Postmodern surrealist bedroom
To my immiediate left, as I lay on half a mattress in the guest room, is a set of archer's arrows, a guitar case, a couple of cacti atop of the bureau, an ironing board and a crushed "lucky beer" beer can. A stack of books sits atop a bookshelf but no books in the bookshelf. That is filled with more beer cans, some dumb bells and a small bottle of echinaciea and some empty coffee migs. The books include Dune and the I Ching. Some wonderful abstract paintings sit directly in front of me. One of them is crookedly hanging on the wall and the other wan is on the floor leaning again a closet door frame. I can't make out what is in the closet. This is the guest room in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Slammaster, Charles Hamilton's house and I love it.
The house is a little messier than usual as they had a house party with a few friends last night. If Charles hadn't promised to pick me up at the airport this morning he probably would have slept through the morning. Instead he greeted me on a lovely sunny day in Saskatoon.
I've just awoken from a nap actually as I had to be up at 5am this morning to head to the Winnipeg airport and catch my flight. I had a bumpy sleep with plenty of weird dreams. Winnipeg proved especially productive for my subconcious. Perhaps it was due to the fact I was there to be a part of the fringe. And perhaps it has to do with Winnipeg being the geographical centre of the continent. Plenty of strange energies and frequencies tend to converge there.
The second half of the Fringe was a little stronger as far as attendance goes. That being said it was not stellar. I managed to gather in around 30-35 people each night of my last two gigs. With the money I make tonight at the Saskatoon slam I might break even for the whole trip but that's about it. I did better last year with a stranger show, The Wet Dream Catcher. I had more ups and downs last year...one show with 2 people and a couple fo shows with aobut 50 at each. Last year had the catchier title, this year was probably more poetically obscure, "My heart is a glass pinata." This year was slower but more consitent as I averaged around 12-15 people for the first 5 shows and then the doubling of attendance for the last two. I think that increase was most definitely due to having excellent show times. 7pm on a Friday and 3:30 Saturday afternoon on the final weekend. I'm still basicaly an unknown commodity in the fringe world. Although there were a few people who came to see me based on lasty year's show and others who recognized me from last year.
I did have a good time this year even if it was far mellower than last year. I got to see some friends I made on the circuit last year and hopefully I'll see a few more of them when they get to Vancouver. I would like to do it all again next year as well. I am not going to give up on it yet.
I had a lot of people really on board with this year's show. Basically once people saw it they would get upset that there were only a dozen people in the theatre. "There should be more people here...I don't know what's wrong with Winnipeg audiences..." was said a few times. I would thank the audience at the end of the show and then thank all the empty seats for coming back, "they're my biggest fans" and one lady said "I don't know what's wrong with people. These seats should be full." Ha.
It's a great challenge, doing this fringe. It is dominated by improv troupes, musicals and what I've come to call "soccer mom theatre" because most of the people who are able to attend most of the time are middle aged to senior aged men and women. A straight up poetry show is a harder sell unless you are Jem Rolls as he has been around for at least 10 years if not more and is fully entrenched as a "must see" since he was the first one to do it.
As far as attendance goes, I also had some interesting times...twice I was up against Jem directly, I was up against another spoken word show almost each night (Andrea Von Wichhert's one pereson show so I never got to see it) so I think we are also splitting audiences or in Jem's case he was dominating them.
Next year I might just do a dirty improv show and that will get people in by default. Anyone want to joing my troupe?
The house is a little messier than usual as they had a house party with a few friends last night. If Charles hadn't promised to pick me up at the airport this morning he probably would have slept through the morning. Instead he greeted me on a lovely sunny day in Saskatoon.
I've just awoken from a nap actually as I had to be up at 5am this morning to head to the Winnipeg airport and catch my flight. I had a bumpy sleep with plenty of weird dreams. Winnipeg proved especially productive for my subconcious. Perhaps it was due to the fact I was there to be a part of the fringe. And perhaps it has to do with Winnipeg being the geographical centre of the continent. Plenty of strange energies and frequencies tend to converge there.
The second half of the Fringe was a little stronger as far as attendance goes. That being said it was not stellar. I managed to gather in around 30-35 people each night of my last two gigs. With the money I make tonight at the Saskatoon slam I might break even for the whole trip but that's about it. I did better last year with a stranger show, The Wet Dream Catcher. I had more ups and downs last year...one show with 2 people and a couple fo shows with aobut 50 at each. Last year had the catchier title, this year was probably more poetically obscure, "My heart is a glass pinata." This year was slower but more consitent as I averaged around 12-15 people for the first 5 shows and then the doubling of attendance for the last two. I think that increase was most definitely due to having excellent show times. 7pm on a Friday and 3:30 Saturday afternoon on the final weekend. I'm still basicaly an unknown commodity in the fringe world. Although there were a few people who came to see me based on lasty year's show and others who recognized me from last year.
I did have a good time this year even if it was far mellower than last year. I got to see some friends I made on the circuit last year and hopefully I'll see a few more of them when they get to Vancouver. I would like to do it all again next year as well. I am not going to give up on it yet.
I had a lot of people really on board with this year's show. Basically once people saw it they would get upset that there were only a dozen people in the theatre. "There should be more people here...I don't know what's wrong with Winnipeg audiences..." was said a few times. I would thank the audience at the end of the show and then thank all the empty seats for coming back, "they're my biggest fans" and one lady said "I don't know what's wrong with people. These seats should be full." Ha.
It's a great challenge, doing this fringe. It is dominated by improv troupes, musicals and what I've come to call "soccer mom theatre" because most of the people who are able to attend most of the time are middle aged to senior aged men and women. A straight up poetry show is a harder sell unless you are Jem Rolls as he has been around for at least 10 years if not more and is fully entrenched as a "must see" since he was the first one to do it.
As far as attendance goes, I also had some interesting times...twice I was up against Jem directly, I was up against another spoken word show almost each night (Andrea Von Wichhert's one pereson show so I never got to see it) so I think we are also splitting audiences or in Jem's case he was dominating them.
Next year I might just do a dirty improv show and that will get people in by default. Anyone want to joing my troupe?