Theatre in the raw

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/07/2004 (7990 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT’S one hour before showtime at Fringe Venue 21, but two actors aren’t warming up in plush dressing rooms. They’re climbing ladders, struggling with speaker wires and yelling lines like, “I need some bits for the drill!”

When a low-budget troupe stages a production in a Bring Your Own Venue (BYOV), with all the stress and technical challenges that can entail, it’s either by choice, or it’s a fallback because they lost out in the official venue lottery.

Winnipeg’s Lame Ass Productions made a choice to mount Anaesthesia; the loss of sensibility — a drama about three Romans in a timeless purgatory — in the grungy Venue 21, the e.children parking garage at Princess and Bannatyne.

This BYOV’s got it all: Uneven, oil-stained concrete floor. Rough, rust-streaked brick walls. Prehistoric loading docks. Metal ceiling. Traffic noise. Echo. Self-wired lighting and sound.

Lame Ass, which doesn’t seem all that lame, has accepted the hassle of dismantling the minimal set each night so cars can park in the space during the day. The company doesn’t provide chairs for the audience, though.

“We’re out to do fringe shows, not mainstream theatre,” says actor/company co-founder Darcy Fehr, who is 29 and appearing in his seventh fringe. “So we needed a space that would challenge the audience, and challenge us to use it.

“People are forced to stand up for the whole show (or sit on the pavement). It’s interactive theatre.”

The gritty garage has been used at least twice previously in fringe history, originally in 1991 as an environment for a play about homelessness. Fehr and company are making a statement by using it again. They see themselves as boundary-pushing fringe purists, true to the original, alternative spirit of the fringe movement.

With recent renovations to Exchange District sites such as the Crocus Building, air-conditioned, soundproof, soft-seater fringe venues are becoming the norm.

Several BYOVs, including the Bull & Bear Tavern, The King’s Head and the Winnipeg Press Club, provide a different sort of comfort: they’re licensed, cabaret-style.

Fehr believes that as audiences get more comfy and are offered more mainstream fare, they are losing interest in risky, thought-provoking drama, and gravitating toward escapist comedy.

“Over the years, it’s getting further and further away from a fringe festival,” he says. “Doing shows that challenge the audience is not frowned upon by everyone, but it’s becoming less popular.

“The festival is becoming less experimental, and more mainstream. And (mainstream) is what the audiences are asking for now.”

The Lame Ass company, which has decided to break up after the festival as the members pursue different paths, knew its BYOV would cost it significantly more than the $500 fringe entry fee. But members’ jaws dropped when they discovered their performing predecessors in the garage had no fire permits.

“We knew we were going to run into trouble,” says Fehr.

Two days before the show opened, they were told the garage had to have a second exit. They had to spend close to $1,000 to tear out a window and install a door, from which a stepladder now leads as an escape route. Then there was the $170 permit, the cost of renting sound equipment, the ding for the sound barrier and huge tarp that close off the opening to the street… all to the tune of about $4,000.

“It’s less safe to go our route,” says actor/co-founder Trevor Botkin.

“There’s a formula you can follow to have a successful fringe show. But it’s never, for us, been about trying to make money. This is a great opportunity, because you have a built-in audience base… to create something with artistic integrity or merit.

“The thing about a Bring Your Own Venue is the workload is about eight times more than if you just walk in and they have it all set up for you.”

So what makes it worthwhile?

“People come and go, ‘Now, that’s theatre.'”