Fringe madness rears its head once more.
Moxie Crew, a new theatre troupe from St. Albert, has just sprouted wings and is holding auditions for its first Fringe Festival show.
The brainchild of director/designer Jim Herchak, Moxie Crew is mounting an original production of Kiss Within a Kiss running at Old Strathcona, August 16 to 26.
A classic plot, Kiss Within a Kiss whips up the farcical dilemmas two actors face in rehearsing scenes for an upcoming play.
“Everything seems to be going wrong. The original actress gets appendicitis and her younger sister steps in to rehearse a play about a deeper story of love lost,” says Herchak.
The director is looking for three actors: a female who can pass for 19, a 20- to 30-year-old male, and a second female anywhere from 25 to 35 years old. Auditions will be held at Fountain Park Pool on Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m.
The welder by trade first became interested in theatre when he was posted in Germany with the Canadian Armoured Reconnaissance Corps.
“I was one of those people moving through the grass and peeking at the tops of trees with binoculars.”
In his down time he joined Stage Fright, the military theatre club.
“It was a way to keep my sanity,” he freely admits.
After returning to Canada in 1991, he shelved theatre for about four years. But in that time, he dabbled on a play, The Colour of Blood, and fired it off to Pleiades Theatre, now renamed Vertigo Theatre. When he shipped off his script, the first-time playwright was unaware the Calgary company never undertook new material.
“They accepted it, workshopped it and rented out rehearsal space. I didn’t know why they accepted it. They tore it apart and made me rewrite it several times. In the end it was the same play, but more polished. It was more gracefully put together.”
It premiered in 1997 headed by artistic director John Paul Fischback as a suspenseful comedy thriller. It follows the scheming of an unfaithful husband and his mistress as they try to make the wife’s murder look like a suicide.
“But there’s a twist on the drugs they give her and she turns the tables on them, and the hunted becomes the hunter.”
In 2005, Herchak moved to St. Albert and promptly joined Walterdale Playhouse, building sets for Edmonton’s community theatre troupe.
Urged to submit a play for Walterdale’s Cradle to Stage competition, he penned Kiss Within a Kiss. Out of 23 entries his script was accepted for a workshop and production.
“It was inspired by a real event. I was living in Kamloops at the time and running auditions for Arsenic and Old Lace. The actress I gave a part to couldn’t take it because she didn’t want her first kiss to be on stage. I always wondered what would have happened if she did kiss on stage.”
In this 45-minute, one-act comedy, the roles are for two actors and a stage manager. At the auditions, Herchak will supply script segments for a cold reading.
With Moxie Crew, Herchak hopes to expand his directorial ambitions while providing entertaining material with depth.
“I want to choose clever scripts and do simple things as opposed to biting off more than I can chew.”
For more information, call 780-459-3347, evenings.
