The 30th anniversary of Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival, the popular summer fest running Aug. 11 to 21, is more than a testament of survival.
The festival reflects how strongly it has become ingrained in theatregoers' lives. As Fringe Festival executive director Julian Mayne said, “How better to celebrate 30 years than by sharing the experience?”
This year's theme — Fringeopolis —mirrors Old Strathcona's transformation as a city within a city built around theatre performances, busking acts, children's activities, vendors, artisans and an expected 400,000 visitors.
As the oldest and largest Fringe festival in North America, organizers have booked 200 acts in 1,200 plus performances spread across 42 stages.
In addition, there are nightly late night cabarets and Fringe forums where theatre artists and personalities bring informative, entertaining discussions to the festival.
Mayne is particularly proud of an exchange with the Art Creation Foundation for Children, a Haitian organization that serves 95 children from six months to 18 years.
About 10 of the children have been invited to the KidsFringe. “They will give a performance of Haitian folk tales and songs and present papier machĂ© workshops,” Mayne said.
“This type of collaboration is very meaningful and their type of work is shown worldwide. Haiti is their home. They are very proud of it and they wish to share it with others.”
In addition, about 40 artists with ties to St. Albert, Morinville and Legal are performing at the Fringe, the largest number in the past decade.
To celebrate this profusion of talent, the Gazette will run reviews of their shows throughout the festival. They will be available at www.stalbertgazette.com.
Festival guidebooks are available for $7 at all local Safeway stores. Tickets range from $6 to $12. Call 780-409-1910 or go online to www.fringetheatre.ca to book.
So join us in sharing the experience with friends and neighbours listed below:
• Paul Kane graduate Louise Casemore Large and former St. Albert resident Elise Benzer take the lead in (Real) Gone (Girl), a work inspired by women of the Beat Generation.
• St. Albert Children's Theatre (SACT) brings back its top tier alumni — Daniel Abrahamson, Matt Alden, Celina Stachow Dean, Emily Dykes and Vanessa Sabourin — for a remount of Lucky Stiff.
• Riding a wave of creativity, SACT has scored a second show with SACT in the City, a nightly cabaret of established artists that got their start with this troupe.
• In a twist of irony, St. Albert comedian/actor Scott C. Bourgeois and Leah Anderson star in Has This Ever Happened to You? The Ron Cashmere Story, a look at a man born to be the perfect pitchman.
• SACT improv instructor Jamie Cavanagh wears the director's hat in Notes From a Zombie Apocalypse, a tale of a world gone awry.
• David Johnston, one of St. Albert's most versatile actor/playwrights, puts his two cents into a dark adaptation of Dracula, Bram Stoker's classic vampire story of blood, desire and madness.
• New to the professional scene, St. Albert's Kyla Shinkewski, along with Jamie Cavanagh, stars in Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline, a stark examination of revenge.
• Once again, the multi-faceted Shinkewski has a role in Aleugenta, a probe into a legacy that allowed the involuntary sterilization of children.
• SACT drama instructor Eric Wigston and St. Albert actor Doran Werner regroup in Bare as students that face issues of sexuality and personal identity.
• David Johnston whips out his pen as the wicked playwright of No Choking Matter, a comedy that attempts to teach the Heimlich Manoeuvre.
• As part of a playwrights' collective, Matt Alden has penned 9 Months to Mars, a comedy about two astronauts forced to get along while on a space mission.
• St. Albert jazz singer/actress Lori Mohacsy joins a cast of four in The Book of Jobes, a Biblical allegory about a woman with cerebral palsy who seeks to make sense of her life after a random attack.
• Melanie Gall, a St. Albert born and raised soprano now living in New York, brings to life The Sparrow and The Mouse — Creating the Music of Edith Piaf.
• Paul Kane graduate Lauren Boyd directs (Title of Show), which also stars St. Albert actor Stephen Tracey in a rags-to-riches story about two nobodies who write a musical starring themselves that becomes a hit.
