Category: The Last Man on Earth

Our first few days in Calgary were a little shocking after the wildness of Winnipeg. Calgary Fringe is much smaller than Winnipeg, and our first few audiences were quite small. We are slowly building though, and I think that by the end we will be doing very well. We just have to work the promotion of the show. So, today, we are going out to flyer a bunch of lineups before our 9pm show tonight. After the show, a group of us are off to Edmonton to go to the media launch there, in the hopes of gaining some advance press in Edmonton tomorrow. Then we come back for another 9pm show tomorrow. It will be tiring, but we have the opportunity for it to be really great for us.

Although things have been really busy, I am missing a lot of people at home. But it won’t be too much longer before I see them again.

I’ll have more form the road soon.

What a long, glorious time this has been. For the last week and a bit, we have really not stopped at all. When we haven’t been performing, we have been doing promotion. But all that work has really paid off. Audiences have been great. We have had a lot of people see our show, and they have been incredibly enthusiastic. Lots of laughing, and thunderous applause, and a couple of standing ovations. It’s been great. And we get an additional show tomorrow, as we we named Best of Fest, which is like Toronto Fringe’s Patron’s Pick. So, at 2:45 tomorrow afternoon, we will perform the show an extra time.

The downside is that I am pretty exhausted. We have been out all day, every day. And we are all feeling the same. It’s a lot of work, and we are looking forward to the drive to Calgary on Monday, since we’ll be able to get a bit of a rest from fringe. That should be enough for us to recharge, and do it all again in a new city.

We arrived in Winnipeg on time with a bit of extra time before our tech rehearsal. In three hours at tech, we were able to focus lights, set up and do a run through (we didn’t think we would get a run through in, so that was a pleasant surprise). Yesterday we got out bearings, put up some posters and did a bit of postcarding.

Today is the big day: our first show is tonight at 9:30. In the meantime, this afternoon we are going to set up Penelope’s Pie Stand like we did in Montreal.

This Fringe is huge. A lot of people go to Fringe, and not just people who normally do theatre. There is a huge audience for Fringe here, and it’s a little hard to fathom. It’s like most of the city is excited for Fringe, which is very exciting.

Tonight, we perform, and we find out just how good our advanced buzz is.

Today we will arrive in Winnipeg. This evening we will load into the theatre and go through our tech. This is all very exciting.

The past couple days have been a blur. So much so, that I just realized that it hasn’t even been two days since my last post. Seems it’s hard to keep track of the days when you are spending 8 to 10 hours in a car.

The trip had been good so far, save for the fact that I’ve been having trouble sleeping at night, what with the unfamiliar beds and rooms. But I will land into a sleep schedule soon enough.

We are currently driving to Kenora, where we will stretch legs, have lunch, and switch drivers. Then it’s just a couple of hours to Winnipeg.

This is really happening!

I just realized that the last post I made was in the middle of the Montreal Fringe.  So, how did things end up?

We’re really happy with the buzz we were able to generate in Montreal.  Our audience for The Last Man on Earth grew consistently as the Fringe went on, and we got lots of positive feedback, both from the audience at the end of the show, people who stopped us at the Fringe Park, and in reviews.  By the last show, we sold out, and sold out to the point where we had to turn people away.  In the end, we were nominated for Best English Language production.  We didn’t win, but that didn’t matter so much; its a cliche, but we were honoured to be nominated.

Montreal was a great starting point for our tour, and we were happy to be a part of it.  Things will only grow from here.

It was also great to be in Montreal for an extended period and to see it less like a tourist and more like a resident might.  The city kept trying to convince me that I should fall in love with it, from the scenery (I’ve never seen more beautiful resdiential housing in a downtown area), to the parks that seem to be neighbourhood hubs, to the neighbourhoods themselves, which function as neighbourhoods.  It was very different from Toronto.

More exciting to me is the journey West, because I’ve been to Montreal before, but I’ve never been to Winnipeg, Calgary or Edmonton, so that’s really exciting.

Oh, and one more thing: I meant to post more often.  So, if you see a lack of posts after a few days once we head out on the Western leg of the tour, give me a poke on twitter to remind me to post.