Fringe is about hitting the road, sleeping on strangers’ couches, and doing everything you can to get people to see your show. In her documentary, On the Fringe, Nancy Kenny gives us a peek into Fringe lifestyle via her tour of the Canadian Fringe circuit, moving from city to city performing her award-winning show, Roller Derby Saved My Soul.
I got a chance to see both the documentary and the play last week at Tampa’s inaugural Fringe, where Roller Derby Saved My Soul won “the pick of the fringe.” As she drove off to Orlando, I chatted with her (over speakerphone) about the inspiration behind On the Fringe and Roller Derby Saved My Soul and about her favorite Tampa Fringe moments.
I really loved your documentary On the Fringe. What made you decide to produce a fringe documentary? How did you get started?
In Canada we have the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, which is the body that oversees all the Fringe festivals in Canada. And they have their own lottery before all the other ones, where if you get chosen in that lottery, you get to do [all the shows you signed up for].
I put down eight festivals, thinking I wasn’t going to get them, [but] I did, which meant I had a full summer tour booked. And a friend of mine said, “People have been talking for ages about how there should be a documentary about Fringe. Since you’re going to be in all the cities, you should do that.” And I was like, “Okay,” not really knowing the amount of work that it would take, or knowing anything about filmmaking. I’m really glad at the time I didn’t [know], because I don’t know if I would have undertaken this project.
He [the friend] also connected me with a friend of his, [Natalie Watson], that was just graduating from film school and wanted to do a cross-country road trip-type movie, and he said, “You guys should get together.” We talked for the first time over Skype, and we clicked instantly, which was so good. The most important thing for me was: Is this someone I can spend four months on the road with?
And she was.
She was the one that did a lot of the filmmaking and editing. We brought on another guy — [Cory Thibert] — he’s also a fringe performer, but he’s a filmmaker and a director, and he came on to direct the movie. So just three of us doing this whole thing.
Since you are now my go-to expert on the Fringe lifestyle, how would you describe a Fringe festival to someone who has never been to one?
Well…A fringe festival is an unjuried, uncensored festival of the performing arts. So most festivals the participants are selected by lottery, which means even the festival organizers have no idea what’s going to be on stage in their venue. That’s what I think is so great about Fringe. You get veterans that have been performing for years and years and years, or you can get people who have never ever done a show and they just had an idea and they really wanted to do something on stage so they just grab a group of friends together and put on a show. The level is so varied, and it’s really magical because of that. It’s like this grab-bag surprise thing.
I started calling Fringe “the Netflix of theater,” because you can binge-watch all of these shows for a fairly cheap rate. It’s very inexpensive compared to seeing shows in big venues and stuff like that. If you don’t like something, like if it wasn’t your cup of tea, most shows are quite short — like, they’re less than an hour, so you can just go to the next one and maybe you’ll find one that you absolutely adore. You get to discover something you didn’t know you liked or missed in your life by going to try something out. So it’s really cool in that way.
Believe it or not, I actually liked all of the shows that I ended up going to during this Fringe.
I believe it, actually, because I saw 13 shows at the festival and I liked every single one.
What (or who) was your inspiration for Amy in Roller Derby Saved My Soul?
All of my writing has a piece of me in it. There are parts of me in Amy; there are parts of me in June; there are parts of me in Diana. The play itself came about at a time when I was turning 30. I do have a younger sister. She’s nothing like June, but I have a younger sister who is married and has two kids, and owns a big house and two cars, and has a really fancy job.
At the time, I was couch-surfing, and doing Fringe shows, and I really had no idea what I was doing with my life, and all the milestones you’re told you’re supposed to have hit by now weren’t there. So that was really the inspiration — how it started. The Roller Derby story is more of an envelope to that story of self-discovery.
I’d never actually done roller derby before, but I was sitting in a coffee shop and there was a newspaper with roller derby on the cover. When I read the article it just clicked, you know? It was like…This is it. This subject matter is the show.
