Intrepid

You are currently browsing articles tagged Intrepid.

Busy, busy, busy

August 25, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

There is no Victoria Fringe Festival this year, for reasons which will require no further elucidation. Indeed, fringe festivals are – in this exceedingly difficult time – exceedingly thin on the ground.

In common, no doubt, with other similar organising companies Intrepid Theatre juggled for a while notions of alternative festival forms (online only – local companies in carefully socially isolated venues…) but in the end had to admit defeat. One of the major problems is that many small fringe companies can only make their festival visits work financially if they can hop from one such to another, filling their summers with a brief international tour of fringes. Economies of scale – dontcha know…

Well – no-one is doing international fringe tours this year – so that all went out of the window. Intrepid – like many small companies heavily reliant on grant income – is having to work hard just to survive, without taking on further major challenges. Kudos to them – say I – for keeping the ship afloat.

So – the gentle reader will doubtless be musing – at a time of year when things are normally pretty frenetic, the Immigrant must be able to kick-back and enjoy the dog days sitting on the deck, chilled white in hand, enjoying the late August sunshine.

Not a bit of it! I am busier than ever and cannot frankly imagine how my fringe duties might have been fitted in at all.

The chief source of such busyness is my rapidly upcoming computer literacy teaching. Term starts in a couple of weeks and, because the course is being taught entirely online, all of the course structures and materials must be re-designed and re-written accordingly. It is one thing in normal times for students to slumber gently for ninety minutes in a lecture theatre whilst I drone on about the good-old days of computing (after all, when I am done they can all head off to the cafeteria for cheap sustenance and the chance to ‘diss’ my efforts) but quite another being taught online. In the comforts (or otherwise) of their own homes not a one of them would put up with an hour and a half of a disembodied voice emanating from the equivalent of a Zoom session. They would more likely just go back to bed and do what students do best.

No – the canny lecturer just has to get a whole bunch more canny than ever in order to keep them engaged. I will report back as to how it all goes.

My other busyness is much more fun. Since The Chanteuse and I discovered how to record with each other safely at arms-length we have been rampaging our way through our back-catalog of as-yet unrecorded tracks – trying to complete them before she too has to go back to work in September. Though I say it myself, we have been doing some great work. There is much to do on the mixing and mastering fronts – not to mention all the other bits and pieces that go to make up a release – but we have an album’s worth of material and we aim to get something out into the big wide world this autumn.

Now – that is exciting!

Tags: Anam Danu, Fringe, Intrepid, Music, teaching, Theatre, work

The magic circle

September 8, 2019 in Life in BC | Permalink

“The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.”

P.S. Baber – ‘Cassie Draws the Universe’

Our relief at discovering – subsequent to our arrival four years ago from London (arguably the theatre capital of the world) – that Victoria is consistently able to offer a rich bill of fare in thespian terms… was palpable! As I have written before in these pages, we routinely hold season tickets for The Belfry and one of the reasons that I was keen to sit on the Board of Intrepid Theatre was my admiration for the work that they do in bringing adventurous theatre to the provincial capital.

I have waxed lyrical before within these musings on the subject of the Victoria Fringe Festival (for those seeking proof posts may be found here, here and here). Of the three festivals operated by Intrepid Theatre the Fringe is perhaps closest to my heart, my healthy love of fringe theatre having been nurtured over many years at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The posts referenced above extol the delights of the shows from the past three fringe festivals with which we were particularly impressed and this post will do likewise for 2019 – but I do wish first to make a brief observation concerning the changing nature of fringe theatre.

When I first visited the Edinburgh Fringe in 1976 I am very sure that there was on offer more drama than there is now and certainly less comedy. Now, I have nothing against comedy – whether as stand-up or as comedy plays – but it is good to have a balance. Likewise in the field of drama the trend over recent decades has been towards small cast shows – presumably as much as anything on grounds of cost – with the emphasis often on solo shows based on personal experience. Again – nothing wrong with that as a form, but I do find myself longing for a ‘proper’ script, preferably containing subtle and thoughtful dialogue and (please god!) subtext!

Is that too much to ask?

So – the production that I enjoyed most this year was “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Theatre Alive Productions. Mitch Alborn’s play dates from 2002 and is a sensitive and profound text that was beautifully and movingly performed by the company. I love to see new work but I also greatly enjoy a piece that has been properly honed over a number of years and through numerous rewrites.

