Review Rundown Special: Toronto Fringe Festival 2023

This week No Proscenium is brought to you by MEOW WOLF, and the brand new THE REAL UNREAL: NOW OPEN! Get to know the unknown in this brand new, mind-bending, interactive art experience located at Grapevine Mills (just north of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport). All ages. All possibilities.

Taking over 16 stages throughout its 12-day run, the 2023 edition of the Toronto Fringe Festival brought 101 unique shows to the city. This non-juried festival held a wide variety of productions, including a number of immersive, and immersive-adjacent performances.

Though only four productions fit the “immersive” bill, a number of shows drew from immersive-type engagement. Whether it be the audience throwing balls at a juggler (Are You Catching What I’m Throwing?), seeing a show about a band within an actual concert venue (Retrograde), utilization of non-critical yet amusing audience interaction (The Family Crow, Insert Clown Here, Amor de Cosmos), or potent breaking of the fourth wall (James & Jamesy: Easy As Pie — and I mean potent… they literally crawled onto the seats in the theater) — immersive practices helped keep many of this year’s productions fresh.

Here’s a rundown of the four immersive productions at the 2023 Toronto Fringe Festival, which ran July 5–16th. All tickets were $15.

Kyra de Magica — Kyra Tang

Kyra de Magica’s mom thinks she’s at Chinese dance class right now, but she’s actually across the street to the Toronto Fringe Festival in the hopes that her (very) amateur magic might convince Zac Efron that she’s the love of his life.

A tripwire is set up outside the venue to alert us as to whether her mother is outside, and we’re given very careful instructions on how to proceed should such a travesty occur — Distract her with loud noises! Spray her with this squirt bottle! Manspread so she can’t see through the aisle! And so, Kyra Tang’s 16-year-old alter ego, and her wordless (but hilariously frustrated) morphsuit-clad assistant, lead us on a surprisingly heartfelt adventure that is chaotic in the very best of ways.

The show was staged at St. Volodymyr Institute, a venue typically reserved for Toronto Fringe Festival’s KidsFest programming. Although the show isn’t specifically targeted toward children, this seems like a fitting location. Kyra de Magica may be a satirical magician, but throughout the course of her 60-minute show, she takes all of the chaos, whimsy, and fun of our favorite childhood programming and gives us the permission, even as adults, to recapture that magic.

Also, there was a giant block of gouda cheese. It was delicious.

The Will of a Woman — Diamond Heart Productions

As the only production billed as a proper “immersive theatre experience” at Toronto Fringe, Diamond Heart Productions’ latest show provided an interesting hook that helped it sell out its entire run. The show took place at The Spadina Museum, a fitting venue considering the show’s historical source material.

The Will of a Woman tells the story of Elizabeth Bethune Campbell, the first woman to defend herself before the Privy Council of England. As we weaved our way through The Spadina Museum, we followed Elizabeth through a series of scenes depicting the domestic drama, courtroom corruption, and societal misogyny that plagued her fight for justice. Though I definitely admire the resilience it took to make this stance, it was difficult at first to root for her — a socialite who essentially looked to disinherit her own sister through legal means. Later, as the nature of the court case was revealed to be fraud-related, it became easier to cheer on Campbell, but the story was at times unclear.

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Compared to other Toronto Fringe productions, The Will of a Woman was one of the most detailed, with excellent attention paid to costuming, props, and sets (largely thanks to the innate character of the museum itself). While immersion was partially achieved through our movement between the museum’s rooms, it was also dulled by the large size of the audience, which sometimes made it difficult to see the actors. In addition, our size meant that there were delays and breaks between each scene, as plainclothes company members ushered the party in the right direction. Due to this start-and-stop nature of the performance, the show felt more like a series of separate vignettes rather than a single uninterrupted narrative.

Ultimately, Spadina Museum was a fitting venue for this production, as the show has a museum-like quality to it, akin to one of the “Heritage Canada” television segments familiar to many Canadians. Though some of the production’s immersive aspects took away from the performance rather than adding to it, at the end of the day I now know an important piece of Canadian history that I likely would have passed over otherwise!

Mail Ordered — Shanice Stanislaus

Fresh off of wins at the Vancouver and Calgary Fringe Festivals, Mail Ordered shares the story of Lila, a young woman of unknown Asian heritage who is looking for a husband. The most important factor in her ideal man? He has to buy her for $100,000… and she’ll converse with the entire audience until she locates a man who fits the bill.

There’s a cleverness to Mail Ordered that best goes appreciated if you don’t go into it knowing too much. As the production is touring its way through the Fringe Festival circuit, I’ll refrain from saying anything that might spoil the fun.

The show takes a page out of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, and in doing so incorporates much of the same humor, commentary, and divisiveness that the former would have garnered. At times, the humor feels more like uncomfortable mockery, but as the show progresses, things are revealed to be deeper than they initially appear. The Singaporean-Calgarian production is an interesting melding of cultures and successfully draws on the identities and nuances of these two very different places.

There’s definitely a larger discussion to be had about the ethics of caricaturing what is essentially a form of human trafficking, but Mail Ordered is a well-executed show that made me think.

Muse: An Experiment in Storytelling and Life Drawing — Cameryn Moore / Little Black Book Productions

In 2017, Cameryn Moore started nude modeling in her new home of Berlin, Germany. The award-winning storyteller and performer is also known as the creator of Smut Slam, a global network of dirty-storytelling events.

In Muse, she takes a traditional live drawing session and transforms it into something more reciprocatory. Instead of her, the model, being the sole and silent creative muse of the engagement, we are invited to have a conversation with her as we draw. Discussion flowed from the expected (“How did you start nude modeling?”), to the philosophical (“Do you have any creative muses yourself?”), to the casual (“Do you have any pets?”), as Moore switched from pose to pose encouraging our art. First-time drawers, long-lapsed artists (like myself), and seasoned charcoal-wielders all found themselves side-by-side as we used the provided art materials to engage in the performance.

Themes of body positivity and creativity permeated throughout the discussion, but there was no specific predetermined narrative that Moore directed the conversation toward. Instead, she opted for a relaxed and cozy environment that was a well-appreciated refuge in the midst of a very busy Toronto Fringe Festival!

Thanks again to MEOW WOLF for sponsoring this year’s Next Stage Immersive Summit Next Generation of Creators & Audiences Pillar.

Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, new home of NoPro’s show listings.

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