From Press Release:

Through a guided tour in Kensington Market, help the emerging graffiti artist, Cabiria, as she creates her first piece: a public tribute to her childhood friend, Stacy, who went missing years ago.

This is a play about the stories we tell to gloss over uncomfortable truths, difficult pasts, and troublesome encounters. The play questions how and why we turn a blind eye to what happens all around us?

This is the third Fringe show that Colleen Osborn and Cassandra Silver have collaborated on. Fringe allows artists to develop bold ideas that wouldn’t fly in a conventional theatrical production. This time around we’re experimenting in Colleen’s Kensington neighbourhood with a promenade show. A moving art piece. Like graffiti, this site-specific show is ephemeral. It would be impossible to replicate this show in a future remount: construction will be completed and garage doors will have new graffiti-tags. All of these elements are as temporary as the show itself.

Details

• Sweet Girl Shrapnel plays at 29 Lippincott Street. (29 Lippincott St.)
• Tickets are $13, including a $2 service charge. The festival also offers a range of money-saving passes and discounts for serious Fringers.
• Tickets can be purchased online, by telephone (416-966-1062), from the Festival Box Office at Scadding Court (707 Dundas St. W.), and — if any remain — from the venue’s box office starting one hour before curtain.
• Content Warnings: Sexual content; Mature language; Audience participation; Outdoors; Walking tour.
• The Fringe Festival considers this venue to be wheelchair-accessible.
• Be aware that Fringe performances always start exactly on time, and that latecomers are never admitted.

Performances

• Wednesday July 4th, 6:45 pm
• Wednesday July 4th, 8:00 pm
• Thursday July 5th, 6:45 pm
• Thursday July 5th, 8:00 pm
• Friday July 6th, 6:45 pm
• Friday July 6th, 8:00 pm
• Saturday July 7th, 6:45 pm
• Saturday July 7th, 8:00 pm
• Monday July 9th, 6:45 pm
• Monday July 9th, 8:00 pm
• Tuesday July 10th, 6:45 pm
• Tuesday July 10th, 8:00 pm
• Thursday July 12th, 6:45 pm
• Thursday July 12th, 8:00 pm
• Friday July 13th, 6:45 pm
• Friday July 13th, 8:00 pm

Photo 1 taken by Colleen Osborn. Xanath Fuentes Natanson (Actor: Cabiria).

From Press Release:

You know they say everyone has got a novel in them?

Well, you know what it’s called, that novel we’ve all got in us?

I, IDIOT

With verbal and physical buffoonery, Jem Rolls cartoons the personal and the universal in his own intercontinental epic of blundering idiocy.

33, 333 muck-ups. And counting.

He has received 40+ ***** reviews and 200+ ****.

Jem’s last show: “The Inventor Of All Things” received FIVE STAR REVIEWS from CBC, the Winnipeg Free Press, the Edmonton Journal and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix

so this year a suspiciously self-deprecating individual boasts

a whole new genre of performance

yes a whole new genre

VERBAL BOUFFON

for it’s a lyrical cartoonery

when, with verbal and bodily buffoonery,

Jem Rolls explores the comic universality

in his own ungrand epic of ungrand

stupidity

I, IDIOT

after a ragingly successful self-reinvention as storyteller

in his last show THE INVENTOR OF ALL THINGS,

itself a bigsized risk… [the kind of comedy which ends in Hiroshima, anyone?]

Jem could perhaps have ploughed a similar and now safer furrow

instead he continues dangling himself over the edge of risk

on a slender branch of poetically adulterated silliness

above a bottomless lake of ever possible Fringe failure

for, unfortunately, he been infected by the clown virus

has learnt more from the clowns on the Fringe Tour than from anyone else

Jonno Katz, Chris Gibbs, Red Bastard and more

and so is transmogrifying himself again, same but different

into a more physically performative poet than any poet he has ever seen

with poems, song, monologues, bad jokes, good jokes, knock-knock jokes, neologisms, lousy lipsyncing, and an unwise but contractually obligated first foray into interpretive dance

including… an unsightly piece of savage introspection: “HOLD STILL JEM, I‘M GOING IN”

a wilful rejection of truth knowledge language and history, “NOTHING IS TRUE BUT SOME THINGS ARE MORE TRUE THAN OTHERS”

Photo of Jem Rolls by Jem Rolls.

From Press Release

Five playwrights were commissioned to create new work to be performed in a kitchen in Leslieville to an audience busy
munching on snacks served up by the cast. The writers were assigned a unique flavour, a time limit, a cast size limit, and
were encouraged to include the use of direct address and create characters with no appearance based descriptions, to
allow for casting of any gender, age range, ethnicity, etc. The pieces they created are strange, powerful meditations on
love, betrayal, grief and revenge. They are magical, delicious and proudly queer.

In the first play Siren, by award-winning playwright Natalie Kaye (Mood Swings, Fringe 2016), a scullery maid makes
dinner and rails against the constraints of her oppressive employment, vowing to storm the seas as a blood-thirsty pirate.
She will serve the audience a deliciously salty summer gazpacho.

The salad course, Bitter Hearts, debates the ethics of veganism while relishing the inescapable bitterness of first love’s
betrayal. The main course, Savour, directed by Sandra Cardinal (Sizzle & Spin, Fringe 2015) and starring Fringe veteran and
CAEA member Andrea Irwin (False Start, Fringe 2016 & Hogtown, 2017), Kelly-Marie McKenna (If We Were Birds, York U),
and Mladen Obradović (A Flea in Her Ear, Fringe 2017), is a delectable romance about yearning, alienation, magic and
carpe diem.

