Group Tour

In this age of high­er trav­el costs, you nor­mal­ly see only one and two per­son shows tour­ing the Fringe cir­cuit. How­ev­er, a group of local Con­tem­po­rary Dance stu­dents that is cur­rent­ly pre­sent­ing Twen­ty Four at the Fringe is tak­ing their dance show to two oth­er Fringes this sum­mer, start­ing with Kingston next week. It is a finan­cial risk to take a show with a mid-sized cast to anoth­er city, but it’s a good show and I hope it works out for them.

The Heat Is On

It’s been hot and humid the last two days (and that’s the weath­er fore­cast for today too). I’ve been to a cou­ple of hot venues dur­ing the last cou­ple of days. The Cre8ery has fans but not air con­di­tion­ing and was a lit­tle hot on Mon­day night. MTYP has air con­di­tion­ing but, with a big crowd, it was very uncom­fort­able last night. I can only imag­ine how hot it was for per­former Mike Dela­m­ont to be under the bright stage lights for 60 min­utes — he did under­stand­ably takes a few breaks to grab a drink of water and wipe the sweat off his forehead.

Phones

A cou­ple of Fringe shows this year have asked peo­ple to take out their smart­phones — Influ­enced and Laugh­ing Yoga. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I’ve seen at least one per­son in each show keep their phone on after the scene was fin­ished just to scroll. Because, they are so addic­tive, I’m think­ing it’s a dumb idea to use smart­phones in a show.

Live Music

The Barn Iden­ti­ty is sell­ing real­ly well and on Sat­ur­day, Eri­ka Mac­Don­ald’s show will have a spe­cial treat — live music (instead of record­ed music) from her part­ner Paul Strickland.

Round Table

Please join us tonight at 8 pm on 101.5 FM or umfm​.com for our annu­al hour long round table dis­cus­sion, where our review­ers will talk about some of their favourite shows at the Fringe.

Quote of the Day

“I’m not here to do art, I’m here to get rich.”

From Old Man (Venue 19).