Fringe Character

One of the country’s best-known theatre personalities, TJ Dawe has authored six shows (including Labrador, The Doctor Is Sick and The Curse of the Trickster) and a handful of adaptations of literary works. The script to his original show The Slip-Knot was recently nominated for a Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.

In addition to being a prolific writer, Dawe is also a tireless performer — he devotes a good chunk of every year touring his plays. He’s been on stage at everything from the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal to the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina and is a mainstay of the Canadian Fringe theatre festivals. Dawe is currently on a cross-Canada tour of the Fringe circuit, which takes him to Toronto (July 6-16), Winnipeg (July 20-30), Saskatoon (August 5-14), Victoria (August 25-September 5) and Vancouver (September 8-18). His diary of this year’s Fringe circuit will be updated throughout the summer.

Part 2

Saw a great one-man show last night: Three Ring Circus, by Daniel Thau-Eleff from Winnipeg. I saw him do it at the Winnipeg Fringe last year, and he’s reworked it and is touring it this summer. It’s about growing up Jewish in Winnipeg and trying to deal with his feelings about Israel and Palestine. He’s taking chances and coming up with original ways to make a world out of a bare stage and a chair. That’s what the Fringe is all about, in my opinion: developing work. Trying things out. Where else can you do that? And make money doing it, too. Sometimes, anyway. But on a Fringe tour, all kinds of different crowds see your stuff. If something’s not coming across, change it. If you have an idea, throw it in — even if it occurs to you in the middle of a show.

After the show I stuck around to say hi, and Daniel came from backstage with an older guy talking to him, quietly and seriously. Daniel smiled politely. The guy left. It turns out the older guy had said, “You’re very intelligent, you’re an excellent writer and actor. So how is it that you could come up with such wretched conclusions?” Isn’t it fun to be so accessible to the audience? This guy — a stranger — had gone backstage to find him and say this! Daniel’s stage manager told me they’d had a guy in Montreal criticize the show — saying whoever directed it wasn’t grumpy enough (huh?) — and offer his own services as director. Who are these people? What goes through their heads? I got told off a few times on the sidewalk last year by people who'd seen my show The Curse of the Trickster. It’s not fun, but what are you going to do — tell them off back? Get in a yelling match? No show’s going to work for everyone. Then again, is it such a bad thing to enter into a dialogue with someone with a radically different point of view? Yes it is, if they’re an idiot. But we’re all so sensitive and we hold onto our views emotionally; can anyone really talk turkey about something as personal as a show they’ve written and performed? In the middle of a run? Backstage?

Hung around the Tranzac Club afterwards, and got offered a free ticket by a guy for a show called The Dispute, directed by Kate Lynch, who I’ve heard of. I went. It wasn’t bad at all. Had a cast of ten, which is quite unusual for the Fringe. It was written in 1744 — also unusual. It’s about which sex is more inclined to infidelity and inconstancy. It was good, and funny. And an obscure one-act French classic is not the kind of thing you’re likely to see anywhere else. It said in the program the company was founded when two of the lead actors in it met working on another project and discovered their mutual love of that exact play. That’s another thing I like — actors taking things into their own hands. Being an actor is usually filled with waiting for other people to choose to give you work. If they aren’t hiring you, you sit at home and go crazy. You audition and you wait and you audition and you wait. Even if you are getting work, it isn’t necessarily in the plays you want to be in. To hell with all that. Put on your own show.