Elsewhere Englishman Charles Adrian’s “Dear Samantha” was as funny and delightful as when we first encountered him/her two years ago and the frankly bizarre – but also very funny – “Ballad of Frank Allen” by the Australian company Weeping Spoon Productions rounded off our fringe viewing on a high. The premise of this latter – featuring a janitor who has been been accidentally shrunk to microscopic proportions and who is living in the beard of another man – pretty much embodies the sense of the unexpected that one hopes to find in fringe theatre.

Tags: Culture, Drama, Fringe, Intrepid, Theatre

Not-bad Samaritan

February 14, 2019 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

On Sunday evening – just as the storm winds from the weekend were beginning to slacken but also as the first of the serious snowstorms was starting to dump its icy load all over Victoria and the peninsula – I was on my way downtown to pick up the three members of a Halifax-based theatre company who had been performing the previous night as part of Intrepid Theatre’s OutStages festival. My task was to run them to the airport so that they could start their long journey (three hops) back to Halifax.

As we started back up the Pat Bay highway the snow really set in and the residual winds whipped it horizontally across the carriageway, reducing visibility quite dramatically. It was shortly after five o’clock and the temperature had dipped below zero. The compacted snow that had already fallen began to freeze into ice and – though snowploughs had clearly been up the highway at some point – there was no sign of them nor of gritting trucks at this juncture.

The airport is at the top of the peninsula, about five minutes drive from us but around twelve miles out of the City. The road climbs steadily from Downtown and there are long stretches with gentle but persistent inclines – both up and down – as one heads north.

It rapidly became clear that most of the vehicles on the highway (which was quite busy with people trying to get home) were not equipped with winter tyres. As a result there was much lateral sliding as they fought for grip on the slippery slopes. We began to see accidents as cars and other vehicles slid into one another or off the carriageway entirely. We could see places where the traffic coming south had stopped completely.

The Lexus – with permanent four-wheel drive and fitted with a practically new set of snow tyres – sailed serenely through, though dodging other uncontrollable vehicles proved a challenge.

Slowly but steadily we made our way to the airport. The grateful thespists were decanted at the departure lounge and I headed for home. We had been checking continually as we progressed that the flight was still scheduled to depart on-time, but when I got home I thought I would check once more. The news was bad. The flight had been cancelled – as had all others by this point. Furthermore the Pat Bay highway had also been closed shortly after our transit thereof.

Much telephoning ensued on the part of the Intrepid Production Manager, to try to find an hotel near the airport that could put up our performers for the night. I headed back to the terminal so that I could transport them wherever they heeded to go. Naturally everyone else with cancelled flights was doing exactly the same thing and no rooms were be found. Thus it was that I brought a weary troupe of thesps and their equipment back to our now snowbound house, where we entertained them, fed them and put them up for the night.

When we struggled from our cosy beds the next morning (Monday) to be faced by a veritable winter wonderland outside, the first order of the day was to hit the phones again. We heard a sniff of a flight leaving within the next hour and a half so we rushed to get ready, dug out the Lexus and headed once more to the airport. After much frazzled to-ing and fro-ing it was determined that no seats were to be had after all and that many other flights were once again being cancelled. This time Intrepid managed to find our new friends a room at an Inn in Sidney and having deposited them there I headed for home as it once again started to snow in earnest.

They were now scheduled to leave on the Tuesday mid-morning. At around nine o’clock I received an urgent text telling me that they were struggling to locate a taxi. Once more I set to work digging the Lexus out of the snow. Fortunately word was received of a suitable conveyance having been found and I didn’t need to venture forth again. We anxiously watched the flight status online and traded texts with our new theatre-buddies as other flights were again being cancelled, before breathing a sigh of relief as theirs finally took to the air.

We heard later that the storms had extended all across Canada, that their flight had been diverted to Fredericton and that they had been put into a taxi for a four hour drive through the night to get back to Halifax very early this morning (Wednesday). Blimey!

The real hero of this whole adventure was a Lexus called Lorelei. I am completely in awe of this incredible machine which – equipped with the right tyres – is simply unstoppable. It goes about its work with the minimum of fuss, simply floating over anything that gets in its way. A fabulous piece of design and engineering!

