But you're never too old to have fun at the fringe.

"All the people in the theatre community are like my kids. I'm very lucky."

Brownstone, who has a supporting role in Remember the Night (at Venue 22 through July 27), is certainly not alone among seniors who enjoy participating in a festival geared largely to the young.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of grey heads can be seen on audience members, and if it weren't for retirees, the ranks of volunteers would be conspicuously thinner.

"Being active keeps me young," says Marjorie Turton, 70, who has been a fringe volunteer for half a dozen years in a variety of jobs.

"The fringe is the place for your complaints and rages against the establishment. It allows people to think they're not alone in their frustration."

For 83-year-old Winnipeg playwright Ron Blicq, the fringe has become a place to get in touch with his inner child.

"I'm in my second childhood, so it's not much different," quips Blicq, who is directing a production of his own children's play, You Will Write, Won't You?, which runs through July 27 at Venue 8, the School of the Contemporary Dancers.

A former teacher of technical communications at Red River College, Blicq took up playwriting well into his retirement.

He estimates he has written a dozen scripts in the last five years. He has had several produced at a prominent one-act theatre festival on the island of his birth, Guernsey, in the British Channel.

You Will Write, Won't You?, his third fringe effort, focuses on a teenage girl on a Prairie farm who yearns to be a writer.

It stars Megan Wilson and Kevin Carruthers, teenage actors who've come through the ranks of Fantasy Theatre for Children.

"I try to write about the human condition, but I like the ideas that occur to young people."

Marion Neild, a retired speech and language pathologist, has long been an enthusiastic fringe-goer, but this year she has taken a leap onto the stage.

As a founding member of the Winnipeg community theatre troupe Shoestring, she is among several seniors in the 12-member cast of A.R. Gurney's The Dining Room (MTC Backstage at the Mainstage, Venue 1.

"It's fun," says Neild, 85, who plays a maid and an elderly mother among several small parts in the 40-character dramatic comedy.

"I like the exuberance and variety of the fringe."

Turton likes to attend fringe plays to "keep the blood flowing and the adrenaline pumping."

She also volunteers with the Manitoba Museum and with the Mineral Society of Manitoba.

"If you didn't have seniors, a lot of activities would be in dire straits," Turton says. "We fill the unpaid positions that keep the city functioning."

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca