Tour Whore, September 23, 2012

What the Fuck Just Happened?!
by Cameryn Moore

At this time of year, especially, my FB feed dies down a little. It’s not that all my Fringe colleagues ran out of shows to promote; I personally have gigs upcoming in eight different cities. No, I think it’s because everyone is taking time to assess what the fuck just happened. 

It’s a valid and legitimate part of the touring model: there needs to be some post-mortem. Or pre-vivem. I need time to figure it out, process it, make it fit into my future plans for global domination. Or not fit. That’s okay, too. For sure there were mistakes and glitches and bad luck, and things that I hope to God will never happen again. (Getting the artificially jaded reviewer in Calgary, or developing laryngitis opening weekend.)  But mostly we are all in a quiet moment, the calm before the storm whips up again.

As I write this, Vancouver Fringe’s Pick of the Fringe holdover programming is winding down, early-bird deadlines for the Orlando and Montreal 2013 Fringes have come and gone, and those touring artists who flung themselves out past Edmonton to the last Canadian Fringes of the tour—Victoria and Vancouver—have begun the annual … migration? Diaspora? I don’t quite know what to call it. 

I likened it more to an amoeba, with sprawling bits coming together for the big festivals and trailing off into branches

Migration implies the same path every year, with everyone on it, and that’s not the right metaphor. Someone asked me in Winnipeg if all the artists are in a caravan or something; I likened it more to an amoeba, with sprawling bits coming together for the big festivals and trailing off into branches, and then pooling together at the very end. Migration suggests instinctual, and that’s not it either. There’s nothing intuitive about the touring life, it doesn’t come easily, like swallows or lemmings, no, we work at this shit, laboring over tour routes for the coming year before we’ve even finished this one. 

“Diaspora” is closer. It suggests that we are being spread from our homeland, and even though, yes, most of us have permanent addresses to return to, for the past two or three months, Fringe has been home. And now we are being forced to leave, because it’s over. The seasonal crop of Fringe theatre has been harvested, and we the workers have picked up our cheques and we’re done. 

But that’s inaccurate, too. We’re not really done. Theatre is never done, there are always things to do. Fringe is a phoenix, new life emerging on the ashes of the old. Plays done, lessons learned, bridges burned. Fringe is dead, long live the Fringe! I stir around in the smoky rubble, looking for glowing coals and shards of spark-hot embers with which to kindle the coming year’s creative bonfire.

This Fringe season has been very, very weird for me. I’m still coming to grips with what fringing has meant to me, and what it can mean. I’m exploring ways to tweak my newest show more to the Fringe—just a title change should do the trick. And eyeballing new Fringes where I can start the whole trilogy all over again. And at the same time I’m looking beyond the Fringe. I realized this year that I may have reached my maximum audience with my current repertoire, the sex-centric stuff. I will not reach Fringe blockbuster status with any of it, because it’s just not general interest enough. I may have already reached everyone I’m going to reach in that category of Fringe audiences who are interested in sex stuff the way I do it. But I haven’t finished yet, either, which means I need to go further afield.

I’m looking at juried festivals more closely, and marshaling my resources to tap into the college sex-ed market. I’ve got a few collaborators and co-producers around North America—people I met on the Fringe, or on the edges of the Fringe—and we’re flipping through calendars, picking out dates. I am taking Phone Whore to the Edinburgh Fringe next summer, trying to make contact with producers around the world. Hell, I’ve got all that time up in Montreal this coming year. That’s a significant launch point, and I need all the launch points I can get. I’m still going to do Fringe, but I’m also getting out.

The thought fills me with dismay, I’ll be honest. Because home on the Fringe is comfortable. It’s not always rocking, but it’s usually fun, and I’ve lived here for long enough to know how it works, more or less. I know how to make the faucet work, and how to jimmy up the door to pull it closed. I know what the neighbors are like, and I know how to live with my roommates. I know this house. But I need more room. This room is getting cramped, but it’s all the space I have in my Fringe home. I’m going to be more of a guest now, not a permanent resident. I’ll come back when I can, but I want to be Out There a lot more. There’s lots more room out there, I can feel it. More people, more conversations, more sparks.

I recently found a quote that I love: “Our role in life is to bring the light of our own souls to the dim places around us.” (Joan Chittister) This time of year, I feel that task keenly. I’ve lit the Fringe well for the year. I’m holding the torch up high now and looking around out there, beyond the wooden fence, at all the other dim places that need my light, too.

camerynmoore.com