Edmonton treated us well! Our trip was filled with emotion, performance opportunities, personal growth, inspiration, friendship, sweat and even a few tears.
After our first week we became familiar with the Fringe grounds. We started recognizing friendly faces whether they be volunteers or artists who were also performing in the festival. After speaking with other artists I found everyone to be extraordinarily supportive of one another. The Fringe provides each show with eight comp tickets, of which you can give away to other artists with a secret comp code. There was little secrecy where that was concerned. On a Facebook group titled Artist Board - Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival all the artists shared their passwords freely and we did the same. I saw approximately thirty performances while I was in Edmonton. Of which, two changed me. I'd like to share their work with you:
RECESS
Focusing on a group of 7-year-olds, Recess takes the audience into the hearts and minds of children navigating their way through the public school system. In the Bronx, we meet Sherita Johnson, the 7-year-old protagonist of the play whose tumultuous home life sets the stage for her daily battles at school. Recess shines light on the tense and unpredictable interactions of Sherita, her classmates, and her teacher Ms. White. The struggles for power, criminalization of the youth and the effects of a suffocating bureaucracy are an every day reality. We witness how children encounter difficulties beyond their making and still find ways to prevail. Not just relevant to youth, or to those who work with youth, Recess is a story about how and where inspiration can be found if we take the time to listen to the voices of those who typically do not get heard. Recess was created and performed by actress, Una Osato.
To see when RECESS is performing in your city, visit http://www.recesstheplay.com/
LITTLE ORANGE MAN
Prepare yourself for Kitt, a high-octane Danish girl, as she fires up homemade technology to extract and reenact the audience's dreams.
Haunting and hilarious. CultureVulture.
The kind of inventive, heartfelt and unique storytelling you normally only dream about.Visitoriu.
Very Entertaining. CBC. Pick-of-the-Fringe Victoria & Vancouver. Live songs, shadow puppetry.
I reached out to the woman behind Kitt, Ingrid Hansen, an actress who transforms herself and the audience in an hour. As I said before, this performances changed me. I'm honored to share an interview with her about Little Orange Man, here on Enforced Arch.
James Koroni: You tackled a gamut of creative outlets in this performance. How did you come to include each element and why was it essential to telling this story?
Ingrid Hansen: This was my first time creating a solo show. One thing I knew from the outset was that I didn't want to be talking to myself / playing multiple characters that switch back and forth. So, if you don't have a co-actor to interact with, and you're not talking to yourself, who do you interact with? Our answer was: the audience, and your environment. So we wanted everything to happen 'live in real time' with the audience as living participants in the room, and we worked with a lot of different puppetry / object manipulation elements.
Koroni: Did you have experience in all these elements i.e. singing, puppetry, etc., or did you explore new arena's along the way?
Hansen: I worked on a children's TV series for four seasons as a puppeteer, and got to train with a fantastic puppet artist, Tim Gosley. Since creating Little Orange Man, my director & co-creator Kathleen Greenfield and I studied at the Old Trout Puppet Intensive at the Banff National Arts Centre. I cannot WAIT to train with them again.
My main inspiration for wanting to learn the ukulele was watching Taylor Mac perform in The Beast of Taylor Mac. He used the instrument so artfully for intimate and theatrical storytelling, and I wanted to steal that from him as best I could. I still have a lot of learning and growing to do as a musician, even though I've been singing and playing music since I was five.
Koroni: Do you intend to perform Little Orange Man any more this season OR are you looking forward to new productions?
Hansen: YES! Right now we're booked to perform Little Orange Man at The Great Canadian Theatre Centre in Ottawa and then Centaur Theatre in Montreal in February 2013. We tour to the Festival of Animated Objects in Calgary in March of 2013, and then we have applications pending at a bunch of other theatre festivals. We're looking into possibly getting a touring agent to help with bookings. (We'd love to come to your city. Let us know how!)
We're also in the second development phase for our show, Kitt & Jane: an Interactive Survival Guide to the Near-Post-Apocalyptic Future, co-created by Kathleen, myself, and Rod Peter Jr. Kitt & Jane is a companion piece to Little Orange Man. It premiered in it's first incarnation at the Belfry Theatre SPARK Festival in Victoria, and we're looking to tour it in the future as well.
