June 22 2004
Kin and Kindred,
Yesterday I performed my last show of the Montreal Fringe Festival, and now it falls upon me to give an account of my experience in that circus of a city. First of all, I must prepare you for the indignation you will inevitably feel on my behalf very soon, and ask you to breathe deep and let it go. Okay, here's how it went.
I arrived in Montreal on Tuesday two weeks ago, having just been accepted the day before into the Fringe, after crawling up the waiting list for months. This last-minute entry meant that I would not be listed in the Fringe Program and would have to work extra hard to promote myself and get the word out before my first show, which was on Friday. As soon as I was accepted they posted my show description and schedule on the website, and using this info I proceeded to print up hundreds of flyers and posters to distribute around the city. I spent the next three days putting up posters, handing out flyers, and emailing and phoning over two-hundred press and media people about my late entry into the fringe. I also made contact with the few people I was in touch with in the city to invite them to the opening night, bringing friends if possible. Thank you, by the way, to everyone who connected me with friends and family in Montreal.
On Friday night I showed up for my first show with an entourage in tow, ready to perform, and was surprised to find another show had just started in my venue. Confused, I phoned the Fringe Headquarters, and was apologetically informed that they had posted the wrong schedule on the website by mistake, which meant not only that I wasn't on, but that every poster, flyer, and press release I had spent the past three days distributing all had the wrong dates and times on them. Everyone who showed up hoping to see my first shows was turned away, and at that point I had already wasted three days spreading misinformation to the effect that no one in the entire city knew when I was really on.
Shifting into damage control mode, I got the schedule changed on the website and spent the next day printing up replacement posters and flyers, going around retracing my steps putting up the new posters over the old, and sending out an amended press release with the right schedule on it. There was no retrieving the two-hundred erroneous flyers I had already handed out on the street though. The Fringe offered to pay for my re-printing costs, but as for the lost ticket sales, it wasn't really a measurable amount so for that I got an apology.
At my first two actual shows on Saturday and Sunday there wasn't a single ticket sold, but between critics, volunteers and comp tickets I ended up with five or six people at each show, in a theatre with a capacity of seventy. My first show was actually populated by six critics, all of whom sat back in their chairs frowning, arms crossed, looking bored as I put on the most energetic show I could. It was the first time I had seen an audience fail to crack a smile for an hour straight, even during the climax of The Miller's Tale. The one review that resulted from that episode pronounced lukewarmly that I had made a commendable effort but at the end of the day I remained an academic, not a performer, ho hum. I am consoled by the insight of Oscar Wilde in "The Critic as Artist" - the poor reviewer was probably a failed performer as well.
The weekend, needless to say, threatened to be a real downer, but in contrast to the scheduling disasters I actually managed to have a series of fantastic nights. The Fringe Festival had established an outdoor site right on St. Laurent where live bands played on an outdoor stage surrounded by beer gardens and general merriment. I was not part of the official schedule of performers on the outdoor stage, but they let me jump up during the interludes between bands a few times. I would take the stage, pitch my show, crack some jokes about being the Fringe's Five Minute Wonder, and then they would pump one of the instrumentals from my album and I would rap the song live, usually to considerable applause, after which I would introduce the next scheduled act. Then each night after the stage closed everyone proceeded across the road to the Bayou Bar where two thespians conducted a live talk show interviewing Fringe participants and mocking the festival's producers. I also got to do a few interviews on this talk show, allowing me to perform samples of my Chaucer/Rap and pitch my CD, etc.
Through these and other events, going to shows, etc, I got to meet dozens of other performers, many of whom are on Fringe tours of their own, fascinating people I am sure to run into again. My whole Fringe experience in Montreal was greatly enhanced by the people and the culture, even when my shows themselves were depressing.
