Senior Living: Enjoying life on the fringe

Everyone has a happy place — preferably two or three. For me, it’s sinking into a hot bath with Epsom salts, reading a picture book with a grandchild on either side of me, and the Edmonton International Fringe Festival.

The festival, which wound up at the end of August, is the biggest and longest-running Fringe festival in North America. Launched in 1982, it has provided a platform for 43,000 artists to present their work over more than four decades. This year, there were 216 shows in 38 venues featuring 1,600 artists. The event sold 114,632 tickets in 2023, with $1.2 million going into the pockets of artists. It’s impressive.

But for me, the Fringe is more than a statistical boast. It’s a magical space that has taught me a lot and not just about theatre, but about myself and what has come to matter to me. In the 30 years I’ve been attending the festival (the last 20 or so as a reviewer for the Edmonton Journal, and once as a playwright and producer), my attitude to the spectacle has shifted considerably.

When I first started attending Fringe shows, I felt entitled to be entertained, and took it personally if that didn’t happen. One show from my early years as an audience member was mostly about a young person who screamed in a blood-curdling fashion while pulling a plastic baby doll from their bottom. I wasn’t just puzzled, I was apoplectic. Why? That there were no answers made it worse.

In those days, I was always keeping track, subtracting the bad shows from the good to come up with a score for the duration. Now, I am much less attached to outcomes and more mindful of the performers’ intent. I am more open to difference (and to dance) and to learning. It’s partly because I’m older, and I am making an effort to broaden rather than to narrow my perspective to avoid becoming the stereotype of a senior. But it’s also because I am thinking harder about the journey. Both mine and that of the artists.

That’s a valuable perspective, because at the Fringe, as in life, what you get is uneven, and often random. Some shows are staggeringly good and some are awful. Because the festival is non-juried, any performer who wins a slot in the annual lottery can appear in an approved venue. If anyone doubts the skill and talent required to be theatre professionals, they need only attend a show in which the performers are not.

Still, over time, I have come to understand that the festival is actually about more than the calibre of the productions, or even having a belly laugh. Audience participation is a part of many shows, which creates community. If you are lucky, the festival takes you outside your comfort zone to hear stories from people who are not in your Facebook echo chamber. If you didn’t enjoy those stories, or don’t agree with their political perspective, that’s OK. There is a busker on the curb over there who is belting out a heart-stopping array of show tunes.

That’s a powerful combination of Fringe forces and I feel its benefit the moment I step on site. As long it’s not raining (a different, much grumpier column) something in me shifts. I relax. Taking a deep and hungry sniff of the air, redolent with the aroma of mini-doughnuts, I feel my judgments peeling away.

Amid the hustle and bustle — street performers on unicycles wielding fire, shouts of laughter from the beer tent, artists pitching upcoming shows to passersby — it becomes clear that I am just one person in a big and varied world.

This realization is always a relief.

This year, the first show I saw was obviously an entirely new experience for the cast. One actor couldn’t keep a straight face while delivering her lines. But the hour-long effort also featured a small band of enthusiastic musicians, and there was even a sing-along. Who among us cannot feel good about a sing-along? Later, I saw a one-woman show about a life-threatening illness that was both desperately sad, and yet so hopeful. I could not take my eyes from the stage and cried with sorrow and with joy.

Fringe festivals are like gambling. You peruse the program, blow on your dice and enter the theatre. A big win fuels the belief that you are somehow blessed. When you lose, you hope it’s an anomaly, rub your lucky rabbit’s foot and try again. But here’s the difference between the Fringe and gambling.

When you’re fringing, you are both the gambler and the house. And as you know, the house always wins.

— Liane Faulder writes the Life in the 60s column. [email protected]