Halifax Fringe Day 4

Sunday started out very exciting with Halifax’s First Ever Kids Fringe curated and organized by Lily Falk and Franziska Glen of Gale Force Theatre. What a huge success! There were four shows scheduled at the Central Library, and I attended the first two with my cousin and my niece, Bridgette, who is three and a half. The two shows that we attended were filled to capacity in the Paul O’Regan Hall, and there were fun activities for the kids to take part in, both in the hall and just outside on the main floor of the library, between the shows. The library is an ideal venue for this. We arrived early with my niece and went upstairs to the play area there, and Bridgette met a kid a little older than her that she ended up sitting with during one of the performances, and she also made friends with another younger kid sitting beside us. It was awesome to see the kids getting up and dancing and playing together in the breaks between the shows, as well as sitting so attentively to watch the performances. They are creating the very beginnings of their very own Fringe community here at the library. 🥹

The first show we saw was Bird Watch by InesS Circus, which had beautiful costumes, and featured an array of different performers performing routines with aerial silks. Two bird watchers in fun vintage bathing suits are at the beach watching for birds. They find a goldfinch, a red cardinal, and a blue jay flying and doing tricks in the air, and the bird watchers dream of what it might be like to be able to fly for themselves. This concept worked beautifully for the show to showcase the skills and talents of all three of the performers playing the birds, and the performers playing the humans. The goldfinch wowed the audience with their ability to do the splits and spin very fast while hanging upside down, and their ability to use the silks to support themself in the air lying on their belly with their legs arched up over their head. The cardinal’s movements and music choice, with a Celtic pop vibe, were more vigorous and quicker paced, giving us a real ferocity in their flips, and after they spun around at the top of the apparatus they spun their way down nearly to the floor. The blue jay brought a real specificity of movement to their routine, and it was really neat to see how fast they were able to do their flips and the way that they could slide downward on the silks standing up vertically. The bird watchers were able to do even more daring tricks where they let themselves free fall at first, and then use the twisting of the silks around various parts of their bodies to catch themselves just in time. They also did a floor routine with bright wing-like fans, and spinning umbrellas. 

Bridgette was enchanted by the whole performance. She really liked the ways that the fiery red, orange, and yellow fans were moving, and at one point during an aerial silk routine she turned to me and whispered, incredulously, “Did you see that?!” She was interested in how sometimes the velocity of the performers’ flips and spins would make the whole apparatus they were on wobble. Her favourite part was when one of the bird watchers gave her a blue feather, and she pretended to fly with it for the rest of the show. At the end she told us excitedly, “I want to do that!” 

TWISI Kids Fringe Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bird Watch plays at the Halifax Central Library (5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax) as part of Kids Fringe on Sunday September 13th at 1:00pm. This show is free and does not require any pre-registration.

The second show that Bridgette and I watched was A Potion for Emotion by It’s Gonna Be Great Theatre. Overworked (and probably underpaid) monster Goober is late and doesn’t have time to spend with his pet Fluffygus before he has to head off to the office. Once there he hears that monsters everywhere are fighting with one another, and he has his boss enlist the computer to find out the solution to the hostilities. The computer tells Goober and Boss that the problem is that the monsters are feeling too many emotions, and that they need to administer this specific potion to all the monsters in the city to stop them from feeling so they can live harmoniously. The challenge for Goober is that they have to go on an adventure to find the well and to add the potion to it, and along the way they have to repress all their own emotions or the potion will be ruined. This is difficult for empathetic Goober, as along the way they meet someone who is sad, angry, and joyful, and Goober needs to be sure not to let any of those emotions rub off on the potion. 

There is lots that is so great about this show. Rachel Lloyd shines brightly as Goober, capturing their extreme determination to make this quest a success, their anxiety in discovering how easily their emotions boil to the surface, the way that they know that they aren’t handling things well with Sternest, who is sad, and Frenita, who is happy, and their sheepish sort of apology tour they go on later in the play. Lloyd also sings and raps, which is great fun. The puppets are beautifully constructed. Sternest is this large muppet-like creature who arrives running and carrying a cake. Fluffygus is a cute and furry little ferret-like pet. The Boss is a small but intense kind of Sasquatch character who is beautifully detailed. The way he is being manipulated from the back by Laura Stinson is also very neat, as it really helps to create the illusion that he is moving of his own accord. Lowry the Guardian of the Wall is one of the cutest of the puppets. They remind me of the Dozers in the original 1983 Fraggle Rock series, but if they were crossed with a kitten. They also have this way of coming alive as they’re interacting with Lloyd’s Goober that is really magical. 

