Thursday Adventures - Fringe 2024 - Mass Debating and Weird Al Karaoke!

Mass Debating - brought to the Fringe by 100% More Girls (the unification of Whizgiggling and Guys in Disguise) this was a really cute and funny musical about a junior high debate competition between an all girls school and an all boys school. Set in past (1970s?) there are many moments highlighting the expectations for girls vs. boys in the competition and in the world as a whole. In this production, the women play the boys, and the men play the girls.  It was very smart to choose junior high as there is perhaps the biggest gap in maturity between grade 7s, 8s and 9s than in high school grades and the show uses those differences to show us the internal and external relationships of the competitors with themselves. It's got the flavour and feel of Putnam County Spelling Bee and I think it could actually be something like that with a little expansion on the script! Also, there's an amazing tap number!! I had so much fun and I highly recommend - however, it might be hard to get tickets at this point! Written and directed by Trevor Schmidt with music by Mason Snelgrove. 

Weird Al Karaoke - I have been interested in this local company for a few year now and finally got myself to one of their shows. They perform throughout the year every third Thursday night at Grindstone. This show is a Greatest Hits of numbers from the past season. I had a lot of fun. The premise is that the comedian/performers select a song to which they create their own parody song. Favourites from the show included an homage to the movie Dune 2 (sung to the tune of Petula Clark's Downtown); a song about the slow build of the LRT Valley Line to Millwoods (sung to the tune of Midnight Train to Georgia); a veritable dictionary of Gen-Z slang in a song titled You're a Mid One, Mr. Cringe (for which I need to get the lyrics so I can understand what my students are saying!). A Very funny show and I hope to catch it in the regular season (and maybe even try it out myself?!). 

Tickets for all shows here. 

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