It’s a-LIVE!! Biggest Fringe ever is back
Has Hamilton been missing the Fringe?
You can hear the answer in the excitement of Chris Stanton's voice. Affirmatory, good playgoer.
He is excited to say that the long-running and enormously popular annual theatre tradition (18 years) in this city is alive and well - and, well, alive-r, as in more live, than it has been at least since COVID-19.
The shows, more than 60 (the most ever), being staged in 350 separate performances on 14 different stages throughout the city (again, the most ever), are going to be chiefly live, with masks strongly recommended, supplemented by some online fare, says Stanton, this year's festival director.
It's not like the festival was ever gone for us to miss it - a version of the event went ahead even in the summer of 2020 during some of the worst of the first wave and what the festival learned from that summer they applied to a much expanded hybrid program last July, 2021, with great success.
But, it wasn't quite the same. This year, well, this year there's a kind of a feeling. Dare we say? Will there be a return to the freewheeling days, interactive, physical audience-dominated years of yore?
We will see, but it looks promising. The festival gets underway with the kickoff Wednesday (July 20) from 4 to 11 p.m. at the outdoor Hamilton Fringe Club, 190 King William (Theatre Aquarius), and it runs to July 31.
It's been fantastic," Stanton says of this, his latest go as festival director (Heather Kanabe is executive director). Honestly, it's been a weird process. A discovery and a rediscovery (of the Fringe's root experience). It's all a bit crazy but joyful crazy."
He's talking about the delicate balance that Hamilton Fringe Festival 2022 must strike between being balanced and delicate (viz-a-viz public health and social concerns) and being unbalanced and sometimes indelicate in terms of zaniness and experimentation.
A key innovation of the festival this year, adds Stanton, is something called the Fringe All Access program.
This is something we're very excited about," says Stanton. These are pieces - plays, musicals, cabarets curated by a committee created in 2021, asking how do we expand who's being seen on the stage?"
These are works, such as Discocab: Disability Connection Cabaret," meant to fortify the diversity of the festival. It's a novel approach for Fringe, which works by a lottery system, which is good at keeping things random but not so good at ensuring that there is the best range and spectrum of voices and backgrounds represented.
There will, of course, be the Fringe's usual mix of fresh faces and unpredictable turns with some of the festival's perhaps equally unpredictable stalwarts, like Susan Robinson and Will Gillespie (Mine: True Stories and Legends of the Porcupine Gold Rush"); Tottering Biped Theatre (Bullfinch's Mythology") and Corin Raymond (Bookmarks").
There will be parodies, playfulness, improv and profundities, excess and exaltation, and even food and cooking on stage with lots for everyone in the family, including Family Fringe.
There's everything from End With A Kiss" (Red Brick Theatre's take on Hallmark romances, all ad-libbed), Drag Me To The Opera" (Steven Morton as Aida Cupcake) and Lisa Pezik in Too Big for Her Britches" to social commentary, questions of justice, artificial intelligence, magic and poignant reflections on love and breakups to things in-between, like Too Much Information Improvised," which is Steph Haller and Paddy MacDonald, real life exes, in an improv about their messy relationship.
Then there is Brian Morton's play, The Night They Raided McMaster," based on the true story of the seizure of a film that the famous Hollywood producer (Ghostbusters," for one) was showing at Mac when he was a student there in the late 1960s.
It is a local production, and this year's Fringe has perhaps the strongest ever representation of Hamilton-based talent.
Home base for Fringe this year is Theatre Aquarius, with programming at The Studio Theatre, the back stage area and outdoors. This year, with Mary Francis Moore (TA artistic director), there has been a deepening of our partnership (with Theatre Aquarius)," says Stanton.
He says the pre-festival ticket sales so far are even better than last year's.
Other stage areas include Bridgeworks, The Staircase, Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts, The Zoetic, Casbah Lounge, The Players' Guild, The Westdale, Relay Coffee Roasters, Vintage Coffee Roasters, Mosaic, RED Church Cafe-Gallery, Defining Movement Dance, Mills Hardware.
For complete schedules, maps, addresses and directions to the stage or to volunteer and/or partner with the Fringe, visit Hamilton Fringe Festival 2022 Program (hftco.ca) or call 289-698-2234 or email heather@hftco.ca.
Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator.jmahoney@thespec.com