Fringe Fest

This evening I went out for a walk after a couple of days of sitting on my butt and it felt good. My back was sore from sitting all day and I was very tired from lack of sleep from the past two nights. This got my body in motion and my blood circulating and I felt a lot better afterwards.

I walked around the Pleateau again. I love that area because it's not as smelly and douchey as other parts of downtown and there's all sorts of gorgeous sights and the wonderful smell of charcoal-grilled chicken floating around the borough. I frequently have encounters with interesting people who like to share their experiences around the city, like this time I was watching some people swing dancing and some guy started talking to me about this dancing school down the street and this great place where you can buy smoking pipes, tobacco and accessories.

Some more murals I never noticed before.

Tonight, I stumbled upon this event in the Parc des Amériques at the corner of Saint-Laurent boulevard and Rachel street. It's called the Fringe Festival and its basically an event where indie artists can promote themselves and show their artwork. The festival doesn't just take place at this park, but also at theatres and other places around town where art ranging from music to theatre, stand up comedy, visual arts and a lot more.

The best part was when I sat down with a stage performer called Cameryn Moore who was herself sitting behind an old classic typewriter and a sign that said smut while you wait. I overheard her conversation with a standing couple and she said she used to be a phone sex call girl and decided to take part in this festival to do some stand up act of some kind. When the couple left she said hi to me so I went and had a conversation with her about the festival and what she does. She told me she writes short erotica stories and does stand up shows and plays, of course all on the topic of sex. The whole typewriter setup was because she was writing half-pages or full pages of custom erotic stories between conversations with people and pinning them on the boarded up wall behind her for people to buy. She asked me if I knew about Fringe and when I told her I never been she said I was missing out. She suggested I go in and check it out, which I did. It's a really intimate little indie festival thing in the park and they had beer and hot dogs! This evening at the park there was a quartet of indie musicians playing some bluegrass. There was a bassist, a drummer, an accordion player, a banjo player and singer. They weren't bad at all!

As I left, Cameryn gave me a couple of flyers to advertise her show called Power Play where she talks about erotic stories and asks the audience to participate in making the stories more interesting. And she also has an upcoming play that's coming later this year called Phone Whore which is a one-act play where she takes the role of a phone sex call girl. Apparently that play has won a few awards in other fringe festivals in other cities such as Ottawa, Victoria and San Francisco.

I got myself the newspaper-program for the festival with the schedules for all the shows. You can check out the website for the festival at montrealfringe.ca. It looks pretty cool and I recommend it if you're into indie art stuff. Ticket prices range from $5.00 to $10.00 and all have a $2.00 processing fee. It's good local entertainment at a very good price!

It was quite an interesting walk this evening to say the least and I was glad I went and checked out what was going on at that park.