Koroni: Little Orange Man has a great deal of comedy but also leaves you with a heartfelt message. What message or messages do you hope the audience will leave with?
Hansen: We always work motivated by our politics. However, I don't like to explicitly state what audiences "should" get from a show, because I love for people to experience things on their own terms and connect to things in their own way. I hope to offer people a space to connect with the freedom and limitless imagination we have as young people before we learn terrible self-oppressing habits in the process of 'growing up.' I hope to make openings, to wedge a little emotional space into our increasingly isolating existence.
Koroni: Which artists are currently inspiring your work?
Hansen: Shaun Tan, Don Kenn the post-it note artist, Taylor Mac, The Old Trouts, our baby cousins, Freaks and Geeks, David Suzuki, Elizabeth May, Atomic Vaudeville, Anne Cirillo, Tasha Diamant and the Human Body Project, Terry Gilliam, Tim Gosley, Sue Morrison and Red Bastard.
Koroni: What book are you reading?
Hansen: Leviathan (comic) by Peter Blegvad, the adventures of a faceless baby and a cat.
For more information on Ingrid Hansen please visit, snafudance.com.
Edmonton FRINGE – Part 1 Edmonton FRINGE – Part 2 Edmonton FRINGE – Part 3 Edmonton FRINGE – Part 4 Edmonton FRINGE – Part 5 Edmonton FRINGE - Part 6
While in Edmonton, Canada for The International Fringe Festival the cast of The Man Who Wasn't There took time to Busk on The Fringe Grounds. This not only gave us more opportunities to perform but was a fulfilling way to connect with people and invite them to our show!
Our tech rehearsal is finally here which means we get see the performance space for the first time. The Fringe festival only allows 3 hours in the space to take care of all technical issues such as; lighting, sound, spacing, etc. We managed to cover all our bases and more. By more I mean we managed to sneak in a little photo shoot.
Our venue is on the King Edward School campus, only two blocks from the FRINGE sight. The school is absolutely breathtaking!
After tech rehearsal Lauren Cox and I, James Koroni, invited everyone over to our hosts home to eat dinner, prepared by us. 
Our hosts have an organic garden that provides half of their produce and the other half comes in every Tuesday from a farming co-op, which is evenly split amongst local families. You basically receive whatever can be grown with current weather conditions in consideration. With our host family out of town there were so many veggies to eat. The trick is, you must use what is available which was mostly onions, potatoes, cucumbers, parsley and peas. We got creative with some tempeh and here's the result:
We're excited to see how local produce can inspire every meal for the rest of our stay here in Edmonton.
After our first relaxing day in Edmonton we all went our separate ways because five different homes were taking us in for the next two week. For the first night Lauren Cox, Maya Oliva and I, James Koroni, went to a home just four blocks from The FRINGE sight. Our generous hosts have a two story home with a basement, a beautiful tree with two swings in it, three bright children and two handsome guinea pigs. In their backyard there's a raspberry bush, two kinds of apple trees and every Tuesday a fresh shipment of organic produce is dropped off. Wow! Too much excitement for one day. We called it an early night.
After three months of rehearsal and performing in various New York City venues we, the cast of The Man Who Wasn't There, were ready to depart for The FRINGE Festival in Edmonton, Canada. We excitedly and sleepily arrived at LaGuardia Airport on August 12th at 3:30 AM with hopes to get through airport check-in and security with ease. This wasn't the case. Our check-in alone, with our group of nine people, took over an hour and a half to complete. We then arrived at Airport Security around 5:15 AM.
With a boarding time of 5:45 AM and our flight at 6:15 AM we thought we were set but that was before we noticed the line was longer than that of Splash Mountain at Disneyland. This is when we started to sweat. Fortunately with our New Yorker sense of urgency and a lot of sarcasm we managed to get on our flight right on time.
Our hosts live in is a cozy home with family portraits lining the stairwells, an organic garden with tomatoes, zucchini, pumpkins, apple trees etc. and a scent of fresh baked bread that filled every room. Heidi even crocheted a scarf for everyone in the cast and production crew!
