Hurrah for the 2009 Fringe Festival!

What a Festival! We staged 471 performances of 68 plays for an audience of 21,000 (an increase of 6% over last year! We formed a spontaneous village of volunteers, artists, and fans to celebrate theatre!

For a Festival that doesn’t jury its programming, there was a great depth to this year’s lineup including renewed energy from veterans of the theatre community and a bumper crop of newcomers and touring artists.

We celebrated our 25th Anniversary with a new awards component (see below), a new Fringe Bar location, and many new and committed sponsors. Thank you to all who made this year’s Festival a resounding success!

Fringe Awards Night

Hosted by Fringe veteran and comedian extraordinaire, Toby Berner, the Fringe Awards Night was held on September 20 at Performance Works to a full house of artists, volunteers, staff, and fans. We created new awards to provide development opportunities for artists, to celebrate our joyous proliferation of theatre and community, and to celebrate our 25th Anniversary!

The Awards and their winners are:

Cultchivating the Future Award: Ginette Mohr for Fish Face

From the Fringe and the Cultch, the Cultchivating the Future Award paid tribute to Fish Face for its unique potential and rewarded it with development resources and a run at the Cultch.

Talk of the Fringe Award: Ryan Gladstone for The Seven Lives of Louis Riel

Plank Magazine’s Talk of the Fringe Award recognized Seven Lives for generating the most online and in person buzz. (Plank even made the award shown here on the left.

Joanna Maratta Award: Cara Yeates of Some Reckless Abandon

The new Joanna Maratta Award honoured Cara Yates for showing potential to make the greatest contribution to the Vancouver theatre community through artistic achievement and demonstrated community leadership. Cara will be awarded with a mentorship with TJ Dawe.

25th Anniversary Award: Jacques Lalonde

Celebrating the inimitable and unstoppable Jacques Lalonde and his contribution to the Fringe over our first quarter century. Jacques has now performed in 23 consecutive Fringes!

Volunteer Choice Award: The Honeymoon Period is Officially Over

The Honeymoon was the buzz of the volunteer centre and it was chosen by volunteers (some of our biggest fans) as the Volunteer Choice Award!

The SOFA (Spirit of the Fringe Award): Saving Faith

In addition to relentlessly flyering (in a jock strap and helmet no less), Rolf Reynolds continued to perform even when his acting partner Dennis Innes had to leave the Festival for several days due to a death in his family. Then Dennis returned to perform the remaining performances with Rolf. Now that’s spirit!

The Nasty Award: The Cockwhisperer: A Love Story

Yes, there actually were other contenders, but the Cockwhisperer perfectly fulfilled the criteria of  the show you’d least like your grandmother to see. Thanks to Collette Kendal for being the gracious recipient of this fun award!

Thank you to all our 68 performing companies for contributing to an extremely rich and diverse year of theatre! Awards are just one way of celebrating. We’re proud to say that every day of the Fringe was a celebration of theatre and the artists who create and perform it!

Sweet on the Fringe?! Yes You Are!

Eleven presenters, over 20 volunteers, 11 artists, four venue techs, and, most importantly, almost 5,000 audience members were involved in this year’s Sweet on the Fringe campaign! Through quarters, loonies, toonies, and some exciting bills, we raised almost $9,000 and gave away over 4,500 Cocoa Camino chocolates! Most got tasty morsels of dark chocolate, but some lucked out with big, spicy bars! Frenzied audiences cheered as a zany musical medley spurred volunteer “pilots” to zoom through the laughing crowds collecting “fuel” for the Fringe.

It peaked when our Executive Director, on the back of legendary Charlie Ross, led a piggy-back horse race through the happily crazed crowd. Charlie then donated a one night only fundraiser performance of his world famous One-Man Star Wars Trilogy to close the Public Market Pick of the Fringe. That sold out night brought us $3,500!

Mid-way through the Festival, we joined our artists in mounting a secret cabaret for the final Saturday of the Festival. Together we raised $1,000 and gave the lucky attendees a gut splitting Fringe highlight!

Finally, during (and just prior to) the Festival, individual donors responded to the sudden provincial funding cuts with $1,600 in direct donations and ticket purchase top ups!

Have You Taken Our Audience Survey?

We’re hoping to gather some information from you, our audience members, so that we can learn about your experiences at the Fringe!

As a thank you for taking the time to fill out our very brief questionnaire, you’ll be entered to win a Superpass for the 2010 Fringe (that’s an all access pass!)–just be sure to leave us with your name and contact info in the very last question of the survey.

To take our Audience Survey, click here! And feel free to share this link with the friends you brought to the Fringe!

Wanna be part of the 2010 Vancouver International Fringe Festival?

The deadlines for the Fringe are coming up fast and are as follows:

October 28, 2009: Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals Application Due (this is for those of you who want to do the Fringe Circuit and travel to at least five Fringe Festivals)

October 28, 2009: Artist Application for Vancouver International Fringe Festival goes online (for mainstage venues)

November 27, 2009: Artist Application Deadline for the Vancouver Fringe (for mainstage venues)

December 4, 2009: Lottery (this is when we draw shows out of a proverbial hat)

December 9,  2009: Vancouver Fringe BYOV Application available online

February 24, 2010: Vancouver Fringe BYOV Application Deadline

Fun Stuff Round Town

We here at the Fringe get invited to lots of stuff… stuff that we want to invite you to too! Check out these upcoming fun things:

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Monster Theatre’s The Shakespeare Show Or; How an illiterate son of a Glover became the Greatest Playwright in the World is playing at the Genstar Studio Theatre at the ACT in Maple Ridge on Saturday, Oct. 17 at 8:30pm. It features Fringe favourites Tara Travis (Lavignia: a Modern Fairy Tale of Gigantic Proportions) and Ryan Gladstone (The Seven Lives of Louis Riel).

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Evil Dead: The Musical opens on Oct. 22 at the Vogue Theatre and runs till Halloween! Henry Kolenko, the show’s Artistic Producer (who just happens to be Fringe Alumni) let us know that if you come out, you need to decide ahead of time if you’re up for sitting in the Splatter Zone…

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Here Be Monsters is a theatre festival meant to facilitate the creativity of new work! With only 48 hours to put together a show based on a random “inspiration package,” performing groups will put their shows on at Performance Works on Oct. 30 and 31. And they’re still accepting applications! If you’re up for the challenge, fill out the application (trust us, they’re still accepting applications even though it’s past the deadline!).

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Fringe Shows being held over at the Firehall Arts Centre:

From Oct. 21-31 nggrfg and Oh Winnipeg! A Surprising Musical Memoir are being shown at the Firehall Arts Centre! Don’t miss this chance to see these Fringe shows! Visit the Firehall’s website for times and ticket info.

Lavignia: a Modern Fairy Tale of Gigantic Proportions and The Seven Lives of Louis Riel are also being held over at the Firehall November 4-14. Times and ticket info here.

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