Downtown Nanaimo will host some of the best uncensored “fringe” performances in hopes of inspiring active empathy.
The 13th annual Nanaimo Fringe Festival, as presented by the Pacific Coast Stage Company, will host a dozen productions in multiple venues throughout the city’s downtown core.
The festival starts Thursday, Aug. 10, and will hold stagings until Aug. 20. A free preview night at the Port Theatre on Thursday will showcase “sneak peeks” of the festival line-up.
Nanaimo comic Peter Hudson has produced several stand-up sets featuring various comedians to be held at different locations downtown on Fridays and Saturdays of the festival.
Black Rabbit Kitchen on Selby Street will also host several live music acts, including Nanaimo’s 13-year-old rising blues star James Vickers, and Nanaimo Clippers national anthem singer, Sarah Tomei.
A special presentation by the Pacific Coast Stage Company, through the Access Impact Mentorship initiative, will be staged at the OV Arts Centre on Friday, Aug. 11, and Sunday, Aug. 13.
Theo Soloway, Adrien Kennedy, Jesse Wilson, Brandon Caul and Connor Runnings came together as a cohort to share five stories written and performed by neurodivergent artists in Snoezlen Sessions.
Both the Friday and Sunday performances have different billings and showcase different stories by the artists. Each show is self-contained with varying lengths and have common threads between them that tackle neurodiversity in their own specific ways.
“Theatre can be a little bit inaccessible sometimes,” said Runnings. “I love theatre. But when you go out, it’s always an event and you have to mentally prepare yourself to be among crowds and to not be able to go to the bathroom for awhile … and all the sensory ‘icks’ that comes with going to a big public place with a lot of people.”
Caul agreed and said each show achieves this in its own way, whether through action or speaking.
Runnings said the emphasis of the Snoezlen Sessions was to not only create an environment where people can feel seen in that aspect, but to also acknowledge the hard work that neurodivergent people do in going about everyday life.
“The goal of the AIM project is to conceptualize what neurodivergent support theatre could potentially look like. That’s a market that is niche, but growing. And we want to accommodate however we can. But since there’s not really a model for it, there ends up being a lot of trial and error. So it’s kind of a process of throwing stuff on the wall to see what sticks.”
He continued to say that if an audience member was neurotypical and attending the production, they could potentially learn something about autism. And if they were neurodivergent, they could potentially relate to the experiences and feel less alone or out of place.
“I want people to have conversations and be informed about it,” Runnings said. “I find the arts are a good way to teach people … I feel like there’s an active empathy that goes into watching a piece and putting yourself in the shoes of the main character, or any of the characters, and just thinking, ‘Huh, if the world affected me in that way, I would go about how I act towards people who live in that world completely differently.’”
Runnings and Caul have worked together before in Runnings’ previous show Built Different which premiered at the Nanaimo Fringe Festival in 2021, and was then picked up by the rEvolver Festival in Vancouver last year. Runnings said the success of that show lead to the cohort being created and the Access Impact Mentorship initiative being set in motion.
More information on the Nanaimo Fringe Festival, including a complete schedule, can be found online at www.nanaimofringe.com.
Look for more coverage of the fringe festival in an upcoming issue of the News Bulletin.
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mandy.moraes@nanaimobulletin.com
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