Fringe After Dark Series

Bringing people together

June 1, 2011, and the Montreal Fringe Festival has begun. “First set of tickets of the festival officially on sale at the venue box office!” read a tweet from @fringemtl, “FRINGE IS ON!” And with that different staffers were tweeting about some of the different shows that opened tonight, with a ticket sale countdown for something called Strip Spelling Bee, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Chat Perdu Productions is a Montreal-Toronto outfit, and Strip Spelling Bee is just one among the long list of events they lay claim to. It’s a part of the Fringe After Dark series, with a different show each night, after dark, when the veil between the stage and the audience is at its thinnest, and anything can happen. Strip Spelling Bee kicked it off, and passes the baton to Slow Dance Night!, Hair Nation Party, Grindhouse Wednesdays on a Sunday, and Crowd Karaoke!, to name but a few.

Slowdance Night!, also by Chat Perdu, takes you back to another time, to the dance hall era, when you had a dance card, hopefully filled, and you were never without a partner. It’s all slow songs, just like the last bit of a high school dance. You could have a new partner with every song, or sidle up to a “designated dancer,” if you’re a little on the shy side.

Hair Nation Party, by Dee J Twisted, is not about the late 1960s, but the mid-1980s, when hair metal, and hair, was big. It comes with an air guitar competition, and costumes are, of course, encouraged.

Grindhouse Wednesdays on a Sunday is a fundraiser for Montreal’s Head and Hands, a drop-in centre for at-risk youth in Montreal’s Notre Dame de Grace district. The show, as the name implies, includes the screening of an exploitation film, with a bit of improvisational theatre to kick it off, courtesy Montreal Improv. And while they usually hold “Grindhouse Wednesdays” on Wednesdays, for the Fringe their holding their “Grindhouse Wednesday” on a Sunday.

And then, for the Glee fan or Idol star in all of us, Chat Perdu pops in again for Crowd Karaoke! (I don’t know why all of their titles have exclamation points, unless they want you to shout the names of their shows out loud), bringing people, strangers and friends, together to sing karaoke.

That’s just to get you through the week. And there’s plenty more where that came from. Watch this space for details, and check here for show times, venues, and ticket prices.

Bon Fringe!

Photo by montrealfringe.ca

Grindhouse Wednesdays on a Sunday

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Photo by montrealfringe.ca