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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.
SATURDAY
IN THE ABROAD
Having emigrated to Canada from Nigeria, Samuel Kugbiyi is in-the-abroad, a term used by Africans who have left their homes for new lands. Kugbiyi wants his audiences to understand what it’s like for a young immigrant to battle loneliness, as well as economic and cultural shock.
He’s been singing, dancing and entertaining since he was nine years old, so Kugbiyi is telling his story through a one-man show which he calls a musical and dramatic rant.
Kugbiyi says In The Abroad just may elicit a few tears, but will encourage a great deal of laughter, and merriment.
It runs at 1:45 p.m. in the Lantern Church Fellowship Hall.
DJ CHRIST: SAVING HUMANITY
Chris Visser calls his fringe show a what-if experiment. He hypothesizes what might happen if Christ returned today with no knowledge of the past 2,000 years. He would probably have an identity crisis and have to start all over again to redefine and rebuild what Christianity has become to reach a modern audience.
Because he’s tackling these major topics with humour, Visser says there will be music, dancing, and perhaps even miracles. He asks his prospective audiences to take the show as a thought experiment and nothing else.
DJ Christ runs at 8:45 p.m. in the Lantern Church Fellowship Hall.
SUNDAY
THE OTHER
Like many people, Daniel, the hero of the fringe show The Other, is his own worst critic. For poor Daniel, that inner critic begins taking on a life of its own, forcing him to buckle under the insults or to rise above his self-doubt.
The Other, which looks at mental health issues through humour, is the creation of Calgarian Nathan Crockett, who shares the stage with Elainna Noble and Jonathan Top.
They call their play a gripping, dark comedy that illustrates how the strength to overcome one’s demons lies in reaching out and connecting with others.
The Other runs in The Wood’s Home Theatre in Inglewood at 5:30 p.m.
A LITTLE BIT MUCH
Chelsea Davison insists she’s not an oddity, but simply just another woman who’s been told a few times too many that she is a little bit much.
Davison wants to share her journey through a life filled with jokes, ideas, dreams, plans, sex, drugs, travel, hairdressing, dating, marriage and kids all in the pursuit of the absurd and unwinnable game of having it all and being someone.
She promises A Little Bit Much will be a raucous ride about self-perception and social conditioning.
A Little Bit Much runs in the Wood’s Home Theatre at 7:15 p.m.
For best bets Monday through Thursday, Aug. 5-8, go online to the Calgary Herald Arts section.