Victoria Fringe Festival all about community, discovery

Arts August 13, 2014

With 54 shows spread across multiple venues during 11 jam-packed days of live theatre, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by Victoria Fringe Fest. But, according to festival organizers and those who are mounting live theatre productions during Fringe, the best way to embrace the organized chaos of the annual live theatre festival is to jump right in.

And while you may lose yourself for a few days in the wonderment of various styles of live performance art, what you’ll end up finding is even more important, says Rose Jang, the festival’s first guest producer.

Victoria Fringe Festival guest producer Rose Jang loves the fest vibe (photo by Derek Ford).
Victoria Fringe Festival guest producer Rose Jang loves the fest vibe (photo by Derek Ford).

“The best thing about Fringe is the sense of community and the sense of exploration,” says Jang. “I don’t come from a theatre background, and it’s something that I got myself into, and a lot of my first discoveries in theatre came from the Fringe… discovering the theatre community and discovering what theatre actually is.”

Fringe producer and Intrepid Theatre director Janet Munsil approached Jang to take over the reins this year, an opportunity that the recent Camosun graduate didn’t hesitate at grabbing. A longtime volunteer for the festival, the former Applied Communication Program student and Nexus contributor has experience volunteering, working at, and attending different Fringe festivals across Canada, but Victoria’s Fringe has always held a special place for her.

“I like that it’s different every year and it’s such a huge community,” she says. “Every year there are people that just pop out of the woodwork and I only see them at Fringe and it’s a big, huge family. I love seeing my Victoria Fringe family every year.”

Included in that family are the casts and crews of the 54 different plays from all over the world that were selected this year in the Fringe Festival’s lottery system. Every year the festival includes many local production companies, some of which camped outside of Intrepid’s offices in January in order to secure one of 10 guaranteed local spots.

“This is the second time our company waited outside overnight for an early-bird guaranteed spot,” says Dyana Victoria of Broken Rhythms, a Victoria-based dance company and former Pick of the Fringe winner that’s mounting a new show called SEVEN this year. “It always feels great to perform in Victoria.”

First-time Fringer but longtime local spoken-word artist shayne avec i grec will be performing in a two-man show called The Anthropocalypse this year and says although Fringes around the world share the commonalities of bringing art lovers together through live theatre, the Victoria festival is particularly special for him because it’s happening in his community.

“The thing that excites me most about Victoria being our first Fringe Festival is the community that rallies together this time every year, and all of the smiles that I see throughout downtown,” says grec, who also camped out in January to get his spot. “I know these are commonplace things of any Fringe, but this community is directly mine and I’ve always loved to ride that glow. Now I’m excited to help create it.”

As a mid-sized Fringe festival, Jang says Victoria has the benefit of being small enough for theatre-goers to get to know each show in the program just enough to decide what they want to take in.

“Victoria’s Fringe is big enough that you can’t see every show; it would be physically impossible,” says Jang. “But it’s small enough that you can get to know every show a little bit.”

As opposed to smaller Fringe festivals such as Calgary, which only has about 30 shows, and much larger ones like Winnipeg and Edmonton, with nearly 200 shows apiece, Victoria is a good balance of variety. And some inherent risk for good measure.

“Fringe is also about that sense of discovery,” says Jang. “Because it’s a lottery, we have no idea what the shows are going to be; whether they’re going to be any good, what genres they’re going to be… It’s the cheapest theatre you can possibly see, and either you’re going to see something amazing like you’ve never seen before, or something horrible like you’ve never seen before, which I think is a great reason to see as many shows as possible at the festival.”

One of the shows hoping for attention this year is The Princess Rescue Force from Robin Gadsby’s New Blood Theatre. Gadsby agrees that the theatre community in Victoria is a wonderful place for creative minds to develop their shows.

“My favourite thing about the Victoria Fringe is the close support of the community,” says Gadsby. “There’s a great mix of reliable favourites, but it’s also the perfect city for new writers and creators to try out their work for the first time, and it’s going to be exciting to see what fresh stuff comes out this year.”

UVic Fine Arts undergraduate Markus Spodzieja is such a fan of performing in the Fringe that he’s actually in two shows this year, The Rise of Basement Boy and Improv on Trial.

“It feels good to be a local in the festival because Fringe is something that Victoria does extremely well, and I’m glad to not only be surrounded by local talent, but also be witness to everyone that travels great distances for our festival,” says Spodzieja. “And any festival that has the creativity to make their mascot a llama mixed with a unicorn is alright in my books.”

A closer look at some local Fringe picks

The Anthropocalypse
Being billed as a “talk-opera,” this two-man show is the culmination of three years of touring the North American poetry and spoken-word circuit. “We started building a reality-bending mythology, or fakelore, with the goal of creating the world’s first psychedelic talk opera,” says the show’s co-creator, shayne avec i grec.
SEVEN
A 50-minute visual dance performance, SEVEN deals with the seven different stages of grief, “both the ugliness and the beauty,” according to artistic director Dyana Victoria. The show uses rhythmical contemporary, a unique style of dance that “brings animalistic qualities into movement and highlights the importance of music in storytelling,” says Victoria.
The Rise of the Basement Boy
Started as a UVic writing assignment by writer/director Shane Campbell, the play began to take shape when fellow UVic student Markus Spodzieja, who had previous Fringe experience, got involved in development. “To say our show is heavily geek-influenced would be an understatement,” says Spodzieja. “Expect catchy songs, a few swordfights, plenty of nerdy humour, and a never-ending satchel of laughs.”
The Princess Rescue Force
A farcical journey through a fairy tale world, Robin Gadsby plays 15 different characters over the course of this one-hour comedy show. “Fringe-goers can expect to see something completely ridiculous the likes of which they’ve never experienced before,” says Gadsby.

Victoria Fringe Festival
August 21-31
Various venues
victoriafringe.com