Latest Updates: Fringe Festival 2009 RSS

• Arts

  36 Girls tackles real-life issues at Fringe

  

  Posted by Brandii Styles at 11:15 pm on July 9, 2009
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  How does one tackle all of life’s issues in just one hour?

  Ask 29-year-old playwright/director Aurora Stewart de Penas.

  “I just write,” she says.

  Stewart de Penas, co-founder of creative performance collective Birdtown and Swanville, vividly portrays the obstacles life serves up in 36 Little Plays About Hopeless Girls. The hysterical, poignant production comes in the form of one-minute vignettes strung together to make for an enjoyable hour. She credits life experience for the honesty in her writing.

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• Arts

  Toronto-based Fringe play gets Canadian Comedy Award nomination

  

  Posted by Jeff Cottrill at 4:51 pm on July 8, 2009
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  When local playwright Marissa Gregoris decided to take Second City classes years ago, it was because she heard you didn’t have to be funny.

  So it seems ironic that Gregoris has since earned three Canadian Comedy Award nominations – the latest for her Fringe Festival hit, It’s Just a Phase.

  (More …)

   

• Arts, News

  It’s worth the drive to Sara Hennessey Town

  

  Posted by Mike Crisolago at 3:26 am on July 7, 2009
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  In many ways, Sara Hennessey Town bares a striking resemblance to the city of Toronto. And there’s a reason for that.

  “A lot of comedy comes from being disgruntled and being unimpressed with something,” Hennessey, the writer and star of the Fringe Festival comedy, said. “And I walk around and there’s so many things that can piss you off in a day – whether it’s slow walkers or the smells or anything.”

  Sara Hennessey Town, the follow-up to the hit 2008 Fringe hit Sara Hennessey Time, is a bit of a departure for the 25-year old Aurora-born comedian. While Time provided a showcase for Hennessey’s stand-up, Town is a one-woman sketch show featuring a variety of characters served up with an innovative and intelligent presentation.

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• Arts, News

  Stepping out of Neil Young’s shadow

  

  Posted by Mike Crisolago at 2:52 am on July 6, 2009
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  Frank Wilks never set out to become Neil Young. In fact, for his first musical gig, at the old Chalet Steakhouse on Queen Street East, the 19-year old had another persona prepared.

  “I used to have a fedora and I called myself the Lonely Man Frank Wilks, because I was a solo act.”

  The moniker didn’t last long.

  “Right from my very first performance everyone said, ‘Man, you sound so much like Neil Young.’” Wilks said. “So it started right then, this Neil Young thing.”

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• Arts, News

  I Am Not Neil Young, the musical rocks the Fringe Fest

  

  Posted by Mike Crisolago at 2:49 am on July 6, 2009
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  Frank Wilks was incredibly calm for a man about to take to the stage and willingly reveal the great highs and, yes, terrible lows of his own life.

  Falling onto a couch next to me, minutes before the start of his one-man show I Am Not Neil Young, the musical, Wilks responded to my question about whether he’s nervous performing without a band.

  “Nah. I’ve got the band in a box,” he said, referring to the musical backing tracks he plays along with.

  Then he grinned.

  “I think I’ll sit here and watch the show.”

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• Arts, News

  Play breaks down the science of the human body and the mind

  

  Posted by Caroline George at 1:57 am on July 6, 2009
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  Physics and the physical world collide for writer T. Berto.

  His newest creation, A Singularity of Being, this year ’s best new play winner at Toronto’s Fringe Festival, hits closer to home than audiences may realize.

  “It added so much veracity and visceral parts of myself in it,” said Berto of the play’s complex, but also deeply personal subject matter.

  Berto lost a childhood friend last year to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the same disease that cripples the play’s central character, shattered genius Roland Mathers.

  (More …)

   

• Arts

  Comedian Chris Gibbs discusses fatherhood, Toronto, and his new Fringe show

  

  Posted by Jeff Cottrill at 8:27 pm on July 3, 2009
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  Chris Gibbs feels very much at home in Toronto.

  “It’s a lovely place,” he says. “Everyone’s nice, it’s cheap and it’s friendly – if you come from London. I’m sure if you’re from somewhere else, it’s more” – he adopts an American-accented hick voice – “‘Eww, it’s the big city!’”

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• Arts

  Fringe play reexamines myth of Adam and Eve – and Lillith

  

  Posted by Jeff Cottrill at 6:31 pm on July 3, 2009
  No Comments 2 images
  

  Everybody knows the story of Adam and Eve. But what about Lillith – whom some ancient texts refer to as Adam’s first wife?

  Returning to Lillith, by St. Catharines’ Seventh Circle Theatre, puts Lillith back into the equation. The one-act drama, opening tonight at the Fringe Festival, asks, what if Lillith re-entered into Adam’s life during his marriage to Eve?

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• Arts

  Queer-themed productions among Fringe Fest openers

  

  Posted by Jeff Cottrill at 3:48 am on July 2, 2009
  No Comments 2 images
  

  Cross-dressing and same-sex coupling: common elements of two very different one-act plays that opened last night at the Fringe Festival.

  An all-female version of The Importance of Being Earnest, and a re-launch of last year’s hit It’s Just a Phase, both may allow theatre-goers one brief last taste of Pride week.
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• Arts

  The Fringe’s ‘Once More With Feeling’ shadow-cast revamps a cult classic

  

  Posted by Laura Godfrey at 6:10 pm on July 1, 2009
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  Step aside, Bella and Sookie – this year’s Fringe Festival is bringing back the leading lady of a vampire franchise from before your time, with her very own Scooby gang to boot.

  Starting this week at the Bloor Cinema, dreams will come true for fans of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On July 2, 5 and 10, the show’s critically-acclaimed musical episode, “Once More With Feeling,” finds its way onstage as a shadow-cast, where enthusiastic performers will recreate the show as it plays on a movie screen behind them. (More …)