In its 20-year lifespan, the Hamilton Fringe Festival has grown exponentially and is now a staple on the city’s calendar of events, says one of the festival’s organizers.
The 12-day event kicks off on Wednesday evening, running until July 28.
When the festival began in 2003, five venues around the city hosted performances. One year, 2006, had as few as three venues signed on, says Christopher Stanton, executive director of Hamilton Festival Theatre Company.
This year, 12 venues around the city are hosting a total of 43 indoor shows and 17 outdoor events outside of the main hub at Theatre Aquarius.
There are also free shows as part of Fringe on the Streets, a new initiative which will see a show start at Ferguson Station, with different performances along a 90-minute route that goes right through downtown Hamilton. The walking tour culminates at Tivoli in the Square on James Street with a dance finale.
“There’s plays, there’s comedy, there’s improv, there’s sketch, there’s dance, there’s music, there’s family stuff — there really is something for everybody,” Stanton said.
“It’s like a theatre festival for those folks who are theatre-curious but haven’t necessarily dived in yet.”
Stanton said the reception from Hamilton audiences has been “incredible” over the years.
Audiences and the community of artists that the Fringe supports have “grown incrementally” every year, too, he added.
“It’s been just wonderful… It’s so clear that people are excited about this,” he said.
“Every year more people kind of get to understand what the festival is about and what we’re providing the city and it’s awesome to just watch it grow, year after year.”
Community heard ‘the call’ to help: festival director
The artists range, too, as the shows are “chosen by lottery randomly,” Stanton said.
“You’ll see a group of students that have just graduated from McMaster’s theatre [program] that are eager to try something,” he said. “You’ll see people that have been in the industry for 30 years who want to try something a little more experimental, and you’ll see folks that are tax accountants [who’ve] got a play that’s tucked away in the corner of their night stand and they’ve just been dying to do it.”
Stanton noted that “things are a bit tight in terms of government funding” in the post-lockdown era, but “the community is incredibly supportive.
“They’ve heard the call of helping us out and making sure that we’re being supported. And I think the thing to celebrate this year is just the resilience of the performing arts here in Hamilton.”
As the festival kicks off, CBC Hamilton spoke to a handful of performers who are bringing their shows to life over the next week or so — showcasing the wide range of themes and formats performances offer.
The full program is available on the festival website.
The Haters Tour
Surer Qaly Deria and Sam Sferrazza developed and wrote The Haters Tour — a parody of corporate sensitivity training. In it they both play heightened versions of themselves as comedians who have taken a corporate job in HR to do sensitivity training.
“The idea is that we’re going to all these small towns that have issues with hate crimes based on the latest statistics, and we’re there to sort of educate the public,” Sferrazza told CBC Hamilton.
“The whole presentation is a little more theatrical than your usual sensitivity training and our characters come to find out that the government body that employs us kind of has different ethics, different morals and beliefs than we do.”
Sferrazza — a comedian from Toronto — has been doing stand up for about eight years now but is venturing into theatre writing and performing for the first time.
Sferrazza and Deria both said anyone who laughs really loud, anyone has had to sit through very boring surface-level, mind numbing sensitivity training and people who are into satire should come to the show.
“I think it’s going to be a really fun show, a really accessible show. It’s not going be your stuffy, theatre-going kind of thing. We’re gonna make it fun. Our characters make it fun. We’re both stand up comedians by trade, so it’s gonna be a really funny riot,” Sferrazza said.
Ushindi: When We Are Welcome
Paula Grove, director of Usindi: When We are Welcome, says this show features eight women — all newcomers to Canada who now live in Hamilton.
“[Ushindi], which is a Swahili word, means victory, and it was coined by one of the women,” Grove said.
“It is about their experiences coming to Canada as newcomers, specifically refugees, and they have arrived in large numbers in the last couple of years for a number of reasons… In all those cases, they end up coming through the airport and then have nowhere to go and their odyssey begins,” Grove said.
“As the women share in the play, back home they’re surrounded by elders and aunties who helped to prescribe their life, keep them protected, guide them, give them advice. And all of a sudden they find themselves here without all of that and the challenge begins.”
Mary Njeri Ndiritu, one of the cast members, said telling their stories and getting them to be understood has pushed most of the women.
Ndiritu said life in Canada has “been full of ups and downs, but getting people to help here and there has been a big thing for everybody here.”
Anybody who has had an experience of being an immigrant or a refugee will love it.– Paula Grove, director, Ushindi: When We Are Welcome
She said the women, who reside at the YWCA in Hamilton, part of the Transitional Living program, “rely on people who help us to show us the way because it’s a new land. We know nobody, most of us, so it’s been a wild experience, but all-in-all, bittersweet. But we just take it a day at a time.
“We have real issues and real trauma, some of us, and so it would be nice for people to see us in a different light.”
Grove said another “really special” thing about the play is that the women share their music — “the songs that keep them going, that uplift them.”
Most of the women are from Kenya, with one from Zimbabwe.
Grove said people should see the show “to be inspired and to be uplifted.”
Also, people who are interested in 2SLGBTQ+ rights, should see it, because some of the women fled to Canada because of persecution back home over their sexuality, Grove said.
“Anybody who has had an experience of being an immigrant or a refugee will love it,” she added.
Death of a Starman
Death of a Starman is a play about a washed up astrologer who’s given 48 hours to repay his debts to mobsters.
Kay Komizara, who is from B.C., directs and stage manages the play, and is also one of the writers. It features, as the sole actor, Zaid Bustami in a dozen self-absorbed characters.
Komizara told CBC Hamilton the show is now on a roadshow around Canada, with Hamilton Fringe being its second stop, after Toronto.
“Our show is a very fast-paced kind of dramatic action comedy,” Komizara said.
“This play is chock full of astrology… we try to play a little bit of both sides, so people who hate or love astrology, feel strongly about it [should see it]. The show is also for people who want something very stimulating … and people who want to see something with a political edge to it.”
Death of a Starman follows the actor’s descent into madness, and exposes the rising trend of toxic male grifter culture. The multimedia show also features puppets and video and original music recorded just for the play to complement the action, Komizara said.