The final piece is A Trifle, written by award-winning playwright Nina Kaye (Death Meets Harlequin, Fringe 2017) and
directed by Collette Radau (Midnight Toronto, Rhubarb 2017). This dessert course, about new love, cake, and how to
connect, is a sweet, but not too saccharine, way to end the night.

With 17 members in the production team, many of whom are returning to Fringe, and only 30 seats in our cozy kitchen
each night, these tickets are sure to sell quickly so book now!

Details

• Kitchen Sink Drama plays at the Ralph Thornton Community Centre. (765 Queen St. E.)
• Tickets are $13, including a $2 service charge. The festival also offers a range of money-saving passes and discounts for serious Fringers.
• Tickets can be purchased online, by telephone (416-966-1062), from the Festival Box Office at Scadding Court (707 Dundas St. W.), and — if any remain — from the venue’s box office starting one hour before curtain.
• Content Warnings: Mature language; Sexual content; Audience participation.
• The Fringe Festival considers this venue to be wheelchair-accessible.
• Be aware that Fringe performances always start exactly on time, and that latecomers are never admitted.

Performances

• Wednesday July 4th, 7:30 pm
• Thursday July 5th, 7:30 pm
• Friday July 6th, 7:30 pm
• Saturday July 7th, 7:30 pm
• Monday July 9th, 7:30 pm
• Tuesday July 10th, 7:30 pm
• Wednesday July 11th, 7:30 pm
• Thursday July 12th, 7:30 pm
• Friday July 13th, 7:30 pm
• Saturday July 14th, 7:30 pm

Photo by Nina Kaye.

From Press Release

Written by Gillian Bartolucci, under the direction of Second City alumna, Carly Heffernan, Full Body Pull is a one person play about the ever-evolving relationship that comedian Gillian Bartolucci has with her mother; a woman who had kids, but is much more than a parent. Through a collection of sketches and storytelling Gillian explores growing up alongside a grown-up who is also growing up.

Gillian Bartolucci is a member of the Canadian Comedy Award-winning sketch collective The Sketchersons, as well as sketch quartet Panaca (Top 10 Comedy Shows of 2015, NOW Magazine & Torontoist). She has performed solo in the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival and was featured in the Best of the Fest Showcase at the Montreal Sketch Comedy Festival. In 2017 Gillian also performed in the JFL42 New Faces: Characters Showcase.

Material for Full Body Pull was developed through writing, childhood, and pinot grigio.

Details

• Full Body Pull plays at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace. (16 Ryerson Ave.)
• Tickets are $13, including a $2 service charge. The festival also offers a range of money-saving passes and discounts for serious Fringers.
• Tickets can be purchased online, by telephone (416-966-1062), from the Festival Box Office at Scadding Court (707 Dundas St. W.), and — if any remain — from the venue’s box office starting one hour before curtain.
• Content Warnings: Mature language; Audience participation.
• This venue is wheelchair-accessible. Accessible seating is in the front row.
• Be aware that Fringe performances always start exactly on time, and that latecomers are never admitted.

Performances

• Thursday July 5th, 6:00 pm
• Friday July 6th, 3:00 pm
• Sunday July 8th, 8:00 pm
• Monday July 9th, 9:15 pm
• Tuesday July 10th, 5:00 pm
• Wednesday July 11th, 10:00 pm
• Friday July 13th, 7:00 pm
• Saturday July 14th, 1:00 pm

Marshall Lorenzo

From Press Release

Having recently appeared in Imposters on Bravo, In Contempt on BET, and in the recurring role of “Sketchy-Looking Dude” on CBC’s Kim’s Convenience, Just For Laughs Comedy Award nominee Kris Hagen trades in screen time for a chance to bring his original music, writing and direction to the stage in Lighters in the Air.

A musician named Leo returns to his former hangout, The Empty, a dive bar where the mic is always open. With the help of old friends, a lost love, and The Empty’s newest off-beat barflies, Leo rediscovers his passion for the music he left behind. A play about artistic integrity, unfulfilled expectations, and an uncertain future.

Lighters in the Air will feature original songs by Hagen as well as nightly guest performances by some of the brightest talent in the Toronto music and comedy scenes, including Laura Tremblay (Jukebox Hero: The Musical; Stage West Calgary’s Legally Blonde: The Musical), Ben Beauchemin (Kim’s Convenience, Saving Hope), Ted Morris (Yuk Yuk’s, Just for Laughs, Sirius XM), and more!

Details

• Lighters in the Air plays at the Monarch Tavern. (12 Clinton St.)
• Tickets are $13, including a $2 service charge. The festival also offers a range of money-saving passes and discounts for serious Fringers.
• Tickets can be purchased online, by telephone (416-966-1062), from the Festival Box Office at Scadding Court (707 Dundas St. W.), and — if any remain — from the venue’s box office starting one hour before curtain.
• Content Warnings: Mature language; Unconventional venue.
• The Fringe Festival considers this venue to be wheelchair-accessible.
• Be aware that Fringe performances always start exactly on time, and that latecomers are never admitted.

Performances

• Wednesday July 4th, 8:00 pm
• Thursday July 5th, 8:00 pm
• Friday July 6th, 6:00 pm
• Saturday July 7th, 7:00 pm
• Sunday July 8th, 7:00 pm
• Tuesday July 10th, 8:00 pm
• Wednesday July 11th, 6:00 pm
• Thursday July 12th, 6:00 pm
• Friday July 13th, 7:00 pm
• Saturday July 14th, 3:00 pm
• Sunday July 15th, 7:00 pm

Photo by Sarah Delignies