts,” Utas added.

One of the new elements this year is a first-time opening ceremony for KidsFringe.

“The KidsFringe is one of the best kept secrets and we’re having the first opening ceremony this Friday. We need to celebrate another piece of what makes the festival work. This is a good way to bring moms and kids together. We will start at the ATB Financial Arts Barns at 10 a.m. There will be a circus performer and the Edmonton Eskimos Cheer Team.”

While many previous artistic directors have spent time and resources growing the festival, Utas is eager to bring a sense of community to the sprawling festival.

“I want to lead with art and heart. I think the Fringe is successful when everyone has a part in it – artists, fringers and sponsors. The reach of the festival is international and I want to make sure it doesn’t lose the heart and the art.

The Fringe kicks off with a Performers Parade on Thursday, Aug. 13 at 7 p.m. It starts on Gateway Boulevard and winds down to the ATB Financial Art Barn.

A $10 guide program is available at all Mac’s, Second Cups, Chapters, Indigo and Coles locations.

This year a hefty number of St. Albert, Morinville and Sturgeon County artists are working in 33 productions to make the Fringe a success. Below is a comprehensive list.

• St. Albert university graduate Kristen Padayas stars in Harold and Vivian Entertain Guests, a madcap crazy romp about a couple that doesn’t like surprises, people or each other.

• Morinville actor Rory Turner, a graduate of MacEwan University, and Sturgeon County music director Keat Machtemes help dramatize Assassins, a musical that draws common threads between nine presidential assassins.

• Catherine Wenschlag, a dynamic St. Albert character actress, plays the wacky Sheila in Death Comes to Auntie Norma, a reality show spoof.

• Once again St. Albert son Matt Alden tests his stand-up skills with another zesty comedic run of Die Nasty at the Fringe.

• Morinville stand-up comedienne Brandi CK LaPerle stars in The Fourth Wall, a comedy-drama about a record shop owner that talks to a wall.

• Local director David Johnston spices things up in Deadmonton, a tale of love, violence and possibly murder.

• St. Albert actor Josh Languedoc tries his hand at playwriting in Killing Earl, a play based on the classic Dixie Chicks song.

• The St. Albert collective Go 4 Broke starring Sean Bedard, Ali Yusuf, and Languedoc travel to a science fantasy realm in Simulation: Over, a comedy-drama that presupposes the world will end in one minute.

• Double Double, a musical satire on Canada’s favourite brewhouse, brings together St. Albert artists Arielle Ballance, Nadine Veroba and Owen Bishop.

• In Pinniped, and Other Poems, St. Albert’s Alexandra Dawkins navigates the foggy world of memories and dreams.

• A notable firecracker on stage, former St. Albert actress Eliza Benzer returns to the stage in It’s Love, and Other Reasons to Panic, a look at this crazy thing called love.

• Byron Martin, a former St. Albert improv instructor and founder of Grindstone Theatre, stars in the improvised Life is a Musical.

• Although beloved St. Albert composer Jan Randall moved to Vancouver, he makes a special appearance in another run of Rocket Sugar Factory, a razor sharp improvisation of a TV series pilot.

• St. Albert teachers Jaime Johansson and Barb Hubbard, two long-time cast members of Edmonton Musical Theatre, crafted the original script for Back in Time, a musical that travels at warp speed to the ’50s.

• In this theatre for young audiences, Northern Alberta Children’s Festival volunteer Julie Ferguson is launched into the vast reaches of space in The Unorthodox Coordinates of Razz, the StarChild.

• Be careful what you wish for. St. Albert artist Olivia Latta directs Rigby Muldoon: Time Traveler for Hire in this noir-infused sci-fi comedy about a woman who hires a professional time traveler to change the course of her destiny.

• Founding artistic director of St. Albert Children’s Theatre Maralyn Ryan directs The Curate Shakespeare’s As You Like It, a comedy where young people fall in love faster than switching a TV on and off.

• Back for a second run before Edmonton audiences, Pacific Time, written by St. Albert playwright David Haas, is a science fiction love story that takes place in a mysterious cafĂ© where time and place fluctuate and mesh.

• St. Albert’s esteemed go-to stage manager Al Gadowsky takes the helm in Gidion’s Knot, a suspense-filled, powerful drama on bullying.

• St. Albert community theatre artists Terry Hall and Kaelynn Dixon strike up a few notes in Fiddler on the Roof.

• Dancers Paige Tirs, Janae Olsen and Annika Hanson live in a world where tap dance is the major form of communication in Tip Tap Toe, if you love me never let me go!

• After the success of The Real Inspector Hound, St. Albert actor Chase Jeffels returns with Samuel Beckett’s classic Words & Music.

• The Edmonton Comedy Festival is up to their armpits in laughter providing a sampling of two different comedians every night of the Fringe. St. Albert comic Tyler Hawkins wants everyone to know “no animals were harmed in the making of this production.”

• Morinville actor, Russ Farmer, who last year made a stage comeback, repeats his successes in Personals, a Stephen Schwarz/Alan Menken musical on love.

• Cliff Kelly makes another anticipated performance in Release The McCrackin, a guns and martial arts segue about a man who awakens from a coma with no memory.

• Improv Against Humanity, an 18 and over show, flings the ideas of St. Albert sketch artists Sean Bedard, Tyler Dettling, Scott Pedrick and Languedoc into a dicey party game format.

• Bridget Ryan’s In Your Element is a mash-up of songs and party patter from the ’80s that the St. Albert Children’s Theatre alumna perfected over the years.

• Byron Martin continues to stretch his improv skills as far as he can in Blackout, a new improv-based sketch comedy group of writers, working to present hilarity and fun.

• The mesmerizing playwright/actress Louise Casemore, a Paul Kane alumna, takes the lead in OCD, a short comedy-drama on obsessive-compulsive disorder.

• The award winning Candice Fiorentino (Anatolia Speaks), once again steps up with Balance 2.1, a drama about a sailor with an unknown future and a woman facing a crisis.

• Do you want to be beautiful, so beautiful people can’t take their eyes off you? Then check out Fiorentino’s output in The Seminar: Breakthrough!, a dark satire on the beauty industry’s extremes.

• Homegrown actresses Jenny McKillop and Jenna Dykes-Busby as well as St. Albert Children’s Theatre alumni Kate Ryan and Garrett Ross test their chops in A New Brain, a musical tale about a creative composer whose life is interrupted by a life-threatening brain illness.

• McKillop, Ross and Dykes-Busby once again parlay their craft in Wilder and Wilder!, an exploration of two of Thornton Wilder’s short comedies.