Fringe Character

TJ Dawe with his Winnipeg billets, the Johnsons.

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 3

Work piling on all over me. I’ve got to get my programs photocopied. I always try to have good programs to give out to my audience. Give ’em something to read before the show; warms ’em up. Lets me get a few jokes in there and pique their interest before the curtain goes up. I hate shows with no programs. Or worse yet, with boring programs; just lists of credits for people the audience has never heard of. Yawn. Well, I’ve had so much to do I haven’t gotten mine copied, and I’m already halfway through the run. I only know of one independent photocopy shop in town. And they’re closed weekends. And they close at five on weekdays. And early on Fridays!

Just did up my press releases for Saskatoon, and I’m emailing them off today. Left that one a bit late. I’m no administrator.

Met with the group for the late-night cabaret, and that’s looking good. We’ve got a running order and an idea of what pieces each person’s going to do. The danger is that it’ll go too long. These things usually do. I’m doing two pieces, just written a few days ago. Now I’ve got to memorize them and get ’em polished.

I’m doing a public reading tomorrow of a script I’m working on for next year’s tour: Maxim & Cosmo — explorations of sex and gender stereotypes. I thought I’d take a year off from writing and memorizing and rehearsing a new show. Avoid all that stress. Do old shows. Take it easy. Have a relaxing tour for a change. Good luck! Not only am I juggling four old shows in my memory, but I’m doing all these cabarets. And readings. And I ended up writing a new show anyway. I don’t have to memorize it, but I’ve got to read it out loud on my own and work on it enough so that when I’m doing a reading of it for an audience, I’m looking at them as much as I can instead of sticking my nose in the page and stumbling over the sentences. And the thing’s clocking in at two hours. Twenty thousand words. I’ve got to find out what works and what doesn’t. Best way to do that is with a live audience, after rehearsing it and rewriting it, over and over and over again, like a madman.

I did readings of it at the Orlando Fringe and in Montreal. They went well, but I’ve been adjusting the script since then. Adding things, cutting things. I’ve never been ready a year in advance with a script. This is a new process. I like it. But it’s hard work. Makes me wistful for the days when I only had one show all tour.

I’m doing this in the middle of one of the most active festivals in the country. There are acts on the outdoor stage. Bands. Jugglers. Escape artists. A capoeira group. There are vendors set up, selling food and clothes and jewelry and henna tattoos. There are people everywhere. Posters on every surface. A constantly updated master board of what’s on where. People take the Fringe so seriously in Winnipeg that they know exactly what’s going on. This is my seventh time here, and the hardcore Fringers know my stuff. It’s hard to walk anywhere around the Fringe without someone saying they saw my show or are looking forward to seeing it. It even happened at the airport when I got in.