What's a Fringe?
Today was my first day selling tickets at the Fringe Festival box office. I faced an onslaught of oddballs who had lined up early to score tickets to shows they couldn't miss. It was quite the challenge making sense of some crumpled bits of paper with shows, dates and venues scrawled on them. I have to locate the shows and times on a drop-down menu on the pc, take payment in cash or credit and then print put the reams of tickets, hoping that I haven't buggered something up. Aaargh, details!! I gained confidence by the end of the day and I reckon I'll be running the place by festival's end! My colleagues are a fun bunch. I'm the only non actor or theatre student in the group. My two supervisors are delightful young women who take the edge off a potentially stressful job dealing with other people's $$.
As a work privilege I get free entry to as many plays as I can handle. There are over 100 theatre companies involved and the line-up is completely un-juried. With shows named 'The Vagina Monologues', 'Duet for a Schizophrenic' and 'Pure Unadulterated Hot Steamin' Shirley' this should be a mind-altering couple of weeks. There are some world-class threatre directors involved and some seasoned veterans of the scene whose plays have been running on circuits in Europe. There's even an Australian production called 'The Christian Brothers' which I should check out.
I had an unexpectantly fun-filled night last night. An old boss of mine from ACT government is in Edmonton to attend an international conference on Indigenous Health. He dropped me an email last week wondering where I was in Canada and it turns out he was arriving in Edmonton at the same time as me. How freakish! So we caught up last night and went along to a party at a local bar hosted by the Canadian Aboriginal Counselling service. It was a blast. I met a whole bunch of interesting indigenous people from as far apart as the Northern Territory, New Zealand and off course Canada. I sure didn't expect to see a grey-bearded old blackfella from Ahrnem Land sing a traditional song in a pub in a pool hall in Western Canada.
I went along to the conference myself yesterday afternoon and picked up some reading material. I was particulary interested to find out that while there a millions of First Nations people it the United States (Aboriginal Australians, Maoris and First Nations Canadians are only in the hundreds of thousands), they have a negligible presence at the conference. Perhaps an example of Americans not being particularly clued in or interested in what's going on outside their borders.
MG
As a work privilege I get free entry to as many plays as I can handle. There are over 100 theatre companies involved and the line-up is completely un-juried. With shows named 'The Vagina Monologues', 'Duet for a Schizophrenic' and 'Pure Unadulterated Hot Steamin' Shirley' this should be a mind-altering couple of weeks. There are some world-class threatre directors involved and some seasoned veterans of the scene whose plays have been running on circuits in Europe. There's even an Australian production called 'The Christian Brothers' which I should check out.
I had an unexpectantly fun-filled night last night. An old boss of mine from ACT government is in Edmonton to attend an international conference on Indigenous Health. He dropped me an email last week wondering where I was in Canada and it turns out he was arriving in Edmonton at the same time as me. How freakish! So we caught up last night and went along to a party at a local bar hosted by the Canadian Aboriginal Counselling service. It was a blast. I met a whole bunch of interesting indigenous people from as far apart as the Northern Territory, New Zealand and off course Canada. I sure didn't expect to see a grey-bearded old blackfella from Ahrnem Land sing a traditional song in a pub in a pool hall in Western Canada.
I went along to the conference myself yesterday afternoon and picked up some reading material. I was particulary interested to find out that while there a millions of First Nations people it the United States (Aboriginal Australians, Maoris and First Nations Canadians are only in the hundreds of thousands), they have a negligible presence at the conference. Perhaps an example of Americans not being particularly clued in or interested in what's going on outside their borders.
MG
posted by Matt G at 6:29 PM
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