So I joined my local roller derby team and started practicing with them. A lot of stories that came out — the derby anecdotes — are all things that I’ve heard from roller derby players. Like the way that June describes your basic stance — that’s an amalgamation of a couple different roller derby coaches who have said those different things at various points. The derby names are all true. When I first heard the name Justin Cider, I didn’t get it. It took me a minute and a half before I figured out. (Just inside her, get it?) You know, things like that. A lot of that.
And I was, like, a huge Buffy fan [Buffy the Vampire Slayer] when I was growing up as a teenager, and I’m a big nerd. It’s all those things that came together. So everything is like bits and pieces from my own life, but the story itself is fictional.
I got the impression that Amy joined roller derby to impress a woman. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done to impress someone?
Oh that’s a good question…
[“What is the craziest thing I’ve ever done to impress someone before?” she asks her partner, Wes Babcock, “Did I do something to impress you?”
[“Uh, me?” Wes says. “I think the craziest thing you’ve done to impress me is writing a whole piece of theater.”
[“That impressed you?” Nancy says, “I don’t think that’s the craziest thing I’ve done to…”
[“Did you do anything wild in university?” Wes asks Nancy.]
This is embarrassing.
Do you know what the Century Club is? It’s a drinking game where you do 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes. And at university, I played Century Club one night with a bunch of people from my residence floor. I made it to the end, but I wasn’t drinking beer because I actually didn’t like the taste of beer at the time. So I was drinking coolers, which have even more alcohol. And I just kept going…not to impress…but I was playing a bunch of the guys who were there, ‘cause I wanted to be the cool chick that could drink more than the boys.
I don’t drink anymore now, but I think that is one of the craziest things I’ve done.
How did you imagine Roller Derby Saved My Soul when you first wrote it? Did you initially see it as a one-woman show or did you imagine it in a different format? What would you do with the story if it had a Broadway budget and you could do whatever you wanted?
It’s always been a one-woman show — that was always the goal. But if I had a big budget, there would be a roller derby track on a stage. There would be an actual, actual track [currently, she uses tape to create the track]. There would be a backdrop…a big set….The director and I also thought of having the track in lights, so when Amy is home there’s nothing there, but when she’s at the roller derby, or she’s playing roller derby, it’s all lit up. Like, the floor’s all lit up. So the track would be made out of lights. I’ve also thought about adding more multimedia elements, like projections and adding video of roller derby games and stuff. That was all stuff I had in mind.
But that’s what I love about Fringe. I love the simplicity of what I have right now, because it forces you to just pay attention to the story, and it forces me to write the best story that I can. Because then it’s not bogged down by the theatrics of it.
… Another thing that I would like, is I would love to have more time to train my roller skating — to level it up — because I’d love to do more tricks during the show on roller skates. That’s another thing that I would love to do.
What was your favorite thing about Tampa Fringe? In other words, what was the most fun you had while you were in town?
Oh my god, there are so many! I got to meet a roller team in St. Pete called Deadly Rival, and they have a banked roller derby track, which we don’t have in Canada. I went to visit them and got to skate on that track, which was so cool. They were so nice and awesome. They were just great. And then when they came to see the show, we went out to Hamburger Mary’s and we saw a drag show, and that was really fun.
As for the Fringe itself, it was the people and their shows. Everyone’s so inspiring and passionate and wonderful. I know it’s just the first year of the festival, but it didn’t feel that way.
Wes chimes in: It was very well run. The caliber of the shows was very high. And compared to other festivals that we’ve been to, in other cities that have a much longer history or are more established, the median quality of the work here was higher than usual, and the best work was also better than usual. So it was just really great to see that concentration of good artistic work in a new festival like that.
Back to Nancy: Yeah, and another great thing…I got to get out and meet the people, like Ryan Adam Wells (Beers about Songs). And we got to hang out with Trish and Will, who organized the festival; we realized that we had actually been at the same festival touring many, many times, but the first time we actually met was here in Tampa, because the festival was small enough that you could meet everyone. And that was just great. Honesty, I’m looking forward to when it’s a longer festival so we can spend more time here, because we just had a blast.
Wes: Getting to know Ybor and walking around down there – the food, and…
Nancy: Ybor is beautiful. It’s a great neighborhood.
Wes: Honestly, the whole experience was really great.
This article appears in May 18-25, 2017.