Thanks for Gala-ing With Us!

Thank you to everyone who came out to our Opening Night Gala on September 9! All of you, our audience, our volunteers, and our performers, made the evening a resounding success! It was great fun with especially memorable moments from Jacques Lalonde’s Jean Chrétien leading a swearing song sing-a-long with a little help from Becky Poole, Red Bastard rubbing his bum along an audience member’s face for not participating in his game, and David C. Jones leaping across the stage and encouraging audience members to faint dramatically when bids got over $400!

It was a great fundraising event and your bids helped up raise $11,975! That’s over $2,600 more that last year’s auction totals!

Our Silent Auction raised $7,952 with some of the most impressive bids going towards the Emily Carr University of Art and Design Package (which included a continuing studies gift certificate and some Kroma Acrylics paint) and the Janis Dean Johnson earrings (which brought in twice the retail value!).

The Live Auction raised nearly double the amount raised at the 2008 Live Auction with the Green World Electric Vehicles‘ bike going for $600 and the Wine and Cheese Party Package (which included $250 worth of cheese from Whole Foods and 15 bottles of wine) was sold for $625–that’s $225 more than the retail value!

We want to send a special thanks out to Sheena Sargent, the winner of the Gala’s 50/50 draw! Sheena won $396.50 and donated a large portion of the money back to the Fringe! Thanks Sheena!

The Opening Night Gala finished off with a post party at the St. Ambroise Fringe Bar at Agro Cafe when the Creaking Planks performed and we all danced and danced and danced some more!(All photos by Brice Ferre.)

Fringe Buzz and Sold Out Shows!

The Fringe is all about buzz! Not sure what to see? We’re listing links to Fringe buzz in the media on one of our notes on our Facebook Fan Page. We’re also listing them in our Twitter feed along with the one word (or few word) reviews we’ve been collecting!

Or, if you prefer more personal interaction to get your Fringe buzz, check out Plank Magazine’s Plank Club. Plank Club is like a book club for theatre and you’re invited. Join Plank at the St. Ambroise Fringe Bar at the Agro Cafe on Tuesday, Sept. 15 at 7:00pm, Thursday, Sept. 17 at 7:00pm, or on Saturday, Sept. 19 at 5:00pm.

And yet another way to check out buzz in to have a look at audience comments on the Buzz Board (presented by Speedpro Imaging), which is located at 1398 Cartwright Street.

Sold Out!

In all of our newsletters during the Festival, we’ll report of the shows that sell out or that nearly sell out! Frequent Fringer Passes are sold out and so far these shows are breaking the Box Office:

These shows have sold out at least one of their performances:

Wagabondi Ho!, I Herd a Sheep, 1984, The Power of Ignorance, Tape, The Seven Lives of Louis Riel, The Accident, and Under the Mango Tree

Nearly Sold Out:

Biographies of the Dead and Dying

Don’t forget to book your tickets in advance so you don’t miss the shows you must see!

CiTR presents This Fringey Life

CiTR is well known for being the University of British Columbia’s radio station, and it is indeed a campus station, but they’re also a community radio station that produces shows that are multicultural, eclectic, and that feature a variety of musical genres. In addition to their radio shows, they also produce Discorder Magazine!

This year CiTR has teamed up with the Vancouver Fringe Festival to produce daily podcasts about the Fringe! We’re calling it This Fringey Life and you can find it on our website, or on CiTR’s.

Be sure to listen to This Fringey Life daily for interviews with Fringe artists!

Public Market Pick of the Fringe Frontrunners

We’ve been keeping our volunteers busy tabulating your Public Market Pick of the Fringe ballots and we already have some front runners! But you need to vote for the shows you see!

So just what is the Pick you ask? Well, every time you go see a show you’ll get a ballot that looks like this one here. Write your name, membership nuimber, and most importantly, the name of the show you’re reviewing on the card and circle a number to cast your vote! Drop these off at the venue’s exits, the Fringe Box Office, or at the St. Ambroise Fringe Bar at Agro Cafe. Once a show gets 100 votes, they’re in the running. The four shows with the highest rating get will be held over at the Waterfront Theatre on September 24-27!

Who’s leading the pack so far?

Dog Sees God; AfterLife; The Honeymoon Period Is Officially Over; Grandpa Sol and Grandma Rosie; and Shoe Horn Comedy.

Don’t forget to vote so your favourites can be frontrunners too!

The Grey Campaign

You may notice people around the Festival this year wearing grey square lapel pins or you may be asked to take a postcard with a grey box that is addressed to Gordon Campbell. These items are just one way to protest against the recent cuts to the provincial government’s arts funding.

As we told you in a previous email, on August 28 we received notice that BC Gaming would deny significant core funding to the 2010 Fringe Festival despite the promise of this funding for 2010 and 2011. Although it’s been promised that this Gaming funding has been restored to groups who were promised multi-year grants, we, along with other arts groups, are still awaiting confirmation. But the problem is bigger than that.

The provincial government is cutting over 80% of arts funding. And arts funding only consists of 1/20th of 1% of the provincial government’s budget. This is a devastating cut to a sector of the economy that creates 80,000 jobs. Those jobs are now at risk, if they haven’t already been lost.

We know that you already consider arts and culture important, but we need you to take this belief one step further. Write to your MLA and express your opposition to these cuts. You can find as list of all of BC’s MLAs and their emails addresses here. Please cc your emails to Gordon Campbell, Kevin Kreuger (the Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts), and to Rich Coleman (the Minister of Housing and Social Development). You can even use the sample letters found here.

For more information of the arts cuts read this article, or print out this fact sheet.

Fringe Flashback

Back in 1994 The Way Off Broadway Group brought The Scions of Hydra to the Vancouver Fringe, a show that SFU’s student newspaper, The Peak called “a Star Trek adventure with a sperm-induced twist.”

The Scions stared Michael Schaldemose and Rob Fredrickson.

Reminder to Granville Island Visitors!

The City of Vancouver is strengthening the Granville Street Bridge starting September 14 and will continue for one and a half months. This may cause some delay when visiting Granville Island, so please plan to arrive early just in case! Remember the Fringe has a strict no latecomers policy to keep our packed schedule moving along! The work will take place at Lamey’s Mill Road and up toward 4th and 6th Avenues and Hemlock. There will be flaggers directing traffic.

For more information, please check the City of Vancouver website.

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