By Nicole Gluckstern
It’s official, I’ve gone bi. Bi-coastally Fringe that is. The 18th annual Montreal Fringe Festival has begun, and I’m here to play my role. Like the San Francisco Fringe, of which I’m also a part, the Montreal Fringe offers an eclectic array of unjuried theatrical performances, from dance to drama, acrobatics to absurdities, spoken word to shadow puppetry. Unlike the SF Fringe however, Montreal is a major player in the Canadian Fringe Festival circuit, attracting a large variety of international performers, many of whom will spend the entire summer fringing on the road. It’s also one hell of a party. I’m not cheating on San Francisco, I reason. I’m broadening my horizons. If last year’s Montreal Fringe, my first, was but a dalliance, this year’s for real. While normally it’s fringe performers who do the touring, I figure that as a fringe technician, I shouldn’t have to get left out of the fun.
Fringe folk. Photo by Cindy Lopez.
And so it’s started. It’s humid and the air is redolent with cooking grease from nearby fry haven (heaven!), Patati Patata, as the Fringe kicks off in the Parc des Amèriques with a performance from local lo-fi band, The Unsettlers. My new favorite band! Whisky-soaked is such a cliche by now, so I’ll just say the lead vocals rasp purposfully somewhere between Tom Waits, Mark Lanegan, and the Pogues, while the band keeps the shipwrecked melodies trembling and swinging with a variety of duct-tape repaired instruments such as the accordian, the bowed bass, harmonium, trombone, clarinet, a kickdrum made of an industrial plastic garbage can, and a two-foot tall baby grand piano.