A grateful thanks – say I!

Tags: Friends, Intrepid, Lexus, Weather, winter

Fringe report

September 21, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

I promised but a few posts back to report on our discoveries and experiences at this year’s Victoria Fringe. What with the new term starting and suchlike I am all too aware that I have not thus far kept my word.

Time to rectify!

In the course of the eleven day festival we saw six shows. Wearing my Fringe Ambassador hat I ‘schmoozed’ the queues for those and another seven shows. I spent an afternoon manning the cardboard castle at the Fringe Kids event and also an evening selling fifty50 tickets at the Fringe Preview night.

I feel very sure, however, that the gentle reader is really only interested (if interested at all) in matters theatrical, so – of the six shows that we attended – these were our highlights:

The Wonderheads mask show – ‘The Wilds‘ was by turns amusing and thought provoking. Mask theatre is not for everyone but for those for whom it works it is revelatory, inviting us to consider anew just how we express – or hide – our thoughts and feelings. The Wonderheads remind me a little of Trestle Theatre in London, though perhaps a little less dark (than Trestle used to be!).

Our personal ‘Funniest Show’ award was this year split between two contenders:

Paco Erhard’s ‘Five Step Guide to Being German‘ was a complete hoot and has deservedly been selling out just about everywhere it has toured around the world. It was not spoiled for me in the least by my becoming – having been unkindly pointed out to Paco by my lovely wife as being ‘a Brit‘ – the butt of many of the jokes throughout the evening. I had a chat with Paco afterwards and he is a genuinely nice guy and actually something of an Anglophile.

Stiff competition in the humour stakes was provided by the hilarious retelling at Langham Court of ‘The War of 1812‘, by Mike Delamont, Morgan Cranny, Wes Borg and Rod Peter Jr. Given the strength of this cast of local comedic luminaries it will come as no surprise that they jointly hit it out of the park!

The most gripping performance that we saw this year was given by Anishinaabe writer and performer Josh Languedoc, with ‘Rocko and Nakota: Tales from the Land‘. Playing multiple characters with astonishing commitment and energy this telling of Anishinaabe tales had us entranced and captivated.

By all accounts this year’s Fringe was a great success. Congratulations to Intrepid Theatre and to all those intrepid performers who participated.

Tags: Fringe, Intrepid, Theatre

The busy and the tired

August 30, 2018 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

When I put the boat in the water at the start of July I toyed with the notion of keeping her there for two months instead of one. It would have been nice to have been able to take her out at a moment’s notice throughout the whole of summer.

Wisely (as it turned out) I deferred making the decision regarding a second month until near the end of July. My concern was that August might turn out to be a sufficiently frantic month that getting away to sit contemplatively upon the waters could turn out to be merely a pipe-dream – and the good ship ‘Dignity’ might simply bob about, sadly neglected, in her slip in Portside Marina for a month.

My fears proved to have been well grounded – with August slowly building up a powerful head of steam as it unfolded.

The latter part of the month is these days (as previously reported) given over to the Victoria Fringe. The Girl and I will have seen half a dozen shows by the end of the festival (upon which I will report in a subsequent post) but in my Intrepid Theatre BoD ‘Fringe Ambassador’ role I will have ‘schmoozed the queues’ for a dozen shows, spent an evening selling 50/50 raffle tickets at the ‘Fringe Preview‘ night and given a Saturday afternoon over to manning the Cardboard Castle at the ‘Fringe Kids‘ event.

I also have another term contract for post-secondary IT Literacy teaching for the fall term. This term starts in the first week in September, so preparation – including a fair round of meetings, INSET sessions and lengthy email exchanges – has been underway for a while now.

Finally – we are helping a dear friend move into a new house – in addition to hosting (this coming weekend) a birthday BBQ for her, since she is not really in a position to do so herself at the moment. To do this is, of course, both a privilege and a pleasure, but it does entail trying to knock the garden back into some sort of shape at just the time of year that it has decided that it can now relax, kick back and chill a bit.

This being retired lark is a total picnic!

Tags: Celebration, Friends, Fringe, Intrepid, teaching, Victoria

Fringe!

