2009 Vancouver Fringe Festival

For those of us that grew up gay in a small town, we know the hardships.  But imagine being gay AND the only black person.  Berend McKenzie's one-man show Nggrfg gives us a peak into his world as he grows up in Northern Alberta with his adopted white family.

One of the great things about the Vancouver Fringe Festival is not only what can potentially happen on the stage but also what happens walking between venues, or in our case walking to our car.

Okay, so maybe the old adage of waiting a day before sending a nasty email should also be extended to Twitter. For after sitting through Midnight Hotel’s production of The Journey Is Not Done Quickly last night and thoroughly not enjoying the performance I couldn’t wait to get to my iPhone to Tweet about this mess.

Good thing Lisa Haas managed to land Origins Organic Coffee as her performance space (of which she proudly announced is the “official sexy venue” at this year’s Vancouver Fringe). For with all that talk about death, the aroma of coffee filtered the room from any possible chance we could actually smell the grim reaper cometh our way as Lisa recounted the obsession her family has about this rather morbid subject.

While the show's content might not be queer, we did catch up with local Lesbian Heather Lindsay, who talks to us about her upcoming show, Biographies of the Dead and Dying, at this year's Vancouver Fringe Festival.

New York City's Midnight Hotel Productions will present the world premiere of its The Journey Is Not Done Quickly, at the Vancouver Fringe 2009 Festival.  We caught up with director and actor Ken Lang.

The queer content at this year's Vancouver International Fringe Festival just bigger!  GayVancouver.Net (Gay Vancouver Online) caught up with Lisa Haas who is bringing her one-woman show, Crown Hill Cemetery, from New York to Vancouver.

With the Vancouver International Fringe Festival arriving at a venue near you shortly (9-20 September 2009) GayVancouver.Net (Gay Vancouver Online) set out to discover some of the queer content at this year's Festival. What we discovered is that what we might be lacking in numbers we are certainly not lacking in Fringe-style content. Take Berend McKenzie's upcoming show nggrfg as an example. We caught up with Berend just before he headed off to the Edmonton Fringe Festival to premiere this new piece and talked to him about his show, growing up in Northern Alberta and working with director Denis Simpson.

For 25 years, the Fringe has defied the norms by daring to allow everyone to take the stage and inviting audiences to witness the joy and horror that is created by such an eclectic group of artists. That’s 25 years of cutting-edge shows, queer content, emerging artists, pushing boundaries, defying expectations and basically letting artists do whatever the hell they want.