jackDawe, February 1, 2014

Disappearing Acts
by TJ Dawe
@TJ_Dawe

Is fringe touring disappearing? Maybe. 

I started touring my own shows in '98. Many festivals were first come first served. A few were lotteries. 

Now they're all lotteries, and they're clogged as a hair filled tub. In December the Toronto Fringe put out a list that included all the applicants that didn't even make their wait list. It's longer than Infinite Jest. 

Since 2002 or so there's been the CAFF lottery. Get drawn in that, and you're in as many festivals as you like (minimum five). Ten companies get drawn a year. I've applied every year. Never gotten drawn. 

In spite of that, I toured eight or nine festivals a summer pretty much every year till 2008. It was reliable that I could get into that many. I knew plenty of other people who did this too.

Not so much anymore. 

They came up with their own stuff. They were rarities. 

Over the past five years I've noticed friends trying to build on a hometown success only getting accepted into one or two festivals. Or none. 

I've seen veterans curb their touring, simply because they aren't getting drawn in any of the lotteries.

I planned a bigger tour for this summer. I got into two festivals (Orlando - where few international applicants apply, and Victoria)(and damn, was I lucky to get drawn in Victoria, looking at their wait list). I'm applying for a BYOV in Edmonton. The three venues I've used as a BYOV in Winnipeg in the past don't have room for me this year. 

What's happened? Fringe audiences aren't much bigger. Fringes aren't crawling with agents and producers and talent scouts and artistic directors. It's the same fringe circuit it ever was. 

Here's my theory: there's more of a culture of self-created theatre than there used to be. When I was a theatre student in the 90s, I looked up to Daniel MacIvor, Ronnie Burkett, Spalding Gray. Writer/performers. Creators. They didn't audition and play roles. They came up with their own stuff. They were rarities. 

I did my first tour in '94, in a MacIvor play David Cheoros (a grad student where I was an undergrad)(and he's the guy who runs the Edmonton BYOV I'm hoping to do my new show in this year) directed, and found the fringe circuit full of creators. Foursight Theatre, Way-Off Broadway, Naomi Cooke, Karen Hines, Frank Mecshkuleit, Sensible Footwear. The fringe was a rarefied environment where theatre audiences were open to original, self-created work. 

Since then, self-created theatre has made significant inroads into mainstream houses. Mike Daisey, Forced Entertainment, Mump & Smoot, the Pajama Men, Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland, the Electric Company. The PUSH festival, the High Performance Rodeo, Magnetic North, UNO, the Wildside Festival. 

the monolithic big houses did take care of a selected circle. They still do.

Theatre students are exposed to more of this stuff. More of them are graduating and going in that direction instead of solely auditioning, or auditioning at all.

This fits in with a bigger cultural trend. People are more likely to become entrepreneurs than before. There are more options than getting an entry level job with a big corporation and trusting that they'll take care of you till you retire. Theatre companies were never really like that, but the monolithic big houses did take care of a selected circle. They still do. But it's a shrinking circle. 

These days, musicians put out their own music on sound cloud, and indie labels. You can find an audience without big label and radio support. Anyone can write their own blog, and some hit it big. Film festivals thrive. Cable shows hold their own at TV awards. Web series rack up hits by the millions. Anyone can create something and post it on Youtube. Some go viral, completely by their own merits. 

I'm happy to see this wider acceptance of the micro as well as the macro. I'm encouraged by this increasingly widespread interest in the kind of theatre I gravitate toward. 

The work was tilted in the direction of original creation - overwhelmingly so. 

But I'm sorry to see the decline of across-the-circuit touring. A nine festival tour translates to roughly sixty performances. A show grows in that span. It can't not. You learn as a performer. If it's your script, you'll change it as you go, based on how it's playing. It's an excellent, on-your-feet education. 

But there's no guidance from above, no mentorship. There isn't a grounding in tradition - though many artists come from formal training. The artist is left to make her own discoveries, which is both good and bad. 

So what do you do when you can't tour the fringe anymore? Play the game. Submit your work to artistic directors and juried festivals. Apply for funding. The climate's changing. There's more acceptance for new, rule-breaking, unpublished theatre than there used to be.

I recently attended the AGM-a-palooza in Vancouver. A handful of small companies had seven minutes each to tell their assembled peers what they've been up to and what they're working on. The work was tilted in the direction of original creation - overwhelmingly so. 

Give it another 20 years, and perhaps the seasons of major houses will tilt that way too. And maybe there'll be more festivals providing avenues for self-creators who haven't found a place in the system yet. There's certainly enough talent itching for a chance to be seen.