Theatre director Ken Pinto responds to a question during the media launch of Theatre 400 at the Neptune Theatre in Halifax.Darren Pittman
When word got out that the 20-year-old Atlantic Fringe Festival was going on a two-year hiatus - a surprise decision of the festival's founder and artistic director, Ken Pinto - Halifax's tightly knit theatre community got to work.
Venues, from the established Neptune Theatre to a cash-strapped start-up, The Bus Stop Theatre, have offered to donate space or waive fees. And at a town hall in Halifax last weekend, led in part by 28-year-old local actor Stewart Legere, a volunteer committee was struck to help the Atlantic Fringe Festival's board of directors secure funding, seek out sponsorships and, with any luck, save the festival for 2011.
For a community that's already isolated from the country's artistic centres, Legere says that the loss of the Atlantic Fringe Festival - which brings performers from across the country to Halifax as well as giving local amateur theatres a platform for their work - would have a major impact. "One of the challenges we face is having relevance on a national scale, and that's one of the things a Fringe festival should do," he says. "A lot of emerging artists use the Fringe as their only outlet to create theatre. Two years without that, for some people, could potentially be devastating."
The news of the festival's hiatus came as a shock to many. Pinto didn't make a public announcement - or even inform his own board of directors - about the decision to press pause on the festival until he mentioned it offhandedly in an article in the Halifax Chronicle Herald last Tuesday. "People were confused, surprised, upset - I think people felt blindsided," says Legere.
The Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, the national body that administers the right to use the trademarked "Fringe" name, was also taken by surprise. "We were concerned," says David Jordan, CAFF's president. "There didn't seem to be a connection to the community." He adds that if a Fringe festival is inactive for 18 months, its designation can be revoked by a CAFF bylaw that he says Pinto did not know about when he made his decision.
Pinto says his decision to put the festival on hold was tied to his work on the city's Titanic 100 festival, which will commemorate the centennial of the ship's sinking in 2012. The load was simply too great to do both, he says, and he was still reeling from the death last year of Neil Sampson, who had managed the festival's box office since its inception.
"You never know how hard these things will hit you until they happen," he says. "My modus operandi is to keep on going, keep on going, but it was really rough last year."
Pinto did search for replacements among people he has worked with, but says he did not create a job posting. "I didn't think the people who were interested in taking over had the management skills yet," he says, adding that he wasn't sure that one interested theatre group would still be around. Therefore, Pinto says he decided in February to allow grant-application deadlines to pass, withdraw submitted applications and wait until the Titanic 100 press launch to make an announcement about the Fringe festival's hiatus.
"Looking back, I should've told other people [CAFF and the board]" he says. "This was not the plan. The plan was to do both, and maybe turn it over this year."
Pinto says he'd also hoped a hiatus would allow the Fringe to take stock and look at strategies for growth. While it was always in the black, it was never a competitive venture. His goal was to have the festival compete with the city's jazz and film festivals, and he believed a two-year break would allow him to plan that.
Pinto says he's been surprised by the reaction to his news. "I didn't think it would be this intense," he said. "I didn't see this kind of intensity until after the word got out."