The Nanaimo Fringe Festival is back for another year with 14 plays being shown around the city. Among those, at least two of the plays feature non-binary and transgender characters, writers and performers.
Theoxinia is a play about a dysfunctional throuple whose apartment is invaded by three badly-behaved gods demanding hospitality. It is also the recipient of the Pacific Coast Stage Company’s Trans Artist Scholarship, which was made possible by an anonymous local resident.
The other play, Percolate, is a duo of two-person plays that take place at the same time in a local coffee shop. The setting, at White Rabbit Coffee Co., gives audiences the feeling of listening in on cafe conversations as the plays take place. Percolate is also making Nanaimo Fringe Festival history as the first “bring your own venue performance” ever at the festival.
“It’s a real opportunity to see something unique,” said Tamara McCarthy, director of Percolate and the Fringe festival’s former artistic producer. “This is our 15th annual Fringe, so it’s been running for a while and this is the first time we have a show like this.”
Bring your own venue
Audience members who are seeing Percolate will have the opportunity to lean into the cafe atmosphere where the duo of plays are set. They’ll be able to order drinks and tune into conversations in the plays being performed simultaneously around them.
One of the plays in Percolate is A Coffee for You, written by comedians Scarlet Chen and Patti Savard. The play features a character who is an older Chinese woman who comes into the cafe and talks with the trans woman working as a barista.
“Without revealing too much, we realize pretty quickly that their lives are a little more intertwined than we might first think,” McCarthy said.
Savard told The Discourse that as a trans woman, the character she plays is similar to herself.
“Getting to actually put myself fully into her story and feel her emotions was a beautiful experience,” Savard said.
In her own life, Savard transitioned six years ago, just before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I hit a point in my life where I could not satisfy contentment through achievement anymore, and that’s when I truly woke up,” she said. “There’s always been a whisper and I allowed that inner voice to come through and woke up to myself.”
Savard said the play hits home for her and that “the script itself demands an incredible amount of vulnerability.”
“The questions are the hard questions,” Savard said. “Whether or not I’m in character or myself they’re the same questions … Those uncomfortable questions cut through the character into me.”
The second play happening in the cafe is Naming my Many Selves on a Map of the Constellations by Joy Dube and Scarlet Chen. The play is about a woman reflecting on her life as an immigrant from India who is now living in Nanaimo as she talks about an auto-biographical play.
Both plays in Percolate launched from forum theatre workshops hosted by Pacific Coast Stage Co. — which also puts on the Nanaimo Fringe Festival. The workshops were held for immigrants and newcomers in the city who wanted to share their stories.
Percolate plays on Wednesday and Thursday evening at White Rabbit Coffee Co. Tickets can be purchased on the Port Theatre’s website.
Throuple meets trio of demanding gods
In Theoxenia, written by Duncan-based playwright Evan Shumka, sees a dysfunctional throuple’s apartment invaded by a trio of sadistic gods demanding hospitality from the humans.
The title of the play is rooted in an ancient Greek ritual of entertaining the gods. In texts such as the Odyssey, the gods masquerade in disguise and test mortal morals and virtues. In the case of this play, however, Shumka said the gods are just there “to have a good time at the expense of mortals.”
Shumka decided to put a throuple at the centre of this play to create a dramatic and “fraught situation that the gods could torment them with.” The throuple in the play consists of a man named Nick, a woman named Tegan and non-binary person named Erin.
“It kind of balanced out that situation and changed the gender dynamic within that unit,” Shumka said about choosing to write a non-binary character into the play. “If it had been, say, just a man coming in it would be a lot different between that guy and Nick. It would have been something we’re used to seeing, like posturing.”
Shumka said having a non-binary character as part of the throuple makes Nick less sure how to relate to a person coming into their marriage who is “quite kind and sweet” and harder for him to hate.
“It makes it more difficult and therefore more interesting to watch,” Shumka said.
As a straight, cisgender man, Shumka said writing a non-binary character should be the same as a man writing about any other person.
“They’re a person first when you’re writing about them and just like you, they are deeply feeling everything that’s going on in the story,” he said.
As a new graduate of Vancouver Island University’s creative writing program, Shumka said being selected for the Nanaimo Fringe Festival was “huge” and “amazing.”
“This is one of the most beautiful places there is to live and it’s my home,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to stay close to home for a while, hone my craft, and collaborate with these amazing artists.
Theoxenia plays on Friday and Saturday afternoon (August 15 and 16) at the Ouroboros Theatre. Tickets can be purchased on the Port Theatre’s website.
Festival repairing relationship with trans community
Percolate’s McCarthy was the artistic producer for Pacific Coast Stage Co. for the past two years and worked to “repair relationships with the transgender community” after a previous artistic director made transphobic comments on social media in 2023. The former artistic director’s actions resulted in the Nanaimo Fringe Festival being removed as a member of Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals before being reinstated in 2024.
In addition to the scholarship for trans artists, McCarthy said the festival has created a liaison position with the LGBTQ community who is on site if any artists are concerned about an issue relating to the festival’s safer spaces policy and does not feel comfortable talking to the artistic director about it.
The organization also brought in Nanaimo Pride president Lauren Semple to hold a workshop for Fringe Festival volunteers on pronouns and gender inclusive washrooms in 2024.
Savard said her experience in the festival is that “there is an openness amongst the organization, and we’re all learning together. Even if mistakes are made they’re greeted with open-mindness.”
