Jenny on the beat

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/07/2023 (1191 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jenny is a lot of things. She’s a mischievous imp, a multi-talented chameleon, a well-travelled astronaut and an occasional trapeze artist. She’s also — as per an amended dictionary definition — “just another braying ass.”

Appearing in editorial cartoons and as a coveted trophy, Jenny the donkey has been the eponymous mascot for The Jenny Revue, a grassroots publication covering all things Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, for the last 30 years.

The revue was launched in 1991 and is celebrating a belated 30th anniversary in 2023 following one skipped edition in the ’90s and a recent pandemic pause.

“We were 29 and holding for a few years there,” Jenny editor and “web wizard” Murray Hunter says with a laugh.

The print, and later online, outlet was founded by local actors and theatre boosters Stephen Eric McIntyre, Coral McKendrick and Robert G. Slade as a way to better promote fringe shows. The goal was to create a public forum for the kinds of conversations that often unfold on the way into venues.

“Standing in line and hearing the buzz that’s generated by people saying, ‘Oh, what have you seen? What did you like?’… that’s what The Jenny was trying to do in the beginning,” Hunter says. “This was all pre-social media, so it was really one of the few ways for performers and fringe-goers to have a voice and get the word out there.”

The first volume of The Jenny Revue included six three-page issues containing “down and dirty reviews, gossip, rumour, off-the-program and on-the-edge reporting” published every other day during the 12-day festival. The paper — then available for $1 at makeshift newspaper stands called Jenny Boxes throughout the Exchange District — described itself as the equivalent of “hanging around the beer tent all day.” Jenny doesn’t take herself too seriously.

Hunter has been attending and volunteering at the fringe for more than 20 years. He got involved with The Jenny as a reviewer in the early 2000s. He appreciated the paper’s broad coverage and lack of star ratings — a founding principle designed to avoid simple good or bad designations.

“For performers, word of mouth is the most important thing,” Hunter says. “Some of the more oddball stuff that mainstream reviewers didn’t like… or weren’t interested in, could get a bad review early in the festival and their whole run could be hurt by that.”

The publication also includes a section for theatre troupes to engage in “Shameless Self Promotion.”

In the early days, contributing volunteers would meet nightly at a downtown pub to swap notes and transcribe handwritten reviews submitted by the public, before laying out the day’s issue and sending it off to the printer. At its height, the group was publishing a 12-page paper six times a fringe.

Eventually, Michelle Cook’s house became Jenny Revue central.

“I was in charge of getting them printed and distributed,” says Cook, who has been involved with the revue since its outset. “Dave and my daughter and myself would sit around the dining room table and we would collate and fold.”

Dave is Cook’s longtime partner, Dave Pruden, a graphic artist by trade who’s been sketching inoffensive editorial cartoons of Jenny the donkey for nearly three decades. While he initially got roped into the gig by proximity, it’s been an enjoyable task during one of his favourite annual events.

“It’s just fun to be involved,” Pruden says. “I’ve always been doing theatre, acting or working backstage, and I like the idea of drawing a cartoon for every issue.”

Cook, a seamstress and theatre costume designer, also makes use of her creative skills beyond folding broadsheets. Every year, she hand sews 13 donkey trophies to be doled out at the Jenny Awards — an unofficial fringe wrap party that takes place on the last night of the festival.

Cook estimates she’s sewn nearly 400 mini Jennies to date.

“I can do the donkeys practically in my sleep,” she says, adding that the theme changes annually. There have been batches of green alien Jennies, zebra Jennies, circus Jennies and last year’s COVID-19 Jennies, wearing tiny masks and made from hospital scrubs.

Any performer or troupe mentioned in The Jenny Revue can be nominated for a Jenny Award. It’s a chance for fans and performers to end the festival on a high note — literally, since winners are decided by audience cheering.

“It’s really amazing the way that it works,” Hunter says of the award show. “Because if someone has had a hard run at the festival… but the other performers know it’s a great show, they’ll often win the Jenny.”

Cook’s donkey trophies have become a coveted keepsake.

“Every year, it astonishes me that people really like them,” she says with a chuckle. “(The winners) are thrilled and we can’t figure it out because it’s just a little stuffed toy… and some of them are kind of cockeyed.”

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But cockeyed creativity has always been at the heart of the fringe festival and The Jenny Revue.

Thirty years on, the publication, run by a crew of passionate volunteers, operates mainly online save for a few single-page newsletters distributed during the fest. While the medium has changed, the mandate to inform and entertain remains — making The Jenny, effectively, one of Winnipeg’s longest running fringe productions.

Visit jennyrevue.com to read this year’s reviews and email jennyrevue@gmail.com to submit your own. The Jenny Awards take place at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday at Across the Board Game Café, 211 Bannatyne Ave.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @evawasney

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Eva Wasney
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