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The Calgary Fringe Festival, the city’s annual independent theatre party, runs Aug. 2 to 10, featuring 20 in-person shows. This year’s venues include Festival Hall, the Fellowship Hall in the basement of the Lantern Church, a theatre at Wood’s Homes, the Rose Room in the Alexandra Centre, and the basement of the Next Page bookstore. You can find out more and get tickets at tickets.calgaryfringe.ca. To save you some work, theatre critic Louis B. Hobson has two picks every day of the festival.
FRIDAY
CELEXIA
Much to her dismay, when Alexa McGinn was a youngster, she was placed in her school’s remedial reading and spelling classes. She loved words, and how they enriched her life so she was confused and disheartened. Fortunately, after much insistence on her part, the school discovered Alexa was dyslexic, and she was returned to regular classes.
McGinn’s fringe play Celexia takes its audiences on Alexa’s journey to, not just being reunited with words, but to using them to create her plays and stories.
Celexia runs at 5:15 p.m. in the Lantern Church’s Fellowship Hall.
TAKING IT ALL OFF
In his solo show, Calgary film and stage actor Stuart Bentley takes his audiences on an intimate voyage of self-discovery that looks at everything from yo-yo dieting to the harsh reality of losing a partner to dementia. It’s the realization life can take twists and turns that prove things are not always what they should be, but what they are.
Though it is an unvarnished, deeply human journey, about what it means to become a caretaker, and to deal with grief, Taking It All Off is also filled with joy and hope, and the power of resilience. It may not be about getting physically naked but it’s definitely about getting emotionally naked.
It runs at. 8:45 p.m. in the Lantern Church’s Fellowship Hall.