More Fringe-y, diverse and interactive – it’s Toronto’s 2021 Digital Fringe Festival!

We Torontonians have missed The Fringe. 

Whatever else we have managed to adjust to during the pandemic, we have not reconciled ourselves to the gaping hole in our collective experience where anticipation should be percolating for a plethora of diverse contemporary theatrical works. The Toronto Fringe Festival is a multi-sensory staple of the Toronto summer, which manifests its best self when we’re lining up in the heat or rain, chatting with the volunteers, delighting in unexpected new performances, perspectives and talent – and enjoying a post-show drink on the patio.  

So despite the continuing pandemic, cancelling the 2021 Fringe was never an option for the organizational team led by Executive Director Lucy Eveleigh. “We’re not the sort of team that would do that,” maintains Eveleigh, chatting over Zoom from London, England. “Last year, we thought about that at one moment, and then we said, ‘no, we have to do something’. And the fact is that when we held the digital lottery, we had over 230 applicants.” The large number surprised her. “I thought, ‘does anybody even want to create digital work right now?’” Yes, they did: there was clear excitement to create theatrical experience in the digital space. 

When it came to 2021, “we couldn’t have not done something. I think the digital program that we have and the way that the on-demand is set up – where every company has their own show page – will really feel Fringe-y.” The Digital Fringe Festival boasts 56 shows by artists from around the world, which were programmed by a lottery draw this past spring. And this year, Toronto Fringe reserved 50% of the digital lottery slots for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) artists – a change that ensures more representation across the festival and will be carried forward to future festival planning. 

One of the most “Fringe-y” things the team has created for the Digital Fringe Festival is a virtual patio that conjures Postscript, the patio usually found at the Fringe epicenter at Dundas and Bathurst Streets. Eveleigh describes the gather.town platform as a Zoom Room-like environment – except that it is set up like the patio with a mini-Steam Whistle truck and tables for creating avatars and sitting and playing games with patrons or meeting Fringe artists. “It is the social space where people can go and talk and gather; and we’re really hoping that people will join us there. We’re probably going to do the awards night out of the patio space on the final night of the festival on July 31st as well. We’ve got volunteers that will be at the entrance like they would normally be in real life, and we’ll meet you and take you around.” In addition, there are great features “like show posters which you can click on, and that’ll take you directly to the show. And there’s a big, scavenger type hunt with the opportunity to win prizes. So there’s lots happening that we hope will be part of the community way of doing stuff.” Of course, “social media will also help people to talk about the shows they have seen and what they want to go see, and exchange opinions about what they have seen.” 

Postscript Live(stream) events – which are free of charge and offer Auto-Transcribed Captioning – include Opening and Closing Night parties and Fringe Artist Cabaret Night hosted by Alan Shane Lewis on Monday July 26. On Friday July 30th, the Fringe has also partnered with the Unknown Comedy Club, which will be run by a comedian in Montreal and a comedian in Toronto. The event featuring headliner Nick Reynoldson, Zabrina Douglas, Hannah Lawrence, Daniel Woodrow, and host Rodney Ramsey takes place at 8:00 pm. Earlier that day, a Teen Fringe performance will be streamed to Facebook. 

The festival will be the third one that Eveleigh and her team have presented online. Their mission is “elevating it from last year” while building on the success of January’s much smaller Next Stage Festival. The most important lesson is the sheer scope of what is possible in a digital festival – and how God is in the details: “You have to be careful because to do it really, really well takes a lot of time. The Fringe has not slowed down. If anything, we’ve been busier despite not doing a regular festival. Because we prioritize access, all of our shows have to be watched and approved and captions created. So it takes time: the digital world takes time. In the first year, uploading all the videos and all of that sort of stuff just took a lot longer, so we knew much more going in this time: how much that took, and how it was an opportunity for us to educate our artists, as we went.” 

Artists in this year’s festival were provided great clarity on how to submit their work, how to do what they’re doing, and what the audience might look like. For example, The Fringe’s presentation of the interactive Morro and Jasp Make Yourself Show in January proved to be a huge hit. “There is an appetite for this,” Eveleigh notes. “I think there’s an audience out there that actually really welcomes this, whether it’s from a global point of view – where people can connect across the world – or an accessibility point of view, where people are more comfortable watching from their own homes.” In addition to learning about the practical aspects of creating a digital festival, the team has seen firsthand how much audiences love the Fringe and are ready to support the artists and be a part of it.  So she is bullish about the festival: “we’re excited about offering more shows and more capabilities for the money to get directly back to the artists for their shows.”

