Montreal Fringe Festival: on y va le Fringe!

By Nicole Gluckstern

It's official, I've gone bi. Bi-coastally Fringe that is. The 18th annual Montreal Fringe Festival has begun, and I'm here to play my role. Like the San Francisco Fringe, of which I'm also a part, the Montreal Fringe offers an eclectic array of unjuried theatrical performances, from dance to drama, acrobatics to absurdities, spoken word to shadow puppetry. Unlike the SF Fringe however, Montreal is a major player in the Canadian Fringe Festival circuit, attracting a large variety of international performers, many of whom will spend the entire summer fringing on the road. It's also one hell of a party. I'm not cheating on San Francisco, I reason. I'm broadening my horizons. If last year's Montreal Fringe, my first, was but a dalliance, this year's for real. While normally it's fringe performers who do the touring, I figure that as a fringe technician, I shouldn't have to get left out of the fun.

Fringe folk. Photo by Cindy Lopez.

And so it’s started. It's humid and the air is redolent with cooking grease from nearby fry haven (heaven!), Patati Patata, as the Fringe kicks off in the Parc des Amèriques with a performance from local lo-fi band, The Unsettlers. My new favorite band! Whisky-soaked is such a cliche by now, so I'll just say the lead vocals rasp purposfully somewhere between Tom Waits, Mark Lanegan, and the Pogues, while the band keeps the shipwrecked melodies trembling and swinging with a variety of duct-tape repaired instruments such as the accordian, the bowed bass, harmonium, trombone, clarinet, a kickdrum made of an industrial plastic garbage can, and a two-foot tall baby grand piano.

At one point they even throw in a kazoo and a capgun. Now that's entertainment! Better yet, I catch the Sun Ra Orchestra in the Parc the very next day, and am looking forward to the mini-music festival Fringe Pop next weekend, not to mention the upcoming opening days of the Jazz Fest. Free music is a Montreal summer staple, and I intend to gorge.

My new favorite band, the Unsettlers. Photo by Cindy Lopez.

Of course, there are plenty of theatre shows to see, too -- about 100, as a matter of fact. Ticketed ones, in sweaty little black box theatres with no air circulation and mismatched seats. I walk into A Leave of Absinthe, at the Mainline Theatre and they have filled the little room with stage smoke, which sets the whole audience to coughing before they even close the doors. Set in the legendary Parisian salon, Le Chat Noir, the fanciful vignettes follow the arc of an absinthe-soaked evening populated by troubled artists, writers, fallen women, and the murderously urged. Next I see Francophonic Acnè Japonaise, a highly stylized series of vignettes attempting to break down certain cultural stereotypes about the Japanese while mimicking their Theatrical oeuvre. It doesn't quite work for me; my French is not good enough level for me to fully appreciate the complexities within the text, and the fact that there are no Japanese performers, only Quebecquoise in Japanese drag, seems slightly odd.

The weird and wonderful Shoshinz. Photo by Cindy Lopez.

I enjoy solo show, Totem Figures, more. TJ Dawe, after all, is a Fringe legend. Didn't know the Fringe had legends? Well, it does, and TJ's one of them. Actually, he's mentioned as a "god" in the fringe program more than once. While I wouldn't go so far as to say he's any kind of messiah, Dawe is a gifted and prolific performer who has also directed wildly successful crossover productions, most notably the One Man Star Wars. This festival marks his tenth year on the circuit and his 75th Fringe, and his show can't help but reference his many years of Fringing while discussing his own, and more generally, everybody else's personal mythologies. It’s the hero's quest personalized, brought to laconic life through monologue and deceptively simple storytelling.

Next up on my list: Fringe favorites, mock rockers Die Roten Punkte; Influx Dance (winners of Best Dance Performance at the 2007 San Francisco Fringe, and returning in September to perform at the Garage); Shoshinz, a Japanese performance art duo too weird and wonderful for any other festival; and of course, Barry Smith, whose new show, Baby Book, is the show I am here to work. Not about babies at all, I'm glad to report, BB is actually about Barry's obsession with self-documentation. These bits of self -- photos, videos, and endless scraps and stubs -- have made his last two shows (Jesus in Montana, and American Squatter) possible. But they have also led to the frequently asked question: "Who saves this stuff?" How many former squatters do you know with a photographic record of squalor? How many former cultists have tape recordings of their erstwhile messiahs? Barry does. And incorporates them all into his shows. A wonderfully practical application for an uncontrollable urge, plus jokes.

Up next: Influx Dance. Photo by Cindy Lopez.

Well, I'm off to the Parc now to eat free pancakes and bacon courtesy of the large and lovely ladies of Big Moves who are here from New York with their latest show, Lard ("Like Grease only thicker"). It's 90 degrees out; short shorts, beat-up bicycles, hungover stage managers, and show flyers are everywhere; and all through the Plateau rings the refrain: on y va le Fringe, let us Fringe.

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