Indigenous performance artists encouraged to apply for upcoming fringe festival at Trent University

By Rick Garrick

PETERBOROUGH — The Nogojiwanong Indigenous Fringe Festival’s week-long celebration of Indigenous performance art will include eight indoor and outdoor performances from June 21-28 at Trent University in Peterborough.

“For the audience, it’s a chance to see a big range of theatre that wouldn’t normally necessarily come to their town or community all at the same time,” says Hilary Wear, one of the organizers of the first Nogojiwanong Indigenous Fringe Festival. “Fringe festivals are quite dense with activities and shows — we might have eight different shows in a day and people can go to all of them or go to one or two of them and go out and have lunch on the lawn here by the river.”

The indoor performances will be held in the Nozhem: First Peoples Performance Space, located in the Enwaayang Building on the Trent University campus, and the outdoor performances will be held on the grounds of the Enwaayang Building.

“We’ll be supporting artists to perform either in the theatre, which is a beautiful black box theatre that seats about 100 people — it’s a fully equipped theatre,” Wear says. “Or they might have an outdoor performance space somewhere on the grounds — there’s a bunch of natural performance areas.”

Indigenous performance artists and performing arts companies are encouraged to apply for the festival by Jan. 24. The organizers consider companies to be Indigenous if more than 50 per cent of their members self-identify as Indigenous. Information about the festival is posted online.

“The thing about fringe is it’s not juried, it’s not censored,” Wear says. “We don’t choose which artists get to put on their shows.”

Wear says the eight successful performance artists or companies will be selected by lottery at the end of January. Once they are selected, they need to pay a $50 festival fee.

“They can apply for free with just an idea of what they want to do,” Wear says. “They don’t have to have a fully fleshed-out show before they apply. If their name is chosen out of the hat, they will know in early February and then they have until June to work on their show.”

Wear adds that the maximum running time for a performance is 60 minutes.

“Because we only have one indoor venue, Nozhem, we are limiting it to an hour so logistically we can get as many shows in every day as we can,” Wear says.

Wear says the goal is to feature local, regional, national and international Indigenous performance artists during the festival.

“We will be programming eight different performance groups this year and those people will get the chance to put on their performance five times,” Wear says. “It’s an opportunity for people to really take a risk artistically and for audiences to experience theatre and performance … at a really reasonable rate. All shows cost $10 each and 100 per cent of that money goes back to the artists that are performing.”

The festival opens with a gathering on National Indigenous Peoples Day. Learning/sharing activities and the technical rehearsal are scheduled from June 22-25 and the performances are scheduled from June 24-28.

“Our fringe festival is a little bit different than many fringe festivals,” Wear says. “We’re focused on performance the same as them but we’re also going to have some other activities, some gatherings, some feasts, some workshops and teachings related to this area and community. So it will be a little different that way, it will be a little bit more Indigenous style.”