SEE Magazine
Copyright © 1998. All Rights Reserved.
ON STAGE
BY SCOTT LINGLEYPREVIEW
Edmonton International Street Performers Festival
various locations
July 10 - 19Dick Finkel laughs when he talks about the early years of the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival. Not the convulsive belly laugh brought on by some hysterically funny memory replaying itself before his eyes; more the chortle of relief from someone whose life briefly flashed before his eyes. Just ask the festival producer about the first year of the event, 14 years ago.
"Well, (the festival) was a very well-kept secret," he said (there's that laughter). "It had a very limited success for the first couple of years in the number of people that attended."
Despite the fact the festival coincided with the opening of Rice Howard Way in 1984, the turnout to see mimes, jugglers, clowns and assorted entertainers was disappointing. Finkel said by year three, he was prepared to pack it in - and stop accepting public funding - if Edmontonians didn't take to the festival.
"I appealed to the media in the third year," he said. "(They) finally understood that we were more than freaky jugglers."
Since then, our city has taken to the festival in ever-growing numbers. Finkel figures this year, upwards of 200,000 people will watch shows presented in Sir Winston Churchill Square, various city malls and on the Maclab stage in the Citadel Theatre.
The challenge for the producer now is to hunt down a diverse but uniformly entertaining slate of artists from around the world. "Every year, what we try to do is balance our program between local and non-local, Canadian and international, male and female artists, and to get a good mix of acts. Everybody knows about the jugglers and mimes, but not so much about the dancing, marionettes and acrobatics."
This year, around 50 artists, many of international reputation, will descend on the city to eat fire, paint faces, create sidewalk art, dance, mime, mug, sing and generally goof around. You'll see clowns from Belgium, a cowgirl from San Francisco doing rope tricks, an Indian fakir (from Australia) and sundry vaudevillians from all over North America. And that might be on one stretch of sidewalk. All that's required of you is a donation deposited in a hat at the end of the entertainment.
New to the festival this year is Kid's World, a daily schedule of performances and interactive events for younger festival-goers, weekdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and weekends from noon to 4 p.m. in Sir Winston Churchill Square.
For those who like to take their entertainment sitting down, five staged performances are planned at the Maclab Theatre, including the Women in Comedy revue on July 11; a two-nighter of The Flat, a play by Calgary comedians the three canadians, on July 15 and 16; and Late Night Madness, an anything-goes variety show featuring festival performers on July 17 and 18.
Now that the future of the festival seems assured, Finkel says he can turn his mind to other matters - keeping the public coming back for more, now that they have a taste for street performance.
"You know our scene here is pretty sophisticated," he said. "I come from New York, which is considered a pretty sophisticated place, and people there look at our festival and go apeshit. They can't believe the support we get. In terms of arts festivals, we're pretty sophisticated."
| Go To Issue Contents | Go To Main Index | Go To Listings |