• In The Not-Evil Stepmother, St. Albert resident Arielle Ballance takes the lead in this fairytale gone amok.
• SACT alumnus Josh Languedoc makes his first writing foray into children's theatre in The Kazoodles Present: The Brain Train to Imagination Station.
• Another SACT alumna, Kate Ryan, has developed a serious reputation as a puppeteer and she presents a quirky adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's Princess and the Pea.
• One of the area's sharpest improvisers, Matt Alden, teams with Rapid Fire Theatre in The Kidprovisors to unlock the improv talent of young minds.
• In this all-female production, former St. Albert resident Sarah Sharkey, one of Edmonton's strongest emerging actors, stars in Queen Lear.
• Former St. Albert resident Barbara North, a CBC award-winning comedian, returns to the Fringe with a one-woman show Everything I Didn't Need to Know I Learned in Grade Nine.
• St. Albert dancer Paige Tirs guest stars in Prelude to a Kiss: Live at the Sands, a groovin' twist on the famed Rat Pack combining dance, improv and comedy.
• And St. Albert choreographer Andrea Gilborn puts her seductive moves to the test in Tudor Queens: A Burlesque as six queens strip away their royal robes and reveal the purgatory they live in.
• One of Legal's theatrical constellations, Joelle Prefontaine struts her stuff in Twenty-five, A New Musical, an examination of people coming of age in today's dangerous world.
• The multi-faceted Prefontaine also stars in Guernica, based on Picasso's painting of a small bombed-out Spanish town.
• SACT instructors Sara Vickruk and Candice Fiorentino take centre stage in The Seminar, a comedy/drama that takes a poke at plastic surgery.
• St. Albert Theatre Arts Guild Entertainers (STAGE) actors Corey Rogers, Joshua Schilds and Kayla Manuel weave their way through twisted love lives in Complicated.
• Former SACT instructor Garrett Ross lays out his charms in the new David Belke whodunit Forsooth, My Lovely, a mystery combining fiction and Shakespeare.
• Lori Mohacsy shows off her puppetry in The Wizard That Was, or Was Not, a fable about a wizard's magic spell that forces a beautiful island to disappear under the waves.
• Kate Ryan directs and former SACT music director Ryan Sigurdson guides the notes of Bells are Ringing, a fun piece about a New York answering service in the 1950s.
• Triple threat artist Matt Alden whips out his firecracker humour in Die-Nasty at the Fringe.
• Former St. Albert resident Jenny McKillop stars in Firing Lines: Journalist Beatrice Nasmyth Covers the First World War.
• Byron Martin and Eric Wigston, two former SACT drama instructors, star in Boygroove, a musical that explores the rise and fall of a boy band.
• SACT alumna Bridget Ryan delivers some old cabaret classics laced with a hefty dose of humour in Bridget Ryan's Standards.
• Once again, Bridget Ryan and her mother Maralyn, founding artistic director of SACT, team up for Puppet Pilots, a tale of three puppets who dream of making it big in Hollywood.
• Candice Fiorentino pulls out all the stops in Filthy Rich, a film noir for the stage involving corruption and greed, conspiracy and scandal.
• St. Albert's Georgina Sande and Lucy Haines are part of Edmonton Musical Theatre's Divas and Idols; Broadway Meets Rock.
• St. Albert playwright Cindy Oxley presents Hey, Riel starring David Wilson.
• Wilson also shows off his vocal prowess in The Last Five Years, a Jason Robert Brown song-cycle that chronicles the five-year life of a marriage.
• Three St. Albert Catholic High grads — Sara Bruno, Jesse Harlton and Quinn Hinch — have written Papa's Got a Brand New Urn, a story of three siblings that travel across Canada to spread their father's ashes.
• Morinville playwright Marty Chan premieres Mothership Down, a sharp poke at government agendas.
• A full company of St. Albert improv artists — Sean Bedard, Ali Yusuf, Dylan Cuviliar and Josh Languedoc — hit the stage in Beerprov Strikes Back.