On Wednesday I had my third show, and with the new schedules out and various promotional stunts and performances I was hopeful for a bit of an audience. When I got to the theatre, sure enough, there were half a dozen pre-sale tickets already spoken for (small potatoes but I was glad to get them). When I went into the theatre I was told by the technician that another show using the venue, Pilk's Madhouse, had broken some eggs during their show, and had used my costume to wipe them up, mistaking it for their cleaning rag. They had brought the shirt home to clean it, but when the colour started bleeding they gave it only a brief rinse and brought it back half-clean. The result was that my black poet's shirt had streaks of white on it, and smelled strongly of sulfur. This was even more pronounced when the show heated up and I started sweating - it smelled like I was cooking an egg on my back. I had a dozen people to perform for though, so I swallowed my annoyance and chalked it up to "fringe bloopers".
Thursday's show was cancelled because no one showed up. This was the first time I had cancelled a show due to lack of audience during this entire trip, though I had one show my opening weekend in Brighton with only three people attending. I had dearly hoped to avoid such a thing happening, but there was nothing for it. I did, however, perform for a leadership convention at Concordia University, appear on CBC radio Montreal, and on McGill's campus radio station, all that same day, so I was upbeat about my last two shows coming up on the weekend, given the prolific publicity.
I needn't harp too long on it, though - there were about fifteen people at each of them, totaling just under fifty tickets sold over the course of five shows, since one was cancelled. This was a terrible return on investment to say the least, not to mention a constant source of stress, since I was caught between feeling like I needed to sell harder to catch up and feeling like it didn't matter, since all occasions seemed to inform against me. Mid-way through the second week I found that the wrong schedule had been accidentally re-loaded onto the Fringe website again for at least three days, causing even more people to come at the wrong times or not come at all. I know these scheduling errors on the part of the Fringe were not solely responsible for my woeful sales, but they did further cripple an already handicapped run. Also, I fear I must have made an enemy somewhere along the way, because I found my posters disappearing day by day from the Fringe site walls, conspicuous holes surrounded by other posters left untouched. Maybe I'm just paranoid.
In the end it was a series of setbacks that added up to a dismally unsuccessful Fringe, performance-wise. It was, on the other hand, the most fun I've had yet, toasting the absurd with a community of like-minded characters and character actors. Montreal has a carnivalesque flavour all summer that makes Vancouver seem like a ghost-town in comparison, with street fairs and celebrants out in swarms seemingly every night. It was a great privilege to be there at all, especially since I expected not to even get into the Fringe up until the last minute. If I had not been accepted I would have saved myself the entry fee, which I didn't even half make up in ticket sales, but I would have missed out on the communalism of the experience, another one of those cases where money is a poor measure of value.
I am now in Ottawa, where I have retreated to lick my wounds and regroup for the Toronto Fringe starting next week. I am staying with a good friend in a quiet apartment where I can sort out my promotions and administration for the upcoming festivals, especially Edinburgh, which looms closer on the horizon. My setbacks so far are just basic training for the mother of all Fringes, and I can only hope the lessons I am learning along the way will prepare me.
In Toronto I will have no excuses for poor sales, since I am in my own country, in a city that speaks my own language, with my listing in the program, and adequate time to get the word out. Towards that, if any of you have any friends or family in Toronto, I would be glad if you could put me in touch or pass on an invitation.
Recent events have collectively threatened to derail my optimism, but I see such trials as par for the course on a mad adventure such as this: around the world in 150 days, ballooning on my own hot air. I can't take it personally or get discouraged, at least not for long; my livelihood depends on it. At the very least, there's nothing like hardship to get one's pen moving:
I'm energetic
when I take centre stage like a generator
Venerated like a
sage, enraged like a demonstrator
Crazed with
indignation 'cause my cause is so just
I'm dedicated to
makin' crowds applaud and go nuts
And my shows are
sensational, but nobody shows up
And so my temptation is to just stop and close up
Shop and go back
to composing dope cuts...
I hope you are all experiencing personal triumphs of your own, or at least facing trials with good faith.
Yours,
baba