Fringe festival plays get interactive
The Fringe encourages interactive theatre, writes Louis B. Hobson
The Calgary Fringe Festival is an event where anything goes.
The fringe’s motto is uncensored, unexpected and unforgettable.
The uncensored part means the festival executive do not ask to read a submission or see a video of a show before scheduling it.
The artist needs only win a slot in the yearly lottery.
What has remained pretty constant these past 10 years are the venues in Inglewood, but this year two shows have found their own new venues.
The Calgary group that calls itself ChiMOchiMO Immersive Theatre will present its show titled Knocked over, Knocked off, Knocked up in the old sandstone Alexandra School beside the Alexandra Centre.
Anyone planning to attend should bring comfortable walking shoes, and a brave heart and meet at the Alexandra muster point behind the ticket booth near the Alexandra Centre.
The show is open to a maximum of 25 people.
Cherie Ratte, who wrote this show with Kent Pigot and Trevor Campbell, explains the premise of this interactive experience.
“The old school is now the Greyer Institute for the Not So Terribly Insane,” Ratte says.
“Apparently, stories have leaked out that the doctors at the institute have been conducting experiments on the patients which actually increase their symptoms rather than cure them. The tour has been arranged to alleviate the concerns of the public by taking people into the institution, and perhaps even duplicating some of the experiments on the tour participants.” Ratte admits the purpose of this interactive theatre piece is “to take people a little out of their comfort zone.
“I’ve always felt that people should become more involved in the theatre they attend. We are giving people a chance to be more than simply watchers.”
Ratte expects most audience members to “be a little nervous and reluctant, but as the play gives them the chance to release their inner child, they’ll be happy to play along.”
Erin Morgan and Lily Sutherland, a couple of Torontonians, caught an outdoor Shakespeare play in Toronto last year.
“That outdoor experience inspired us to create our own outdoor play,” says Morgan of Gather, a unique fringe show that will take place in Lantern Park (1401 11 Ave. S.E.) just behind the Lantern Church in Inglewood, one of the major fringe locations.
“When we contacted (festival director) Michele Gallant last winter, we told her all we really needed was a tree and a nice space around it. Michele actually went out in the dead of winter and took pictures in the Lantern Park to ask us if we though that space might work for us. Because our motto is where there’s a tree, there’s a play, we were excited even if we had to try to envision the park without all that snow.”
Gather is about two tribes who’ve come together to celebrate all of creation.
Morgan is the leader of the Stone Dwellers, whereas Sutherland heads the Woodhelvins.
When ticket holders arrive at the park they are given either a stone or a twig which dictates on which side of the tree they must gather.
The Stone Dwellers will have no idea what the Woodhelvins are being instructed to do so it should be 55 very surprising minutes.
“We hope it will prove to be a surreal experience for people. We want their fringe experience to be as different and unpredictable as possible.”
Gather premiered recently at the Winnipeg fringe where word of the surreal experience spread like lightning and by the final night of that fringe, Morgan and Sutherland could barely handle the crowd that attended.
“At the end of the show we form a circle that unites the two tribes and when we saw how incredibly large that circle was Lily and I couldn’t stop beaming,” says Morgan.
“Our little experiment had worked. It had struck a chord.”