A cross-Canada Fringe friendship has resulted in a new and uncommon collaboration between local and visiting artists at this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Serious Comedy is the brainchild of local comedian Quinn Greene and veteran Fringe performer Adam Bailey from Toronto. The show will feature a rotating cast of performers joining Greene and Bailey onstage\u00a0for a series of longform improv shows riffing off the life stories of audience members.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It feels weird that we don’t\u00a0do more of this, actually,” says Bailey, adding that the community of performers from Winnipeg and away often gather socially throughout the festival.\u00a0“I’m shocked that there aren’t more, but if it takes Quinn and me to initiate doing something like this, then let’s do something like this.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Mutual admiration show-ciety\u00a0<\/p>\n
Greene says that he and Bailey “met a thousand times” over the course of many Fringe Festivals before they truly got together this this idea.\u00a0Both men\u00a0immediately\u00a0recall\u00a0all\u00a0the bits they would do just\u00a0hanging out\u00a0with other performers between shows.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Whenever we hang out, it’s almost like a mini-improv riff happening on the spot,” laughs Bailey, adding that it was moments like these that eventually compelled them to put a plan to paper for Serious Comedy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Greene is excited at the prospect of deepening their friendship as the run of the show begins in earnest this week. “This show will be an opportunity for us to learn more about each other on stage, which is always super fun, and sharing that experience with the audience,” he says. “This is a one-night-only experience for\u00a0those audiences coming to see the Fringe.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
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RELATED STORIES<\/p>\n
Longform improv blends humour and\u00a0heart\u00a0<\/p>\n
While both Greene and Bailey come from comedy backgrounds, they both also have a more serious streak that will serve them as empathetic improvisers working with stories given to them by the audience\u00a0in a form of improv called Armando, a type of blend between improvisation and\u00a0monologue elements similar to\u00a0stand-up comedy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’re very grounded as people.\u00a0We’re\u00a0very emotional as people, I think,” explains Greene while underlining that the comedy is the element that will remain front and\u00a0centre. “We’re serious about it being funny. It’s got to be funny… but we can take moments to be emotional, to maybe have our audiences tear up, get into some arguments on stage, let the fire come out, just playing with the form because\u00a0improv can be many, many things.”<\/p>\n
Source: Winnipeg Fringe Festival.<\/p>\n
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With an hour to fill with\u00a0Serious Comedy, Greene and Bailey are betting big on the chemistry of their Fringe friendship to carry them through the show.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Improv is sort of like, in this case, an hour-long trust fall,” says\u00a0Greene. “You just start doing things and you ‘yes, and’ each other and you look each other in the eyes and make sure\u00a0that,\u00a0‘Hey,\u00a0whatever\u00a0you say,\u00a0I’m\u00a0with you. Whatever you do,\u00a0I’m\u00a0going to roll with that.'”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Winnipeg Fringe Festival\u00a0officially opens on July\u00a015 with Serious Comedy opening the next\u00a0afternoon at the Rachel Browne Theatre in the Exchange\u00a0District. Showtimes, tickets and more details can be found at the festival’s website.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cross-Canada Fringe friendship has resulted in a new and uncommon collaboration between local and visiting artists at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-799265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}