We at Hopegrown are pragmatic. Since the Fall, we’ve been anticipating this moment: the dance between the exhilaration of completing an undergraduate degree and the crushing fear of the future. We wanted to keep busy in the face of the unknown, so we designed a 6-city summer tour. Now it’s June, so it’s time to collect our gowns for Convocation time to begin our international summer tour.
For the past four years, we’ve been incubating at Concordia. It’s absolutely humbling to have the opportunity to premiere a new play, Around Miss Julie, at the **St-Ambroise Montreal FRINGE Festival this year. Montreal has offered the members of Hopegrown a wide variety of mind-blowing opportunities, both through Concordia and the larger theatre community. We are so excited to share our work with our peers, mentors, potential future collaborators and, of course, the FRINGE community.
Our Montreal run will launch us into a section of the tour that we like to think of as The Hometown tour. After Montreal FRINGE we will go to Ottawa, the hometown of Lindsey Huebner and Norah Paton. Norah got in touch with her high school buddy, Jonah Allingham (May Can Theatre, Backpack Theatre) and suggested that Hopegrown share a space with his company in the Ottawa Fringe. Hopegrown will be sharing Bring-Your-Own-Venue “H”, the T.A.N. Café (317 Wilbrod Street), with May Can Theatre Company and Backpack Theatre.
Next, we’ll head to London, ON, the hometown of Miriam Cummings. Miriam spent many hours at The Arts Project, both onstage and in the audience, during high school. Performing with Hopegrown in London is going to be a serious case of worlds colliding – in a great way. Our show isn’t part of a Festival in London, so we have the luxury of pre- and post-show time. Before each show in London, local talent will open the show and Hopegrown will facilitate a talk-back afterward.
Finally, we’ll perform in Burlington – Sam’s hometown. Around Miss Julie will share the stage with a number of other companies as a part of the Flounder Festival, a weekend affair housed by Burlington Student Theatre. Sam grew up performing with this theatre company and doing everything from organizing events to sewing costumes to working at camp.
We’re also taking the show to the Hamilton Fringe and then to Edinburgh, Scotland, to participate in the largest arts festival in the world: The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. (YEAAAAAAAAAAAAH!)
We want to keep you posted this summer and stay connected with Montreal’s fantastic community. We’ll be updating BU each time we take our show to a new city so check back here and on our Facebook and Twitter pages for anecdotes and news. See you at the FRINGE(S)!
