I can barely believe it.
This blog was supposed to be our haven, our confessional, our tell-it-all to the world of our complete travels across the vast country of Canada in our pursuit to play our play, Crude Love: Love in the Time of the Oil Sands to anyone who would come. But we got tired.
So we simply performed the play and focused on that, and we spread the word by the old traditional way of word-of-mouth. And somehow that worked.
To recap:
In Winnipeg, we got slammed. Not only did we have to rent our own venue, but we had to rent a venue that was too far away for people to come to, unless they really wanted to see your play. But somehow, even after performing in Winnipeg for three years prior, we still hadn't developed a following. Or even a loathing. So we lost our shirts, and our morale, and Gill even lost her identity - some thieving retailer double-swiped her bank card and stole her pin. They put a phony cheque of $800 into her account, and then tried to take it out. But little did they know that she only had $5 in her account, so they got nothing, and she got notified, and then we got depressed. Because we only had $5 in her account. Ah, the glamourous life of a fringe tour performer!
But in Saskatoon, things started to turn around. We stayed with the inimitable Peter Kooey, and his lovely girlfriend, who treated us like family. They were so hospitable, and supportive of our play. We got a decent review in the paper, and started selling tickets again. And then a reviewer from Edmonton came to preview the play for the largest festival on the circuit, and loved it.
Because Edmontonians could buy tickets online, we started selling out in Edmonton even before we arrived. Unbelievable! It was helpful that our venue only held 100 people, but the word got out fast, and we were the only show in the whole fringe that sold out every single show. We were overjoyed. The Greenpeace Stop-the-Tar-Sands folks came and loved the show. We received incredible donations for Greenpeace in Edmonton, and the quality of the play rose as well. We were offered Pick of the Fringe, but turned it down, in favour of traveling to Victoria - too bad they overlapped.
Victoria was a great short stop along the way, bringing in fast cash for Greenpeace, and a favourable last-minute review from Monday Magazine. And what a joy to breathe in that coastal air again.
But the climax of the tour was most certainly found in our home town Vancouver, where again we sold out every single show - it helped that we could only squeeze 60 people in the venue. But reviewers and audiences alike loved the play. We managed to pull off a play that we had been dreaming of - a love story set in the near future with a political bent, not beating people over the head with it, but caressing them with it. We had many wet eyes at the end of shows, and our performances were never stronger.
We were voted Pick of the Fringe, and sold out the Waterfront Theatre (a dream of mine since The Reefer Man tour) two out of our three extra shows. It was a monumental event for us. We received standing ovations and the most money collected for Greenpeace in any city on the tour. Vancouverites rock! We were featured on the cover of the Georgia Straight weekly magazine, with an excellent article by Colin Thomas. We were given more than we had asked for.
But, on the night of our first sell-out at the Waterfront Theatre, I found out that my grandfather Sidney Goodman had died. Right after our last performance, we flew back to Toronto for his funeral, and I quickly realized again how fragile life is, and how short. We went from Sidney's graveside service to our friend Sarah Jane's beautiful fall wedding. And then back to Vancouver.
And in a quiet, two post-fringe performances, we closed the Crude Love tour at the Jericho Arts Centre, playing to small houses, coming back full circle to where we had begun in Montreal.
We collected an incredible $4,370.10 for Greenpeace's End-the-Tar-Sands campaign. We collected an armful of 4 and 5-star reviews, and we got to perform 62 times in the span of five months over eight Canadian cities. It was an incredible way to realize the fruits of our honeymoon writing retreat in Nicaragua. And I personally feel like the luckiest man on the planet, to be married to such an incredible woman - a talent like Gillian is rare - she is a brilliant actress, a soulful writer, and the most amazing wife and lover I could have ever imagined. Our love is anything but crude.
