Dickens of the Mounted – Brad

Wednesday the 18th we drive downtown and take part in the Winnipeg Fringe for All. We hand out book marks in our red shirts and hats. Kris goes on stage and does a 2 minute scene from the show – it goes over well, we’re one of the few acts that tell a story and people seem to get into it. Kris gets selfconscious about having to do all this promotional stuff on his own – which I can appreciate. Unfortunately it would be silly to have another guy up there when its a one man show. But it goes really well – we have two more of them to do yet, and they help keep our show in the minds of the people present.

Afterwards Kris takes some downtime to eat, and I go poster some of the other venues before our show. We load in at 6:30, and go up at 7pm. The show is pretty full – only a few empty chairs which is encouraging. It might be just because we are the opening show for the venue, but the audience seems to enjoy it. However there are 3 giggling teenagers in the front row corner who just have no focus or interest in being there. Its distracting for Kris and the audience around them… it takes a full 10 minutes or so for the energy to be brought back to the story. Unfortunate reality of Fringing… gotta roll with the punches. The other interesting thing was as soon as the show started both Kris and I had this sudden fear of the material – how will this audience react to it? Suddenly every time the word “Indian or Native” is mentioned we’re nervous. What context is it in? Is it critical? Will people react to it negatively? Our depiction of Riel is a complex one, is that a slap in their face? I think ultimately the message of the play is that history is more complex than black and white – that all sides did horrible things during conflicts – but I know that sometimes people are so close to the material that its hard to hear otherwise. We talk about it on the way home and decide that we need to trust our material. We do. And ultimately the story is about this very real and interesting character – but its hard to ignore the politics.

But over all a good show. We do some more postering, some flyering, and head home.

Thursday we took off. We went and did a CBC radio interview with Marilyn Maki at noon, which was a lot of fun. Its our first radio interview – its great how supportive the radio and tv are of the Fringe – in a way that Toronto and Montreal just aren’t… no one cares. It goes well we think – except she refers to me as the writer and adapter… which I’m not. I’m the director, and I try to fit in there that Kris and I adapted it together in what turned out to be quite a lengthy process. But it seems to go good. Afterwards we cross the bridge into the French quarter. We check out St. Boniface cathedral – the fascade is gorgeous to look at – the bare bells hanging from the steeple. And of course Riel’s gravesite.  Then while we’re driving around looking for lunch we see a sign for Ft. Gibraltar, and decide to go check it out. Its a fascinating reconstruction of the North West Trading Co. fort that was here in this region before the Hudson Bay company. The historical interpreters are fantastic and answer all our questions with passion and a personal connection. I think it was nice for them too have adults who were interested in the history and in learning. But very friendly and well worth the $4. We’re hopingto go check out Ft. Gary next week sometime.

We go back downtown and walk around the Forks and Bonnycastle Park which was named after one of Kris’s relatives, which is very cool. We’re tired, and find some grass to sit and read for a while. A lot of gay men walking around – we have a feeling that maybe the two of us suggest something other than the lounging tourist.

Home again, to a nice BBQ’d meal of steak, corn and roasted veggies. A meal fit for a Canadian King. All we’re missing is a cold beer – but Kris has sworn off beer for 6 months because of a fatty liver, and I don’t want him to be sober alone. Temptation being probably difficult for him. I’d rather keep him around a while longer. Besides, then I can keep exploiting his acting talents…haha.

Roadtrip time. Leaving at 6am, the faithful crew of the HMS Gareth, ie the Green minivan departed The Big Smoke (Toronto) on a 2 month journey. It was hard to say goodbye to our loved ones, especially my fiance, but this was an adventure worth taking, and I knew she knew that. Hopefully it’ll take the travel bug out of me for a while… at least travelling without her.

We put in a good 15 hours, taking the northern US route, and enjoyed some beautiful scenery. The roads were… well, American roads. The official Roadkill count for our duration in the US:

18 small rodents (Racoons included)

7 large kill (deer, foxes, etc.)

We stopped for the night in Duluth, enjoyed a soak and pizza dinner, and started the next day again at 9 – no rush, we had made good time.

Kris’s new diet of high fiber and such has made the trip interesting – I always know when he’s passed gass because the loud erruption is followed by a “Did you say something?”  Luckily the windows roll down (they don’t in my Gremlin car). I keep telling him not to tempt me to eat more falafel… mine are silent but deadly.

We cross the border back into Canada, and even the border guard had heard of the Fringe Festival, which was a good sign of things to come. We saw a sign and quickly pulled off the highway to discover the ruins of Ft. Dufferin – one of the original NWMP forts, that also housed the Royal Boundary Commission, sent from England to determine the 49th parallel. It was a rude awakening to the reality of the mosquito problems. After checking out the Red River (someone was awefully optimistic to call it “Red”) and some of the old quarters, we escaped back to the van… our legs smeared with the blood of the fallen.

We headed into the ‘Peg, found the house of my aunt Edna & Uncle John, unloaded our stuff, and drove into town to scope our of venue.

Downtown is beautiful. We love the old buildings around the exchange district – all in such good condition. We grabbed a bite to eat at the Kings Head, just across from the square, and were surprised to see that we had chosen the unofficial Fringe artist hangout as a bunch of other troupes came in and sat down – each of us with our road trip story of getting here. Most of the other groups are veterans of the circuit, having done them for 7 or 8 years. They all speak of the Winnipeg Fringe with reverence to its hospitality and supportive marketing.

We’re a little behind in our postering – many walls have already been covered by those companies that are locals or flew in. We thought we’d be ahead of the game since we left early sunday morning – we even turned down our encore Patrons’ Pick performance Sunday evening because we wanted to get a head start in Winnipeg. Ah well.

Back home, nice to have a real bed and be able to veg a bit. Exhale.

First full day in the city. We finally got our posters printed after walking around downtown trying to find a wifi link to download our poster.

We had a bit of a scare. We had opened up the side of our van to push the sandwich boards out the back, where we put our show info and posters and reviews and stuff for people to see. So we fixed it up, closed the back and then proceeded to go set it up and walk around for 1.5 hours. As we came back towards the van Kris starts swearing. The side door has been open this whole time. We know this is stupid. We forgot to close it before we took off. This is stupid in any city, let alone in Winnipeg, the autotheft capital of Canada… grrr. We were lucky, nothing was taken. My uncle that was trying to track medown had actually hungout by our van for a while, thinking clearly, that if the door is wide open we must be near by… maybe his presence was a deterrent, but he had to go back to work, so we missed him. Anyway, stupid, we know. 

We got that done, then went in for our Media time slot where they videotaped us and did an audio recording of a scene. And then our tech time in our venue – the school for contemporary dance. It went smoothly, our technicians seemed to really appreciate that we were organised and ready to go. I am nothing if not organised. Our technicians scare us more with talk of auto theft, so tomorrow we’re going out to buy a “Club” for the van. Who knows if it works, but Kris and I both worry about things perhaps too much, and it might put our minds at ease a bit. 

After that we put up some posters around the area. They’re pretty nice posters if we do say so ourselves – designed for us by Robin Senior, a friend in Toronto who has some pretty mad skills.

Our first show is tomorrow night. Yeah.