August 20, 2018 in Life as we know it | Permalink

This week sees the start of the 32nd Victoria Fringe Festival. Wearing my Intrepid BoD hat I (along with my fellow directors) will be in for a busy couple of weeks.

I naturally associate the month of August with fringe festivals, having been so many times to the Edinburgh Fringe over the years both as a performer and a spectator. Now, the Edinburgh Fringe is enormous and seems these days to be spilling over from four to five weeks. Here in Victoria everything is on a much smaller scale; a mere twelve days and forty seven shows in less than a dozen venues.

I was recently reading in the online edition of the Guardian an article by a journalist who had been sent to Edinburgh with the brief of visiting shows on the fringe that featured nudity – which trait has a long and chequered history. The Victoria Fringe is no stranger to such antics either – but that may be a post for a different day!

The article was only of moderate interest but – as might be expected – attracted a fair bit of Below The Line comment subsequent to publication – as was doubtless the intention. The online correspondence included this offering which rather caught my eye – from a poster going by the sobriquet ‘TheLonelyDivorcee‘:

“I went to the first Isle of Wight festival in 1968 when the headline acts were Jefferson Airplane and Fairport Convention, both of whom were fronted by naked women. Nobody thought it significant or indeed some sort of massive step forward in equality.

That was partly because people were a lot more open minded then, and partly because we were all out of our minds on LSD/Magic Mushrooms. I say ‘minds’ but really we were just a single mind collectively experiencing ourselves and the universe as unified, ecstatic matter.

In fact most people also spent the entire event entirely naked and due to our youth and the drugs, in state of high sexual arousal. As a result many happy unions were formed between men and women.

This occurred despite the complete absence of ‘safe spaces’ and ‘gender neutral zones’.

When I arrived back home to my parents I was completely changed, much to the disgust of my father who, when he was the same age as I was then had become paralysed after being shot down over Bremen during a 1000 bomber raid on the Nazis – note these were real Nazis, not just people who didn’t recycle their rubbish.

I can’t help think my generation has had the best of it. When I look at my Grandson who’s around that age he doesn’t seem to have much fun. OK, he’s got a £150 pair of jeans, an IPhone and a useless degree in drama – with the debt that comes with it – but there’s no culture other than consumer culture and an increasingly authoritarian attitude towards sex and relationships.

I’m in good health, but I reckon I’ve got about 10-15 years before I will return to matter, and frankly I’ll be glad to be gone as I believe we are entering new puritanical age, and that is not for me.”

If I say that this struck a chord the gentle reader may well understand why!

Happy fringing!

Tags: Edinburgh, Fringe, Intrepid, Memories, Victoria

OutStages!

July 3, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

By dint of an extraordinarily poor piece of planning on my part our trip to Montreal this May coincided exactly with the greater part of the first Intrepid Theatre festival of the year – UNO Fest. As a result, out of the ten day program of solo performances we were only able to see two shows – one at the very start of the festival and one at the end.

Much humble pie has been eaten for this faux pas and I have to report that of the many cuisines that I have enjoyed over the decades this hugely overrated dish will not be making my top ten anytime soon!

We were most happy, however, to have been able to see the wonderful Margaret McAuliffe in the Fishamble production – “The Humours of Brandon“. Mags is from Dublin and spins the tale of her attempt to become Irish Dancing’s open champion with exactly the kind of brio that one associates with her race.

The second festival of the year – OutStages – is considerably shorter, taking place over six days toward the end of June. Once again we saw two shows: this time they were both wonderful!

Up first was a rare appearance by the divine Queer Songbook Orchestra from Toronto in a show entitled “Songs of Resilience“. The conceit of the work is in the choices of popular songs made by members of the LGBTQ community and the frequently dramatic stories behind those choices. The show features guest narrators who read these submissions, to be followed by the twelve piece orchestra’s often startling re-interpretation of what might well be a familiar piece. The effect – engendered in no small degree by the excellence of the arrangements, of the musicianship and of the stunning vocal performances – is really most remarkably moving. I was not alone in wondering how nearly two and a half hours passed in a flash, leaving us wanting much, much more.

More concerning the QSO – including full recordings of their wonderful music – can be found on their website.