For Eveleigh, the best thing about Fringe has always been that there’s so much to choose from. “Depending on how much your capacity is for seeing stuff right now, if you’re going to see six, some might be shows that you recognize – like ‘this is really interesting’ – but then you choose something else – like ‘I would not think to watch this’. She encourages audiences to “take a chance”: “There’s funny stuff happening and serious stuff and there’s musicals. Take a little bit of a leap, and surprise yourself with what you might find.” The Fringe website helps audiences to filter their search through various categories, including the opportunity to select shows by BIPOC artists. “When we made the decision that we had to reserve 50% of slots for creators from BIPOC communities, making sure that people can see that – and access that – was  important to us.” There are many ways to choose, including a random show generator button: “It’s really cool and fun. It just brings up a random show. I love stuff like that because sometimes, even on a digital platform, it can  feel overwhelming. To be able to search according to your criteria is important to us. If you feel like, ‘I have no idea. Just give me something’, it’s a place to start.”

So what are a few examples of the 65 shows on offer? Selections from Fringing On Demand include: At The End of the Day (Bustle & Beast/Brenda Kamino); Bannock Republic (The Centre for Indigenous Theatre/Kenneth T. Williams); Broken Hearted Girl (She’s So Vyle/Selena Vyle); Dance of Torn Paper (Nowadays Theatre/Mohammad Yaghoubi); Deaf Spirit Theatre: ComMUTE (Deaf Spirit Theatre/Elizabeth Morris, Juan Jaramillo, Robert Bhola, Theresa Upton, Susan Oram, Michael T. Cyr, Marc Heyez); The Incredible Adventures of That Nice Canajun Gurl (Taborah Johnson); One of the Good Ones (Yaw Attuah); Orange Chicken: A Sketch Show (Sumeeta Farrukh, Shreya Jha, Wilfred Moeschter, Nam Nguyen, Nightingale Nguyen,Gabby Noga). 

Kidsfest, a Fringe tradition, can also be accessed on demand. This year’s children’s programming was born of considered discussions about curation and scale. Eveleigh and KidsFest Coordinator Kelly Winger could see ample possibilities for online interactivity but were conscious that “it’s also July, and the kids will have been online for the last however many years, it feels like. They’re probably just going to want to go outside for the most part. Kids don’t need any more screen time, and that’s all we can offer them right now. So we hope people will show up and participate, and then go and do their thing.” With this in mind, Kidsfest includes 6 pre-recorded pieces of kids programming: dougiEworld Real Food Puppet Theatre (Douglas Hurst and Rebecca Ananda); Ganapati Stories (Jackson Nair); Nookie and The Big Wind (Tanya Leblanc); To Bee or Not To Bee (Jonathan Mirin and Godeliève Richard); Ship-Shape! (Diana Franz); and The Shoestring Magic Flute (Greg Robic and Lawrence Cotton). The shows range from 30 to 60 minutes which means “there’s a little bit of something for those kids that want to still have a little Fringe-y moment, whether you watch it before you get to bed or something later on when the sun’s gone in.” And each is accompanied by free workshops and activities for various ages in the Digital KidsFest Club. 

For those who miss watching shows in real time, 3 Fringe Primetime shows will scratch that itch with live, appointment-viewing, digital theatre experiences that include pre- and post-show lobby chats and social time. The shows are: winner of the Digital New Play Contest My Korean Canadian Friend by Ngọc Hân (Rebecca) Trần; winner of the Digital Adams Prize for Musical Theatre As You Lay Sleeping by Amelia Izmanki; and Digital 24 Hour Playwriting Contest winner Empty by Natalie Axon. This year’s Fringe also brings opportunities for a new crop of young reviewers through an initiative that has grown to include online training in theatre criticism, the opportunity for publication of reviews, and an honorarium through the John Caplan Legacy Fund. “That’s a new wave of new voices which we need!” smiles Eveleigh.

For some, this year’s Digital Fringe Festival will be a “stopgap” on the road to getting back together in real life. “I’m obviously looking forward to when we can all be in a room again together,” Eveleigh admits. Still, she hopes that people will log on and support the artists because they are truly doing incredible work. “I’m so proud of what the team has put together, and the artists have put together, to create this digital space. And remember: all the money from ticket sales and passes goes directly to the presenting artists. So please come and join us this year!”

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2021