by AMY BARRATT

Zack Winters (aka Anders Yates) and Sweet Sweet Jimmy Priest (aka Dan Jeannote) were all over the Fringe this year, hosting The 13th Hour, the late-night talk show at the Fringe Club, as well as the Fringe-for-all and the Frankie Awards. Oh, and they were also in improv sketch show Uncalled For 4: Forever!

In between 11-second dance parties, the guys had the crowd in the beleaguered beer tent at Sunday night’s Frankies calling out, “We love you condos!” at the top of their lungs. Despite all of this raucous hilarity, the riot cops failed to appear; the little old lady in the flannel shirt, however, was making some Fringe sissy-boys nervous.

Awards-wise, excitement was up on the French side, with the addition of several new awards, and down on the English, with the conspicuous absence of a Just for Laughs Best Comedy award. The simple explanation for JFL’s absence is that they picked up two shows last year, one of which, Man 1 Bank 0, is in their festival this year (July 13–23 at Centaur). It remains to be seen whether the Best Comedy award will be back in the future.

Anyway, that left most of the excitement to be generated by Centaur Theatre’s Best English Production award. Gordon McCall did his darndest, joking around with the Never Surrender guys who, having titled their show Centaur! Centaur! Centaur!, were expecting to win. McCall, head of a seven-member jury, read out a short-list of 10 plays before getting to the winner and two runners-up.

The prize, a spot in Centaur’s Wildside festival in January 2007, went to Living Shadows: A Story of Mary Pickford, presented by Edmonton’s By the Clock Productions. First and second runners up were Chandeleirva, from Toronto’s MerryGoRound Productions, and Real Time, by Ribbit Productions, again from the Fringe capital of Canada, Edmonton.

Chapters bookstore gave out Best Text awards for English and French texts this year. Gift certificates went to Jennifer Kierans for Departure Lounge, and Michel Gatignol for Portalaphrapon.

Studio 303 presented a Best Young Choreographer award to Milan Gervais, for “Lulu,” one of the pieces in Le sixième s’est envolé.

Juste pour rire presented the first-ever award for Best Francophone Comedy to Les Goubéens, a late addition sketch comedy duo from France. TOHU gave out a Prix du public, based on audience feedback as reflected in both handwritten and online “buzz.” That award went to Nathalie Claude for her dance piece Cerveau fêlé 101. The Cirque du soleil gave its award for best francophone creation to Dominique Leroux’s Terrain de jeux pour marionettes.

Finally, the Spirit of the Fringe, for the company that basically “fringes” the best, went to InFluxdance, from Boston, who get a free spot in next year’s fest.

Preliminary numbers from the Fringe indicate that indoor attendance (meaning all shows you have to pay to get into) was up about 12 per cent. Outdoor attendance—rather a misnomer this year as it includes all free shows that took place at the indoor Fringe Club—was down about 19 per cent. (Free events are crucial to Fringe survival because of the beer revenues they generate.) Producer Jeremy Hechtman attributes the drop in numbers to two factors: the restrictions on live music during the week imposed by the city, and the cold, rainy first weekend. Renting the Academy club definitely increased the Fringe’s expenses, but “without the club, attendance at free events would have been down by 50 per cent,” says Hechtman.

The Fringe may be over, but...

The infringement festival continues this weekend. Don’t miss Four One-Legged Men, June 23–24, at Barfly. Check out the schedule at www.infringementfestival.com for more.

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