Speaking of magical, there is a lots of magic going on in the potion that Lloyd makes on stage, transfers into an appropriate canister for a potion, and then it keeps lighting up with different colours depending on the emotions that Goober is feeling. The set, too, allows for the background to change as Goober works their way through their journey, all stemming from the box that is used as Goober’s bed at the beginning of the play. This is such industrious use of space, and makes this show ideal for touring to schools, and to theatres around the region. 

I had two thoughts in watching this show with a sold out crowd of kids- the first, logistically, for a crowd and space this big Lloyd needs a microphone suitable for the rockstar she is. Also, while the kids were rapt throughout the play, I thought that there were a few opportunities where they could be even further engaged and invested in the story if Goober directly addressed them a few times along the way.  

Bridgette saw the connection between Goober and Elsa from Disney’s Frozen (2013), in that they were both told to “conceal don’t feel,” but she explains that while “in Frozen Elsa needs love, the monsters need to talk [about their feelings].” She felt a lot of the same emotions as Goober did while watching the play. She found the Boss puppet a bit scary because he is quite grumpy and has a very stern expression. Overall, she enjoyed the play, and was very engaged in the story. 

TWISI Kids Fringe Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Potion for Emotion has Closed at Kids Fringe.

I transitioned back to Adult Fringe and headed over to DanSpace to see Loony Lundi written by Roz Kennery and Madison Arsenault, and directed by Emily Lux. The theme for this part of my day was understudies. I saw three understudies in shows today. In this show Arsenault played the role of Noella Loon, normally played as Nool Loon by Myles Bradley. Bradley did appear in the play during some pre-recorded moments.

River and their mother Alice are at a therapy appointment with an unconventional therapist. When they don’t seem to be able to connect with each other and see things from the other’s point of view Noella Loon enlists the magic of loon, which allows them not only to change places Freaky Friday style, but to travel through time experiencing each other’s realities in an entirely immersive way. As such River gains a better understanding of how difficult Alice’s life was being pregnant and working in a smokey bar while bracing herself for her partner’s exit, and Alice gets a reality check about the logistics of finding a job in the current economy, and being nonbinary in a non traditional relationship. 

I love the idea of this play as an exploration between the generational gap between Gen X and Gen Z. There have been a lot of words written about the generational gap between the Boomers and the Millennials, so it’s neat to consider how things are playing out in some of the same ways and also differently between these two younger generations. I think there’s the possibility for a more serious and nuanced exploration of this idea within the same or a similar concept, but Loony Lundi is much more lighthearted and funny in a way that isn’t too concerned about how accurate or specific the narrative is. River can throw out random words during their mom’s big work presentation, for example, and the consequences aren’t supposed to be realistic. The silliness is more of the point, and the actors, Vanessa Allen and Mac Flint capture this sense of the absurd and the dramatic, while also creating between themselves a nice sense of the warmth and the safety that exists between a parent and a child, even when they’re having passionate disagreements. 

If you are looking for a classically fringey Fringe show, and I know there are lots of people out there who are, this is a fun one. 

Loony Lundi plays at DanSpace (1800 Argyle Street, Halifax) at the following times: September 11th at 9:30pm.

I then went over to the Neptune Theatre Imperial Studio to see Jon Pickett: Fresh Off the Lot a stand up set by Jon Pickett all about his time working as a used car salesman at an undisclosed local establishment, although I think I saw this show with an audience filled with his former coworkers, because they seemed to be operating on an informed level that I wasn’t tapped into, and that was a fun experience.

I had no idea what to expect with this show beyond the obvious, that it was going to focus on funny anecdotes about working as a car salesman, but I was surprised that there is a real emotional arc to this show. Pickett is from Labrador and he’s charming in a way that is self deprecating, and also characteristic of the East Coast. His sense of humour and his point of view feels both familiar and local, which works very well since he’s telling a hyper-local story. When he talks about having a difficult conversation at a food court with a New York Fries in it, I can immediately imagine where that food court might be. 

