Halifax Fringe Day 8

I spent my day today at the Halifax United Church in three perfectly suited venues there to see three Bring Your Own Venue Halifax Fringe shows. The first show I saw was Nova Scotia Business Inc.: a de-colonial satire, which is a work in progress by Tamsin Moynihan-Robson directed by Kamela Hutzley. 

The premise of this show is that two young queer folks, one Indigenous and one settler, are going for a hike when suddenly all of their surroundings are wildly strange. It turns out that they have time travelled to the year 2101, and Nova Scotia is now a corporation state- Nova Scotia Business Inc. where the overloads have defunded the arts into oblivion and the people toil like robots in places that seem to be a mixture between a call centre and a Dickensian workhouse to make sure that they don’t end up in an unsightly tent city. These two travellers, Shan played by Nikki Valentine and Thecla played by Shadow St.Pierre-Farrow, soon find their way to the hidden artistic hideaway where all those who resist dwell in secret. Shan especially is eager to lead the resistance into some sort of battle, and in fact the newcomers do bring with them a fresh energy that allows them to take the first steps necessary to reclaim their province by force and deception.

There’s so much that is great about this play. Moynihan-Robson does a good job of mixing a hefty dose of humour in with a hefty dose of solemnity as we imagine our beautiful province being ravaged this way. I particularly liked the video ad that plays where the premier, very convincingly played by Jesse Robb, overtly paints artists as draining taxpayer dollars while producing nothing of value in return. 

There are a few areas where I would be interested for the team to expand upon- mostly I was curious how the time travel had occurred, and thought that Thecla and Shan would probably be both interested in figuring out what happened to them, and might want to try to figure out how to go home. I also wondered about their reception from the future dwellers- might they have more questions for them, or complex feelings about people who lived at a time where they could have prevented this grim future but failed to do so. I was also a little bit confused where the two had been hiking and then where they found themselves when they went into the futuristic grocery store- were they in Cape Breton/Unama’ki or were they now in Halifax or somewhere else on the mainland?  

I’m really looking forward to seeing this piece continue to take shape. It’s obviously a timely work, and a creative way to ensure that folks aren’t resting on their laurels; we have a responsibility to this land and to each other to protect our beautiful and bountiful home. 

TWISI Fringe Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ad Hoc Theatre Co.’s Nova Scotia Business Inc: A Decolonial Satire plays at Halifax United Church (6036 Coburg Road, Halifax) September 11th at 7:00pm, and September 12th at 2:00pm.

Next I went from the sanctuary space in the church to the gym, which was an ideal spot for Dan Bray’s newest work The Jackson Elementary Grade 6 Drama Club Presents…. BLOOD & SNOW: The Donner Party’s Fatal Foray Into the Sierra Nevada Wilderness. 

This story is constructed as though it were written by a very zealous elementary school drama teacher who wants to use the story of the Donner Party largely to educate the audience of the Grade 6 students’ parents about the perils of manifest destiny and colonialism. The play that the drama teacher has created tells the story of a group of American settlers in 1846 who took part in the homesteading movement to move west, in their case from Illinois to California, to seek better opportunities for themselves and their families. Due to choosing to follow a new route called the Hastings Cutoff, which bypassed the established trails taking them through snowy mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert in Utah, a real disaster occurred for all those involved in the party. Many died on the journey, and some of the members were so starved while they were stranded and snowbound in Sierra Nevada they were forced to resort to cannibalism. The actors perform this story with joyful abandon and take large liberties with accents, and present most of the scenes out to the audience, a nod to the way that a lot of these elementary school plays are often blocked. 

I really like the concept of this play- the discrepancy between the harrowing and disturbing realities of the Donner’s journey and the exuberance with which the actors are presenting them, complete with an additional ensemble cast of stuffed animals, is really great. The play is very silly, and quite dense in historically accurate detail, and there are beautiful, absurd musical interludes. The play works well as a fun pastiche of childhood theatre imagined by grownups, and this conceit is great for the Fringe- the audience tonight was having a rollicking good time.

I think this play has a lot of potential to be Dan Bray’s own version of something like Mischief Theatre Company’s The Play That Goes Wrong. In this current version the eleven year olds are performing on a level well above what the average sixth grader would bring to a school play performance- they have memorized scads of lines dense with complex words, ideas, and historical exposition, they sing in perfect beautiful harmony a cappella, they always come out on time, stay in character, know where to go and what to do, have the right props and costumes of which there are many, and they have access to a whole tickle trunk filled with accents. I’m so curious what this play would look like if all of this was the case just about 35% of the time, and the rest of it was off the rails. I was just as interested in who each of these children are as individuals as I was about the Donner story, so I really think there’s room for Bray to keep elaborating on this aspect of the narrative, and making each one of the children really unique individuals with their own strengths and challenges in drama class. I think there is also a bit more room, within the anti-colonial spirit of the show, for the drama teacher to focus more of the narrative on the fact that the only two people who were murdered by the group to be cannibalized were Miwok guides, which is horrifying. This happens in the play, but it gets a little lost in all the rest of the chaos happening around it.

This show is very fun fringey fare. I really hope Bray continues to work on it because it’s a really unique and funny idea that is brimming with possibilities for expansion.

TWISI Fringe Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Villains Theatre’s production of Dan Bray’s The Jackson Elementary Grade 6 Drama Club Presents…. BLOOD & SNOW: The Donner Party’s Fatal Foray Into the Sierra Nevada Wilderness plays at Halifax United Church (6036 Coburg Road, Halifax) at the following times: September 11th at 7:45pm, and September 12th at 7:45pm.

Lastly I went into the Fellowship Room of the church to see Kevin Hartford’s play Peak Twins, a continuation of the world he created last year with The Y Files. Colleen Arcturus MacIsaac and Dan Bray return as Agents Fulder and Dully, but this time they have jumped from their own world into a parody of the television series Twin Peaks (1990), which I am, unfortunately, less familiar with than I am with The X Files (1993). Twin Peaks also focuses on an FBI agent, and it is described as being surrealist, campy, melodramatic, and filled with eccentric characters, which this play definitely has in spades. The juxtaposition between the camp and the melodrama coming from actors like Lara Lewis and Colin McGuire and the deadpan calm of Arcturus MacIsaac and Bray creates a nice sense of tension, and gives the play a lot of its humour. 

Fulder and Dully are on a case of a murdered teenager. Each eccentric character that they encounter provides them with complicating backstory and one vague or obscure clue as to where they should head next. Next thing they know they’re dodging magical creatures, and doubting the veracity of an autopsy that they saw with their own two eyes. This show is very silly, over the top, with some clever writing, and a very satisfying ending. The direction by Tara Thorne makes good use of the space and the flashlight bits with Fulder and Dully are never not funny. I love watching Arcturus MacIsaac and Bray play these two weird characters- having Arcturus MacIsaac playing sort of a seedy and depraved character is really fun because they do it with such nonchalance, but it is very different from who they are as a human, and also the types of roles you usually see them playing. Bray, on the other hand, is sort of peak Dan Bray as Dully, and it’s a really funny and charming combination.  

If you’re able to watch an episode of Twin Peaks before you see this show that might help you appreciate all the nuances that I know Hartford and Thorne have thrown in, but the play is entirely enjoyable whether you’re familiar with the series or not.   

TWISI Fringe Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Peak Twins plays at Halifax United Church (6036 Coburg Road, Halifax) at the following times: September 11th at 9:00pm, and September 12th at 9:00pm.

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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