Fringe Fest

This year I'm in the Victoria Fringe with my solo improv show, Photo Booth. It's a simple enough concept, I improvise four characters based on faces/poses made by the audience. There's also some cool flashing light and freezing effects to give the show a photo-booth feel.  I know, perfect in its simplicity. It's less crass then last year's Dave Morris is an Asshole. In that show, I asked for the worst things people have done and wove them together into one story about an asshole (which could have been anyone, really). Both shows are fun in their own way. 

These two shows, though very different in concept,  have one thing in common. Neither started from a place of improv or form, both shows began as concepts, and from their concept a show was formed.  This is a little different then most improvisation you'll see. Most improv is presenting  forms/games/structures, with specific people doing them. A group learns The Harold or a Tap-Out or make up some game called "somegame" and that becomes what their group does. They are defined by the form (or free form) they do, and not the reason, or concept, behind doing it. 

But why do improvisers do this?

It's quite simple really: Improvisation is not a product. It's not a thing to sell to someone. Telling someone to see improv is like telling them to go see "movie" or telling someone they should really check out "book." Improv is a process. It is a way of doing something. So most groups end up treating the form they do as a product, and up until recently, I've always treated myself as the product. "Come see Dave Morris improvise." It's not an improv show, it's a Dave Morris show. Which is why my shows were always called Dave Morris is a BLANK. Well, not anymore. Now the concept is my product. Thus this year's title: Photo Booth.

Having a concept instead of just a form or person as a product opens the show up to a larger audience. Take Photo Booth for instance. It isn't just a show for people who like improv or Dave Morris, it's also for people who love photo booths. For people who love capturing a once- in-a-lifetime moment with friends. People who are sad to see shopping malls adopt the digital photo booth and toss out the old-fashioned film booth. This show is for people who love the you-only-get-one-shot mentality that is the magic of not only photo booths, but improvisation itself. 

Somehow, a years worth of work and play always gets crammed into two-and-a-half months of summer. 

I begin summer working 10-hour days as a puppeteer. I sit in a dark warehouse on the set for a children's TV Series called Tiga Talk.  There are three puppets - a wolf, a goose and a gopher. I'm the gopher. I'm a gopher with a Miss Piggy complex: chubby, fuzzy, but damned if I don't look good in a tiara, tutu and a moustache.  On the set I eat free catered food, hang out with adorable children and laugh with the other puppeteers. These guys bring Nerd up to a whole new level of Amazing. I speak all day in the voice of a gopher, and I rarely see the sun.   This is July. 

After four weeks in puppet-world I hop on a red-eye flight to Toronto.  I rehearse, remix, and rebuild the show Pretty Little Instincts for the SummerWorks Festival. We dance outdoors in the grassy moat on the walls of an old Historic Fort tucked away in downtown Toronto, sharing stage space with the bats and the gophers and the...skunks. They frolic around the dancers in their matching black and white. Performing in the show, I'm a white-painted red-maned woman at a post-apocalyptic mad-hatter's tea party. We dance barefoot in the grass, tip-toeing around mothballs we've left in corners to keep away the skunks. This is Early August.

I fly back to the Island. Kathleen Greenfield and I begin building Little Orange Man for the Victoria Fringe.  I'm now twelve years old.   I play Kitt the Kinder-Whisperer. Kitt's world view is formed as much out of her grandfather's gruesome folktales as of Google and quantum theory. "Kitt's not someone you'd want your kid to have a playdate with," wrote the Calgary Herald, "she's the sort of girl that director Terry Gilliam might have dreamed up."  As Kitt, I am beginning a massive dream experiment -- which requires access to the audience's subconscious.  I'm looking for strangers online to take part in this experiment.  I'm losing the one I love most and I'm fighting. Hard. I sing. I'm playing with my food as the epic battle unfolds between celery and romaine. This is Late August.  

We open this Friday if you want to join the experiment.  

Little Orange Man - Opening Friday August 26th