Mark calendar for Fringe

Annual festival features comedy, singing and improv.

Writer and actress Susan Freedman is back at the Vancouver Fringe Festival. She follows up the success of her one-woman show, Fifty-Seven and Still Lying About My Weight, with more comedy about families, diets, shopping and facelifts in Sixty with More Lies About My Weight.

"I hoped my story would hit home with my generation and it seemed to do that. Fifty-Seven played across the country to great success," said Freedman in an interview with the Bulletin. "The funny stories I tell about my life seem to speak to my contemporaries and to our kids, too. I hope they see themselves again in my new show and laugh when they do."

Freedman, who is Jewish, said that while her Jewish values inform her life and, therefore, her writing, people don't have to be Jewish to enjoy her work. "But Jewish audiences seem to relate to it very well and laugh the loudest!" she said.
Although Sixty with More Lies About My Weight touches upon the fact that we all slow down physically and mentally as we age, Freedman said that she treats the whole business with humor.

"My show is optimistic about getting older," she said. "Hey, ya gotta laugh. How else can we possibly get through life?"

Sixty with More Lies About My Weight is directed by Jan Kudelka. For more information on Freedman and her one-woman show, check out www.susanfreedman.ca.

Sixty with More Lies About My Weight opens at the Ballard Lederer Gallery, 1540 West 2nd Ave., Saturday, Sept. 7, 4:45 p.m. It also shows there on Sept. 8, 5:30 p.m.; Sept. 9, 5:45 p.m.; Sept. 12, 3:30 p.m.; Sept. 13, 1 p.m.; Sept. 14, 4 p.m. Tickets are $11 in advance, $9 at the door.

Not just another musical

The lead actors are battling out a budding off-stage relationship while preparing for the cheesiest show ever. The director wants the best of the best for his show. Chaos, love and cheesiness prevail. In a nutshell, that's the plot of the Fringe play How to be Cheesey in Show Biz Without Even Trying, being put on by the new theatre company Breaking Broadway.

Martin Wong wrote the script, music and lyrics for How to be Cheesey, Ryan Moody directs and Shawna Parry is the choreographer. The cast includes Meghan Anderssen, Chris King, Matthew Rossoff, Jenn Suratos, Shira Elias, Andre Desaulniers, Keri Minty, Nicole Stevens and Jenn Boyd.

Members of the Jewish community, Elias and Rossoff have both been busy performing in various productions over the years. Among Elias's achievements are roles in Oliver, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Metrospective II and Once Upon a Mattress. She is an original member of the performing troupe Sound Sensation. Rossoff appeared in this summer's Joseph at Theatre Under the Stars and he has been in Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding and several other productions. He will make his debut on the Vancouver Playhouse stage in the fall showing of Fiddler on the Roof.

How to be Cheesey plays at Performance Works, 1228 Cartwright St., Sept. 6, 12:15 a.m.; Sept. 8, noon; Sept. 9, 9:45 p.m.; Sept. 12, 8:45 p.m.; Sept. 13, 4:15 p.m.; and Sept. 14, 10:15 p.m. Tickets are $8 at the door, $10 in advance.

Acting outside the box

Having worked together for seven years in more than 10 different improv companies, Becky Johnson and Noah Lepawsky have had plenty of time to cook up Theatre in a Box. A mixture of their various experiences in improvisation, street theatre, mask, political theatre and clown, Theatre in a Box was first staged in Toronto in the spring of 2001. This year, it graces the stages of the Vancouver Fringe for the first time ever.

Last summer, Johnson toured an original solo clown show entitled Underground (with Ruby) and she has just completed Secondary High, her first feature film, in Toronto – it's about trashy high school life. She has been involved in many theatrical and on-screen productions. She is currently creating Making Funny, a two-person comedy show with Toronto cohort Mark Andrada.

Lepawsky, a graduate of the Studio 58 Professional Actor Training Program, has been an inspiration to many young improvisers over the years, especially through his work with the Canadian Improv Games. He has also toured British Columbia elementary schools with Green Thumb Theatre's one-man show Derwent is Different for which he won a Jessie Richardson Award. In 2002, Lepawsky worked with Headlines Theatre performing in THIR$TY.

Johnson and Lepawsky have just returned from a tour of England and Scotland where they were performing improvised street theatre with Vancouver's Rock-Paper-Scissors Comedy Creations. Theatre in a Box runs at Studio 17 (La Maison de la Francophonie), 1565 West 7th Ave. (between Granville and Fir), Sept. 6, 3:30 p.m.; Sept. 7, 11:30 p.m.; Sept. 9, 9 p.m.; Sept. 11, 5:45 p.m.; Sept. 14, 12:30 p.m.; and Sept. 15, 1:45 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance, $8 at the door.

For Fringe tickets and more information about any of the performances, call 604-257-0366, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.vancouverfringe.com.

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