Fringe festivals provide an excellent opportunity for up and coming performers to build and present their own show from scratch and for experienced performers to try out new material. This summer Lethbridge performers will be well represented at fringe festivals across the country.
Calgary born, Brett Hutchinson, a local stand up comedian and a member of Lethbridge improv group Drama Nutz, has put together a long form improv show based on the Choose Your Own Adventure books so many of us enjoyed in our youth for the Aug. 1-9 Calgary Fringe Festival with some friends he met while working with the Loose Moose Improv Theatre.

“ Me and three other high school friends have created a long form improv which we’re premiering at the Fringe this year,” he summarized.

Hutchinson and his friends and fellow Loose Moose Theatre alumni Quinn Contini, Mitch Belot and  Ellis Lalonde always loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books where readers choose the direction of the story by making a choices and being directed to a different page. As a result, they decided to build a show around the concept.

“ We’re all very childish adults and we all loved those Choose Your Own Adventure books,” Hutchinson laughed.
“ We thought Choose Your Own Adventure Books would make a great long form improv,” he said.

“ And it keeps us on our toes,” he said adding it will be fun to watch the audience helping create the story,” he continued.

“So all of us will pitch ideas at the beginning of the show. So one night may be a comedy, another may be a horror and another night may be a science fiction adventure. At certain points in the show we’ll ask the audience which direction to go and we’ll continue until we find a natural end,” summarized the first year University of Lethbridge biology major who also performs with Lethbridge improv troupe the Drama Nutz in addition to performing stand up comedy around the city.

“But none of the performers will know beforehand what the  other performers will put out there,” he said.

“ It’s been in the works since September, but we have been developing the actual show since January,” he said.
He noted while all of them have performed with Loose Moose Theatre,  this is not a Loose Moose Theatre show.

 Mentallist Jeff Newman is excited about bringing his act to his home town of Edmonton for the Edmonton Fringe Festival, Aug. 14-25.

“It will be called Mind Games. It is a longer version of my mind reading act and a lot of other stuff that is autobiographical,” Newman said.
 He went to a Fringe festival in 2011 and has been developing his own act ever since.
 This year he applied to several Fringe festivals including Calgary, Edmonton and Nanaimo and  got accepted to the Fringe in his home town of Edmonton.
“ I have a lot of material, so I cobbled together pre-existing pieces I’ve been working on for years,” he said.

 Being accepted into the Fringe means he has been provided with a venue and rehearsal time and is responsible for promoting his own show.
“The venue is great. It’s the Billiards Club which is great for my show. It’s right downtown where most of the festival is taking place,” he said.
“ It a great venue with great people,” he continued.

“Edmonton is a fun place. It’s where I used to hang out in the good old days. So it is nice to be able to go back. I’m really looking forward to it,” he said.

 He grew up on an Edmonton area farm with a family which  always enjoyed playing games with each other.
 “ I used to play games with my dad and I liked fortune telling.  Mentallism just appealed to me. It just fit my personality and I how I look at the world,” he said.
“So when I was 11 I got one of those $15 magic kits from Wal Mart. I started with standard card tricks,” he said.

“ I used to watch magic shows on TV and always liked the reaction of ‘how did you do that,’” he said.

 Later in the year, in the middle of her third year as a technical theatre major at the University of Lethbridge, Lauren DeKlerk will be bringing her original play “Risky Business”  to the Atlantic Fringe Festival in Halifax, Aug. 28-Sept. 7.

“ It’s hard to describe. I’ve always been interested in what makes you a good person. For example going to church automatically  doesn’t make you a good person,” she explained.

The play features herself and a couple of her friends from university including Colin Dingwall, who is working in Calgary and Ben Waudby.

“It is inspired by an old proverb. I think it is Hindu ‘Hell is who you are meeting who you could become,’” she said.
“It is mainly about not being a bad person,” she said adding it is a comedy featuring drunk angels and  assorted interesting characters.

“It is the first full length play I‘ve written, though written sketches and short videos,” she said.

 None of the cast have been to Halifax before, so they are excited about  their first visit. DeKlerk has friends in Halifax from working at Club Didi. They have launched a crowd-funding campaign through Gofundme http://www.gofundme.com/8xfwj0 to raise money to afford to go to the festival. She has also applied for some grants through the University of Lethbridge as well as the government to fund the project.

“ I’m excited to see friends out there. It’s very exciting. And I want to show off. I wouldn’t be in theatre if I didn’t like showing off,” she said.

“ The read through is 25-30 minutes long, but there is a lot of action in the play, so it should be the full hour,” she continued.

“ I’m missing the first few days of school for this, but I’m studying technical theatre and putting on my own show, so people are very understanding about it,” she continued.
“ I hope it will appeal to anyone who shares my sick sense of humour,” she said.