OutStages was closed by Peale Harbour’s extraordinary “Chautauqua“. Pearle is a drag queen also from Toronto (the creation of Justin Miller), and the show may best be summed up in words from her own publicity:

“Chautauqua is an immersive extravaganza: part cabaret, part tragicomedy, part Tent Revival. There’s music, sing-a-longs, puppet shows and even an exorcism! The world may be falling apart, but Pearle will show you that there’s more that unites us than divides us.”

From the moment that we were ushered into Pearle’s tent – ‘pitched’ on the stage of the Metro Studio – and directed to sit in pre-ordained places on backless benches, it was clear that this was going to be an unusual experience. That it was as memorable as it proved to be was in great part down to Pearle’s extraordinary stage presence. As Jennifer Enchin reported on “Mooney on Theatre”:

“She promised us that by the end of the night, we will be rid of all of our pain and sorrows. I’ll tell you one thing, with stage presence like that — I would believe pretty much anything this woman told me.”

More information, as ever, here:

Many thanks once again to Intrepid Theatre – and in particular to Executive Director Heather Lindsay and to Marketing and Development Manager Sean Guist who curated UNO Fest and OutStages respectively – for bringing such amazing talent to Victoria and for making us so very happy to be living here.

Ta muchly!

Tags: Drama, Intrepid, Theatre, Victoria

Suddenly it’s summer

June 19, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

After a considerable period during which the summer attempted in only a somewhat lacklustre fashion to get properly started… now, suddenly, here it is! Temperatures kicked up by six or seven degrees Celsius almost overnight and the sun is now truly hot.

Nice!

We entertained friends on Saturday evening last and it was the first occasion this year on which we were able comfortably to sit out late on our now year-old deck. Indeed, ’twas so balmy that we stayed out ’til midnight or thereabouts, clad only in t-shirts, shorts and summer dresses (as appropriate to our genders and inclinations!). A splendid evening was had by all even if we were too busy chewing the fat to venture onto the freshly mowed croquet lawn. Oh well – plenty more opportunities now that summer is truly here.

On the Sunday – and only a little worse for wear – I was on Intrepid Theatre board duty. As part of its outreach program the company mans a feature at a number of Victoria public events. On this occasion it was ‘Car Free Day’, for which one of the city’s main thoroughfares – Douglas Street – is closed to vehicular traffic and given over to all manner of stalls and amusements. Next month it will be ‘Pride’ and then in August ‘Fringe Kids’ as part of the Victoria Fringe Festival.

For these events the company creates a 65 sq metre ‘Cardboard Castle’ for youngsters to paint. Those eager to express themselves are given an oversized t-shirt to cover their own clothes, a small container of poster paint in a colour of their choice and a brush, before being set loose inside the castle to cover its walls in any manner that they choose.

They may, of course, return at any point to top up with further colours and some spend a considerable amount of time creating their own masterpieces… either that or just painting each other! Either seems to work and the attraction is hugely popular, not least with parents who can come to rest for a while knowing that their offspring are safely pre-occupied within.

Golly… we are nearly at the solstice already! Now, how did that happen?

Tags: Friends, Intrepid, Summer, Victoria

These are a few…

May 8, 2018 in Life as we know it, Photos | Permalink

It is no secret that we have now entered my favourite time of the year – a subject on which I have almost certainly waxed lyrical any number of times in previous postings (at around this time). There are many reasons to delight in the season… nature reborn – the first hints of the summer to come – the warmth anew upon one’s shoulders – the fresh aromas on the balmy breeze – that strange golden light in the sky!…

My first instinct is to break out the trusty Fuji and to document the nascent spring/summer season as I have done so many times before. As the photos attached below will attest I am not about to refrain from so doing on this occasion either.

It is also time for the first Intrepid Theatre festival of the season – ‘UNO Fest’ – a feast of one man/woman shows which aim to amuse, inform, to move and to set the tone for the rest of the year. I am once again on airport/ferry pickup duty – an endeavour that brings me into contact with fascinating artists from around the world – and what’s not to like about that?!

Finally – in response to Aeroplan threatening to expire our precious points should we not have used them by the end of the month, a short but expedient trip has been arranged. We leave on Thursday for Montreal – a city that I have not yet visited but which am very much looking forward to seeing – before heading back to Vancouver early next week in time to catch the Paul Simon farewell concert that was the subject of a previous missive.

Further photographic images are bound to follow…