This is the fourth year we have toured a show with Poiema Productions.  Touring around Canada has become quite the norm to us Poiema Gals, but as we come to the end of this year’s "Anatolia Speaks" tour, it occurred to me that many people might not know what touring is like.  So why not take this time to highlight some of the best and worst things about touring?

1. A good thing about touring is the extended vacation you get.  If you make money off your show, great! You just got a free vacation!  If you don’t make money, at least you still got to travel, right?  Depending on the show, you also get to travel with your very best friends and see parts of Canada (and sometimes the world) that you may not have traveled to before.  In our case, the shows we’ve put on have taken us to: Winnipeg, London (Ontario), Victoria, Vancouver, Parksville, Nanaimo and Cranbrook. 

2. One part of touring that can be good and bad is your accommodation.  A very noble thing that many people do during Fringe time is open up their homes to random artists they’ve never met, offering a place to sleep, food to eat, and an entire home to live in for the two weeks of Fringe time.  I am happy to say that we’ve had more good experiences with our billets than bad.  Our bad experiences include messy houses with hoarder tendencies, apartments reeking of cat pee, and showers that you wish you brought flip flops to wear into.  But thankfully the good greatly outweighs the bad.  We’ve had a wonderful woman in Winnipeg two years in a row that shared her one-bedroom apartment with us, even taking the couch so we could have her bed.  The second year she was house-sitting and still trusted us enough to stay at her apartment without her.  Another wonderful and kind woman let all four of us take over her basement, each having a bed to ourself, and a bathroom for us to share.  She made it very clear that we were always welcome to use her kitchen and make ourselves at home.  

Of course, the only thing better than a great billet, is having family or friends to stay with.  My auntie Allison lives in Victoria and welcomed all four of us two years in a row.  She also gave up her bed and opted to sleeping on a mattress on the floor for us.  She cooked us some of the best home-cooking I’ve ever had, a much-needed treat after weeks of traveling fueled by fast-food and granola bars.  A huge reason we bring our shows to Cranbrook every year (Candice’s hometown) is because we get to stay with Candice’s parents.  Their beautiful house in the Kootenays can feel like home to anyone staying there.  Their Italian hospitality means there is always delicious food and drinks to welcome you and sustain you for your entire trip.  I think it’s an unwritten law there that they will never let anyone go hungry.  They have a beautiful pool that we always play endless hours of Marco Polo in, a huge yard where we play sardines, and we always get to have a fire where we roast marshmallows and sing songs.  A big reason we tour to the places we do (Nanaimo, Cranbrook, Victoria, hopefully one day Courtenay and Qualicum Beach…) is because it’s a great excuse for us to visit our family and friends all over the country.  And their huge support of our shows and open arms is more encouraging than they could ever know.  This year, we got to stay with family friends of Candice's, in Qualicum Beach, just a short commute to Nanaimo for the show.  We felt at home and so comfortable and can't thank them enough for having us and treating us like family.

The year we toured "Happily Ever After?", we were staying in Sara's cousin's apartment in Vancouver while they were away on their honeymoon.  The apartment was in a prime downtown location, and just a few steps from the water.  We felt like royalty.  One night, we cooked a lovely dinner at the apartment and decided to 'jam' with Sara's guitar and our loud, but beautiful voices.  Time got away from us, and we ended up singing at the top of our lungs, harmonizing, feeling like we were really sounding great, until way past midnight.  We thought nothing of it and went to bed.  The next day, Sara got a call from her cousin saying that there were several complaints from the neighbours in the building, complaining that the people in the apartment were extremely loud, throwing parties, and reeking havoc.  We were completely embarrassed and extremely apologetic, assuring her that we were not the party-type, just the singing-late-at-night-without-thinking type.  We were forced by the building to leave and were desperate to find new accommodation... fast.  I put it on Facebook and that very night, my sister's friend offered her basement suite to us.  She would stay at her friend's while we needed her place for the rest of the Fringe.  It's times like these that make you realize how generous people really are!  

3.  A great thing that happens at Fringe time is the artists, volunteers and theatre-goers create this fun little community for a short while.  Everyone goes to the same bar or lounge allocated for Fringe gatherings and you can always find a familiar face.  Everyone is on the same page and is ready to help you out, often cross-promoting shows, offering advice, and always interested in how your Fringe experience is going.  If you know us or have met us, we have probably told you about Chasing Demons, our favourite addictive card game we are obsessed with.  It is not rare for us to leave the party early to go home and play instead of the more advantageous mingling that we should be doing.  

4.  A challenging thing about touring a show is traveling with props, set, costumes and not to mention the people that take up quite a bit of space.  That is why you may see most Fringe shows with minimal amounts of all of these, such as "Anatolia Speaks".  It includes Candice, a table (which we find at each theatre we’re in), a projector and a screen.  Easy to travel with.  It took us a little while to learn this.  If you recall our first shows were a bit more costume and set heavy.  It’s a hard thing to have a grand set design in your head that completely enhances the show, and try to scale it down to fit in the back of a car.  Luckily, some of the best shows don’t need a huge spectacle and draw audiences all on their own.  Ahem… "Anatolia Speaks" and "Aletheia" to name a few.

5.  A wonderful thing about traveling a show is that you get to perform it many times.  A normal Fringe spot gives you 6 performances.  We usually spend about a year creating the shows, so 6 performances never feels like enough.  That’s a big reason I love touring.  We can do the shows, improve them, rewrite, learn a ton, then pick up and take it somewhere else to try again.  We’ve always said that a show is never finished.  We always want to keep a script open to edits and new ideas.

That’s a small insight to my experience in touring a show.  I never thought I would be where I am now, and that touring would be such a big part of my life.  Thanks to everyone for giving us temporary homes, time off work, food to eat, and unlimited encouragement.

ALETHEIA opened Friday night at the Vancouver Fringe. There was a standing ovation at the end, and the audience was swimming with people I knew and some faces I didn’t. Am I ever blessed that people came! Especially blessed that I get to share something I am so passionate about with people.

Our fringe plays get produced and become successful due to a lot of late nights, countless hours in front of a computer, poutine (or your comfort food of choice), and emotional discharge. This summer has been a different experience for all the Poiema Gals. Last summer, though I did my solo show, we were all still in a show in the same city together. This summer, however, Candice toured (and still is) and though I am fringing also, we will not be performing in the same city. Strange, I’m a little nostalgic about it, but I have to say, I am proud of all of the growth and expansion we are doing as individuals. Being able to promote, perform, and produce my solo show really gives me a lot of pride. It’s also nerve racking as ever, so thank God it continues to be successful or I might have a tiny emotional break down.

I have done a few promotional things all on my own this year: performing at The Flame, at the fringe-free-for-all, and last night when I headed to the fringe bar with some friends from another show I am in called FrAcTured (which also opened last night immediately after my fringe show) to mingle and talk with other performers. Gotta say, I feel like I’ve grown up or something. My family (the Poiema Gals) aren’t around me anymore, and so I have to carry my own torch, and I’m happy to say that I haven’t started anything on fire yet!

Its like going on your first vacation without your family, or moving away from home (which is literally what I’ve done) and noticing you're alone, but you are okay. ‘I’m a big kid now.’ ……….but thank goodness Brianne and Candice will be visiting me for two days starting Monday! ;)

 If you are in Vancouver, pop on over to Studio 16 and see ALETHEIA and FrAcTured, I am happy to say, they will probably be two of the most thought provoking plays at the Vancouver Fringe this year.