2009 Ottawa Fringe Festival recommendations

A note to fellow Ottawa residents: this year’s Ottawa Fringe Festival will be running between June 18th and 28th. Last year’s was a lot of fun.

Some shows that have been recommended to me include:

At a minimum, I will post a quick comment on any shows I see.

[Update: 27 June 2009] I saw Catgut Strung Violin tonight and was most impressed. It was a three-man show on the ‘innocent young man gets sent to war’ theme. It mixed the sober moments into a great deal of intricate, acrobatic slapstick comedy. The sheer number of props and bits of timing to remember must have demanded quite a rehearsal schedule. The end result was poignant and deeply entertaining, in alternating fashion.

There is one more show, tomorrow at 3:00pm.

[Update: 28 Jun 2009] I saw We Never Clothed this afternoon, and found it enjoyable. I liked the musical numbers and the interaction of the actresses. The artistic intent behind the costumes and nudity wasn’t entirely clear to me.

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.

4 thoughts on “2009 Ottawa Fringe Festival recommendations”

  1. Thank you for the recommendation to Catgut Strung Violin, we are very excited to be a part of Ottawa’s Fringe Festival for the first time. I also must add that Jonno Katz (The Accident) is a brilliant performer and has been to our festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Revolutions International Theatre Festival).

    Finally, I have also heard great things about “Countries Shaped Like Stars” and it is at the top of my list to see. It will be a great summer!

    We look forward to seeing a lot of great shows in Ottawa.

  2. Thank you! Inclement Weather opened to a hot packed and extremely loving crowd tonight. It is a show not to be missed!

  3. I got a second ‘top five’ list from a pair of Fringe insiders:

    1. This is a Recording – verbatim theatre (a ll lines are quoted from interviews)
    2. Grandma Sol and Grandma Rosie – one woman show with giant puppets
    3. Catgut Strung Violin – slapstick physical comedy
    4. The Accident – one man show
    5. Countries Shaped Like Stars – play about courtship

    As you can see, there is overlap with the suggestions I got before.

    Another play that looks good is We Never Clothed.

  4. Ottawa Gets Fringefluenza (A1A1)
    June 21, 2009 by XUP

    The Ottawa Fringe Festival (June 18th – 28th) is in full swing with an astonishing line-up of quirky, intriguing, experimental and outrageous productions.

    Some of us Ottawa bloggers were invited to a wine and cheese last evening by the Fringe people. They wined us and cheesed us and we had some interesting conversations with some of the Fringe performers who were out promoting their shows. In exchange for all this wining, cheesing and schmoozing, the bloggers were asked (kindly) to write a little something about Fringe.

    The first thing I’ll write about is how they happen to choose the bloggers that were invited. I think it was a kind of hit or miss selection process – if they’d somehow stumbled across a blog and could find an email address, you got an invitation. They did ask for our Breakfast Bloggers mailing list, but of course we couldn’t give them that. Zoom offered to send out an invitation on behalf of the Fringe, but they didn’t like that idea. So in the end, they didn’t get a lot of bloggers turn out. Which was okay because that meant more cheese for us!!

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