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 4

Just got back from the late-night cabaret. It’s three in the morning. I’m tired. Here’s how it went:

The word must have gotten out, because it sold out in five minutes. Not bad for a midnight show on a Wednesday. There was a full house in there, drinking and ready for something. Got me worried they’d be too loud. We weren’t miked. Our venue was a bar — not built for acoustics.

Kate Masters — Jem Rolls’ girlfriend — did up gothic make-up for a bunch of us. Chris Gibbs looked like Nosferatu in a nice suit. I had big, dark eye-bags. Mark Chavez and Shenoah Allen were white-faced and ghoulish.

We started on time. Our thinking: Don’t let this thing run over. Don’t exhaust the audience’s attention span; they’re drinking.

Someone had to stand at the back of the place and switch the lights on and off. Sometimes it was me, sometimes Shenoah. Other pieces were lit with flashlights some of the audience had brought (which got them a one-dollar discount on admission).

The door was manned the whole show. Many people were turned away. The King’s Head staff told us we could have sold the place out two times over. They wished we were doing a second night. Many beers were bought.

People shut up as soon as the performance began, and got right into it. Mark and Shenoah did a piece in the style of their Pajama Men shows. Jem Rolls, lit by a dozen flashlights, did a poem about being picked up by an insane driver whilst hitchhiking in the south of France. Becky Johnson did a clown piece. Chris Gibbs did stand-up about sympathy cards. I spoofed myself, doing a monologue as if it’s the 2035 Winnipeg Fringe and I’m cranking out yet another one-man show, this one called Paperboy.

One piece followed another. There was no emcee. No musical interlude between acts. Something ended in one place and something else started somewhere else. It moved. People listened and laughed and applauded.

There was an intermission.

Jonno Katz showed a short film he’d made, starring himself. Emelia Symington-Fedy and Anita Rochon did a song as two Russian sisters. Tom X. Chao told us how to invoke the demon Pan.

It was good. It felt good. People understood the spirit it was all meant in, and they were glad they’d made it in. There’s a certain energy in sold-out houses, and an anarchic feeling so late on a weeknight, for an unadvertised event. It felt like an occasion.

The audience wasn’t given a program. No act’s Fringe show was mentioned. No one said anything to the effect of, “Come see my show.”

Shenoah and Mark acted as a two-headed monster and answered the audience’s questions. I did a skit in which I seduced a fan and then flicked her off like an old Kleenex. Jem Rolls was a spider, furious at having four broken legs.

We all walked on stage and sang a children’s song There Are So Many Things That Grow Grow Grow, and the audience joined in. We bowed.

It was as good as we hoped it might be. Maybe it’ll turn into a regular thing. Maybe we’ll do one in Vancouver. Maybe other cities next year, too. Other performers said they wished they were a part of it. Maybe they will be.