Returning faves prove festival has room for old and new
Repeat Fringe shows resonate with local audiences
Whether by virtue of its audacious concept, revered performers or $13 ticket price, Gordon’s Big Bald Head will enjoy its 25th anniversary as a Fringe show when the improv favourite takes to the stage at the 38th annual Edmonton International Fringe Festival.
“The ’90s seems a long time away, but time flies when you’re having fun,” said Gordon’s Big Bald Head stalwart Mark Meer as he contemplated the momentous anniversary.
GBBH, if you are unfamiliar with the concept, sees three theatre artists — Meer, Jacob Banigan and Ron Pederson — create their own version of any other Fringe show based on its description in the program. Once an audience member suggests the play, Meer, Banigan and Pederson invent an hour-long narrative arc complete with character development and emotional stakes.
At the next performance, they do it all again. Have been for 25 years.
Ask Meer about the seemingly tireless supply and demand for Gordon’s Big Bald Head (named for Gordon, the Sesame Street character) and he admitted widespread name recognition of the cast is a factor. But there is also something about practice making perfect.
“One strives to get better every year and it’s certainly true with improv,” said Meer. “I’ll admit in the early years falling into the pitfall of cheap gags and I’m not saying I don’t stoop to that in the modern day, but that tends to fall by the wayside.”
Gordon’s Big Bald Head is an extreme example of a Fringe phenomenon that sees select shows, concepts and performers successfully host audiences over and over again. There are multiple explanations for this happy miracle. Some productions, such as Stephanie Morin-robert’s Blindside (back this year after popular runs in 2016, 2017 and 2018), have sold out previously and are capitalizing on pentup demand for the same product.
Other shows such as God is a Scottish Drag Queen (here for its sixth outing in 2019) are more like a franchise. They feature the talents of the same performer (Victoria’s Mike Delamont in this case) doing a different shtick that grows on audiences year by year.
Vancouver artist T.J. Dawe — who has performed at 16 Edmonton Fringes over the last 25 years — loves the festival so much that he develops numerous shows and plays numerous roles, to make himself comfortingly familiar to the ticket-buying public.
This year, Dawe is in six different productions and will be backstage or on stage for roughly 30 performances in 10 days. He’s the writer/ performer in The Slipknot (its second time at the Edmonton Fringe) and the writer/performer of Operatic Panic Attack (a new work). Dawe is also the director and dramaturge for two plays — Didn’t Hurt, plus Fear and Loathing and Lovecraft. He’s directing two plays in his One Man franchise — One Man Star Wars (a multi-fringe-returning fave) as well as One Man Avengers (which he also co-wrote).
Dawe attributes his ubiquity to knowing what people like. He said some of his shows have a “circus quality” that draws audiences with their sheer novelty.
“I can memorize long, complex passages and reel them off quickly,” he said. “It’s like verbal juggling. A lot of the feedback I get from people is how do you remember that?”
He also has a good sense of what plays resonate and repeats that formula. Some of his more popular shows that have appeared in Edmonton are about crappy jobs — who can’t relate to that? — including The Slipknot, plus Dishpig (about the service industry), Tired Cliches (office jobs), Labrador (children’s touring theatre) and A Canadian Bartender at Butlin’s (self-evident).
“What I’ve also found is that the specific things about my own life, people seem to relate to that and the personal becomes universal,” said Dawe.
Tapping into a universal story has also proved rewarding for theatre artist Julia Mackey — the talent behind the one-person, megahit Jake’s Gift, which first appeared in Edmonton in 2008 and has been back three times since (including last year).
The show sees Mackey play four different characters, including a Second World War veteran named Jake who reluctantly returns to Juno Beach for the 60th anniversary of D -Day. The soldier encounters a little girl who cares for graves of dead soldiers. The tender, funny and charming tale has enjoyed hundreds of performances across North America and in France since its debut in 2007.
Mackey said there are numerous reasons Jake’s Gift returns to packed houses and some of them apply to other shows as well. Capacity is often a limitation at the Fringe. When a show like Mackey’s, which blew up after a positive review by Edmonton theatre don Colin Maclean in 2008, is seen at the often tiny spaces that dot the Fringe site, wannabe patrons often can’t get a ticket. They watch for another opportunity another year.
“But a larger reason is that when people connect to a story on an emotional level, they want to see it again or share it with friends and family,” said Mackey in a phone call from her home in Wells. B.C. “And that often compels (artists) to come back to the Fringe with the same show.”
Mackey said she feels “somewhat sheepish” returning repeatedly to the Edmonton International Fringe Festival with Jake’s Gift because she has such respect for artists who consistently create new work. But audiences make her feel as if her work is new all over again when they talk to her after the show.
People take different messages from the script and that never fails to move Mackey.
“It’s not really a war story, it’s a story about friendship and forgiveness and pushing through emotional traumas and for people Jake is either their dad or their grandfather or their brother-inlaw,” said Mackey. “Whenever I have made strong connections with people after the show, one of the first things they always say to me is that it became personal to them.”
Here’s the refreshingly consistent thing about live theatre: Every performance is a new take, said Mackey, in front of a different audience and in that is endlessly variable.