Edmonton : Features
It's Called Festival City For a Reason
By Jeremy Klaszus
Jun 1, 2008

 

It’s late August, and the wind blows with a chill reminiscent of a Prairie winter. Despite the cruel weather, a juggler at the Edmonton Fringe Festival still manages to draw a large crowd. As he prepares to juggle flaming batons, the wind whips raindrops against the smiling faces of children wearing colourful balloon hats.

“I’ll juggle, and then you’ll go nuts cheering,” he instructs, jokingly. The kids take the bait, clapping and laughing on cue.

Behind the stage, people duck indoors to get out of the rain and be entertained in a way that only these 11 days in August in the historic Old Strathcona district in the south of town can serve up… indoors and out.

Welcome to Edmonton, “Festival City” according to its tireless civic marketers. On most weekends during the summer months, there’s a festival happening in this blue-collar city, oilsands service centre and booming transportation hub. The Fringe, an unjuried theatre fest with more than a thousand performances over 11 days, is just one of many. There’s also a children’s festival, a street performers’ festival, an improv festival, a dragon boat festival, a multiculturalism festival, a jazz festival and a folk festival.

There’s even a beer festival.

“We just go one after the other, all summer long,” says Jack Little, executive director of Edmonton’s Heritage Festival—a weekend event renowned in the city for its tasty ethnic foods. “As an Edmontonian, I go to them all. You don’t have to go away from Edmonton to have a great vacation.”

 

LOCAL PRIDE, WHATEVER THE WEATHER

As the rain-pelted crowd at the Fringe stage demonstrates, Edmontonians are loyal to their festivals. Uncomfortable weather is actually a big reason there are so many of them in the city in the first place.

Winters in Edmonton are “so bloody cold,” says Karen Brown Fournell, general manager of Rapid Fire Theatre. “We’re looking for excuses that force us to get out there and sit outside.”

Improvaganza, Rapid Fire’s 11-day festival in June, happens indoors—in the Varscona Theatre on the Fringe grounds, in fact—but Brown Fournell is outside during the Fringe to check out new talent, chat it up with other theatre folks and enjoy the sun in the beer gardens. Once the snows melt in Edmonton, a winter’s worth of creative energy is unleashed on the city until the temperature drops again.

Things really get rolling with the Children’s Festival in St. Albert, a city of nearly 60,000 immediately northwest of Edmonton, and Improvaganza follows shortly afterwards.

“We’re one of the first ones in Edmonton to really kick things off,” says Brown Fournell. Rapid Fire brings improv teams from around the world to the Prairie city, and audiences eat it up.

“Edmonton gets to see some improv the way that they might see it if they went to Austria, or if they went to Atlanta,” she says.

 

STREET-SMART ART

Many trace the festival explosion back to 1980, when the Alberta government threw a whack of culture cash at Calgary and Edmonton to celebrate the province’s 75^th birthday.

“It was an amazing investment,” says Shelley Switzer, artistic producer of the Edmonton International Street Performer’s Festival.

Edmonton put its money towards festivals. Today, many of them—including the Fringe, the Heritage Festival, the Street Performer’s Festival and the St. Albert Children’s Festival—are in their mid-20s to early-30s, and they’ve shaped the city’s artistic culture and even the physical landscape.

Churchill Square, a sprawling outdoor public programming space across from Edmonton’s pyramid-shaped city hall, is an example. The site was redeveloped in 2004 with festivals in mind. The mostly concrete venue is ground zero for the street performers’ fest and also serves as a venue for The Works, an art and design festival. In 2009, the Art Gallery of Alberta will move into a new building on the square.

Musicians, acrobats and street comedians pack the space, and often roads bordering the square get shut down because the summer festival activity “spills off into the streets,” says Jim Taylor, executive director of the Edmonton Downtown Business Association.

In St. Albert, the children’s fest transforms the city’s small downtown along the Sturgeon River into a family playground where artists and children mingle together.

