Big Top Fringe Tattler

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/07/2011 (5390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WHAT a scorcher of a weekend! Red hot sun and fringe shows to match, many presented in blessed air conditioning to cool off their sweltering audiences. Despite the heat wave, indoor attendance Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday set records. Saturday’s total was 8,700 tickets sold, says festival ringmaster Chuck McEwen. Sunday, which was incredibly hot and humid, still drew an audience of 7,350. Indoor attendance through the opening weekend stands at 33,029, up a touch from 32,425 at this time last year.

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WIENER WARS: A little hotdog brouhaha broke out in front of the MTC Warehouse Saturday when Smoke’n Bob’s cart rolled to his usual spot three days late — and Afternoon Delight’s hotdog cart was sitting in “his” prime fringe location in front of the big outdoor patio. Actually, nobody owns any particular spot once the city allows you a cart. But seller Bob (not the namesake Bob) was smokin’ indignant. He told yours truly he’s been there for 10 years or so with his hot dogs and veggie burgers, and everybody knows it’s his spot. “Finally she just moved off because she wasn’t getting any business,” he said with a smirk. Constance Calderwood of Afternoon Delight says he’s full of mustard. “He called me a (bad word) and I told him he’s unprofessional,” she said. Afternoon Delight tried to stand its ground at a right angle to the Smoke’n Bob cart, but finally gave in and moved its blue umbrellas and Betty Boop-decorated cart over to the Manitoba Planetarium entrance where business is “steady” but nothing like “the $500 a day” Calderwood says you can make back at the Warehouse.

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BABY FRINGE IS BORN: At the beginning of June, a wild ‘n’ crazy woman called Julia Brown started organizing the first Winnipeg Fringe Comes to Clear Lake festival for July 29-Aug. 1. Now she has 13 companies bringing shows from the Winnipeg to Riding Mountain National Park. Here’s the scoop on how she pulled this off. Brown is pals with fringe boss Chuck McEwen going way back — even to doing Black Hole Theatre shows together at University of Manitoba. Julia worked at MTC for years, but last fall she followed her husband to Clear Lake, where his job involves getting more tourists to Riding Mountain. “I ruminated all winter about what I was going to do out here, and when I told my husband this idea, he said, ‘You have to do this.'”

So which 13 shows got drawn in the 18-slot lottery? The Birdmann, The Donnelly Sideshow, Fringe Family Fun Show, Chipmunks Ate My Bike, Princess Dee, The Hysteric, A Kid’s Escape with Dean Gunnarson, Criminal Genius, Under the Nose: Memoirs of a Clown, Doc Faustus, N.O.N.C.E., Love Songs for Future Girl and Mr. Crumple’s Puppet Pad. Some artists will be billeted and others will be (yikes!) camping. Hey, it’s crowded up there. “We usually get 17,000 but we’re expecting 20,000 people at the park this August long weekend,” says Brown. For info email wpgfringeatclearlake@gmail.com. This fall Brown says she will apply to the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals to become a full-fledged independent fringe festival and organize a bigger fringathon next summer.

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FREEBIES: The free entertainment highlight of the weekend? Local blue-roots performer Romi Mayes, who closed down the outdoor stage Saturday evening with a packed Old Market Square at midnight — still 32 C, with a whisper of a breeze. “People were loving her playing, and it was a great way to end the night,” said the fest’s McEwen.

mscurf@shaw.ca