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Dolores au Festival Fringe d'Ottawa

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Well folks, the Ottawa Fringe Festival launched last week, tickets are on sale and I am finally ready (ie. I've finally updated my own website) to talk to you all about it. Poster design by Mikaela Dyke

Dolores is my first theatrical translation from English into French. The play, by Edward Allan Baker, is written in a slang-y, blue collar type of English that I found transposed itself very well into my native Acadian French.

The show itself is being done in a site-specific BYOV (or Bring Your Own Venue) at the Fringe. The play takes place in a kitchen so I rented the kitchen at St Paul's Eastern United Church. Why? Because I don't want to put on a show just to put on a show. I want to create an intimate experience for you, the audience member. You really can't get more intimate than this.

This means that seating for the play is limited to 16 per performance. The Fringe sells up to 50% of tickets in advance on their website so only 8 tickets are available for pre-purchase with the rest available at the door one-hour prior to show time. I definitely recommend you buy in advance in order to guarantee your spot. There is a $2 surcharge for tickets purchased online that goes back to the Fringe. The other $10 comes back to the production.

You may have noticed the large number of performances currently available - 19 in total. This is mostly due to the limited seating. Even if everyone paid the full $10 for the performance (and with complimentary media & VIP passes, as well as discounted Fringe vouchers that's highly unlikely), it would be impossible for me to break even with a typical 6 to 8 performance schedule. Fortunately, the play is also fairly short, which allows for additional scheduling.

Though I don't have the final run time (since we don't get into the space until the week prior to Fringe), it does look like it will be approximately 35 minutes as opposed to the 45 written in the Fringe program.

Already, we're getting a lot of good press and buzz in the mainstream media. You can check them out now:

Fringe Festival opens the stage for many uOttawa artists this summer - uottawa Gazette

Ottawa’s Fringe Festival whoops it up inside and out - Ottawa Citizen

Surprises in Store @ Fringe-O-Ween - Ottawa Tonite (where I talk about BYOVs)

I'll be updating the Dolores page on this site fairly regularly with new information, photos, and such as it comes up, so be sure to bookmark or follow along with this blog. Also expect more French posts in the upcoming days. If you have trouble following along, I recommend using the Google Translate bar in Chrome to make it a little easier on you.

I won't lie, I would be thrilled to sell out of advance tickets before the festival even starts on June 20th, so why not head on over to the Fringe site and buy your tickets now?