“It’s fantastic to watch the kids interact with the artists,” says Troy Funk, the festival’s artistic associate. The event attracts almost 60,000 people—the equivalent of St. Albert’s entire population. Not surprisingly, most festival-goers are locals. “We have some seriously addicted people,” says Switzer. It’s not unusual to hear about people going to see upwards of 30 shows during the 11 days of Fringe. Some people even book off work for the duration of the festival. Perhaps because it is a blue collar city—much more so than, say, Calgary, Edmonton’s skyscraping neighbour nearly 300 km to the south—the festivals have a strong come-as-you-are aesthetic.

“People in Edmonton come to these little hole-in-the-wall theatres and they support the stuff that’s being done at the $10 and $20 ticket level,” says Brown Fournell. “They go out and spend $10 to see live theatre instead of spending $10 to see the latest James Bond flick.”

The lack of pretense in the pursuit of a great time in the sunshine (if available) impressed Ontario actor Darryl Pring when he arrived in Edmonton to perform his one-man Fringe show, The Lemonade Maker.

“There’s a lot of cynicism in Toronto,” says Pring. “Here, people just want to enjoy themselves. There’s more of an attitude of ‘entertain me,’ instead of ‘impress me.’”

Of course, some of the theatre at the Fringe is as awful as some of it is amazing.

“It’s very much a place for creativity—for anybody to be able to create,” says Julian Mayne, the Fringe’s executive director. “You don’t have to be a proven artist to be part of this festival, but we also have some professionals that are very much part of it.”

Far from assuming “Fringers” will come to their shows, artists work admirably hard to get their attention. Performers might accost you while you’re waiting in line to buy lunch. A sales pitch from last year outside of a Strathcona eatery: “I know what you need! An Italian panini and a 2:30 p.m. showing of my show, [insert title here].”

And another ambush, while an audience emptied from an earlier show: “Come see my show. If you don’t like it, I’ll buy you a beer. Seriously.”

He probably would, too.

The Best of the Fests

Edmonton teems with art every summer. Here are eight great festivals not to miss this season

Improvaganza

June 18 – 28; rapidfiretheatre.com

Edmonton’s improv fest is one of the first of the season, and attracts talent from around the world while showcasing local greats. This year’s lineup includes performers such as renowned Slovenia improv group Narabov, as well as other acts from Atlanta, Vancouver and New Mexico.

The Works Art and Design Festival

June 20 – July 2; theworks.ab.ca

This visual arts festival fills downtown Edmonton’s Churchill Square with contemporary and traditional art. And it isn’t limited to exhibitions; there are lectures and other activities throughout.

The 2008 Leonard Cohen International Festival

July 23 – 28; leonardcohennights.org

Every two years, diehard Leonard Cohen fans from around the globe converge to pay tribute to the Canadian icon in music, art and film. (Past host cities include New York and Berlin.) Jann Arden and Serena Ryder headline the Edmonton fest’s gala tribute concert.

Edmonton Heritage Festival

August 2 – 4; heritage-festival.com

This three-day multicultural fest is a local favourite, turning lush William Hawrelak Park into a microcosm of diversity. The festival draws more than 300,000 people each year; festival-goers can sample foods from 60 pavilions representing 75 different cultures.

Edmonton International Jazz Festival

June 20 – 29; edmontonjazz.com

Headlining this year are Pink Martini, the fun, light-spirited vintage “little” orchestra from Portland, Oregon, and Wynton Marsalis with the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra.

International Street Performers Festival

July 4 – July 13; edmontonstreetfest.com

Street performers from around the world—living statues, buskers, jugglers—transform the outdoor Churchill Square into a bustling live performance venue. Programming runs from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.

Edmonton Folk Music Festival

August 7 – 10; edmontonfolkfest.org

Western Canada has a fine folk fest circuit, and Edmonton’s Gallagher Park is a key stop for artists coming through the region during summertime. This year’s bill includes folk popster Colin Hay, Ontario songstress Serena Ryder, and banjo wizard Bela Fleck, who’ll be playing with Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet.

The Fringe

August 14 – 24; fringetheatreadventures.ca

Nearly 150 theatre groups from around the world come to Edmonton’s Old Strathcona district to stage more than 1,000 shows. Each year the festival picks a goofy theme for the 11 days (last year’s was a 007 spoof: “Live and Let Fringe”). This year’s theme is “The Big Kahuna.”