A lot of the comedy comes from the characters that Pickett encountered during his time working at this establishment. There’s an especially fun bit where he relays some pretty wild training that he received from folks in Toronto and New York. But, at the same time, we see how, especially as more and more time goes by, this job starts to wear on Jon when his own morality and compassion for folks conflicts with the company’s policies, which are based solely on earning the most money possible. This is where Pickett talks about how and why he left his job, and there is a really engaging and poignant story there. 

Beyond being interested in Pickett’s own experience, I also learned a bit more about the way that these dealerships work- things that were both intriguing and disturbing. This is a solid storytelling show centred around a slice of life in a particular local industry that doesn’t often show up in the theatre.

TWISI Fringe Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Jon Pickett: Fresh Off the Lot plays at Neptune Theatre’s Imperial Studio (1593 Argyle Street, Halifax) at the following times: September 8th at 6:30pm, September 9th at 9:30pm, September 10th at 5:00pm, and September 12th at 6:30pm.

I then took the bus to the Bus Stop Theatre, since it was raining, and I joined a sold out crowd at the new Emma Lamont play The Atomic Priesthood where we were all treated to two understudy performances- Emma Lamont played Talia, and Thunder Defayette played Mars, and both did a great job- I didn’t know that they were understudies when I watched the show, and I wouldn’t have guessed. 

We find ourselves 10,000 years in the future, where the connection between the past and this future has been severed. A small group of humans have been living on this one section of land for a relatively short period of time. Now they are beginning to get sick, and die in a horrifying fashion. They are, of course, frightened, but Sol, very well played by Shadow St.Pierre-Farrow, remains calm. They have had a dream that they believe explains that the glowing green cats that inhabit this place are Gods, who can be appeased with favours. Sol’s beliefs grow into a fringe religion, with disciples, Mars and Talia. But when Talia’s own sister gets sick and their initial offerings to the Gods don’t show any immediate relief from the suffering they introduce an element of doubt to the community that challenges Sol’s leadership, and everything becomes a lot more dangerous. 

This play is very well written by Lamont, and is exploring the way that religions tend to emerge, with “prophetic” dreams and folks trying their best in earnest to create meaning out what is terrifying, what is confusing, what feels contradictory and arbitrary and unfair in the world. What is interesting is that Lamont has the play set up so that the audience knows the scientific truth about what is happening here, which gives us a omnipotent objectivity when we are viewing the ways that the characters are behaving. Mars has a lot of dutiful church lady energy, which is sort of both funny and tragic within this context. One challenge that our being all-knowing presents is that [spoiler alert] whether Talia is killed by Sol or by the environmental factors at play here, the reality is that everyone is fucked. This lowers the stakes a bit in the confrontation between Talia and Sol. I wondered if maybe as part of when Talia is coming to terms with the possibility that everything they believed could be wrong, they might also contemplate leaving, as then the audience would be given the possibility of Talia maybe escaping death all together before Sol enters as the avenger.

I like how the play delves right into the immediate problem the characters have encountered, but I was curious about what had happened between our world and theirs, and when the recording from Dr. Vale (voiced by Chris George) we were hearing had been created, so I think there is room for Lamont to give a bit more exposition in these recordings for us. 

The cat puppets designed by Cal Anderson and pupeteered by Jarod Monk and Tamsin Moynihan-Robson really vividly bring these adorable felines to life. The lighting by Thunder Defayette is excellent in the way that it gives the characters this ominous green hue. The costume design, especially Sol’s elaborate goth/punk outfit, by Sarah Cooper, really grounds us in a great specificity for this mysterious version of life here on Earth. 

This is another strong piece of work from Emma Lamont, who is quickly becoming a Halifax Fringe favourite. 

TWISI Fringe Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Anomaly Theatre Co.’s production of The Atomic Priesthood plays at the Bus Stop Theatre (2203 Gottingen Street, Halifax) once more on September 9th at 9:30pm.

Halifax Fringe runs from September 3rd to September 13th, 2026 in venues throughout the downtown and North End of Halifax. For more information and to make your Fringe schedule please visit this website. All official Fringe venues are wheelchair accessible. Many shows have at least one mask mandatory performance. Grab a Fringe Guide at any of the venues for a handy way to follow along with all the events at the festival. See ya there! 

A Note On TWISI Fringe Ratings:

I have never liked rating Fringe shows, or any shows, using the 5 Star system as I have done in the past, but they can be helpful for productions that are touring, or seeking funding for further opportunities for development, so with that in mind I will be giving out four, four and a half, and five star ratings this Fringe.

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