Teaching the Fringe
Keir Cutler (Teaching Shakespeare) in his sixth consecutive Ottawa Fringe presents
“Teaching the Fringe”
written and performed by Keir Cutler, directed by TJ Dawe
In 2006 Keir wrote and performed Teaching As You Like It, TJ directed. The third play in the Teaching Shakespeare Trilogy, where Keir’s inept Shakespearean character has sunk to substitute teaching English in a high school. On the day he’s to teach Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It, he instead spends the class denying the rumour that he’s involved with one of the students in the class, who’s conspicuously absent that day. As he endlessly justifies himself he digs a bigger and bigger hole and inadvertently admits he’s done exactly what he’s been accused of. The show ends with him swamped in the guilt of his actions and admissions, waiting for the police to show up and arrest him.
Teaching As You Like It toured fringes across Canada in 2006 and 2007 receiving rave reviews from critics, the Ottawa Citizen called the play “utterly superb,” the mayor of Edmonton loved it, and a Toronto psychologist who treats abusive priests, asked Keir for a video of the piece to show his patients how they justify and rationalize their criminal behavior.
After his last fringe performance of the show at the 2007 Winnipeg Fringe, Keir was forwarded a three-page letter an audience member wrote to the head of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and most disturbingly, a child protection agency. The handwritten letter complains that the show promotes the idea that sexual predation of underaged girls is acceptable, and that it could be used as a textbook for anyone who wanted to take advantage of a student. Accusations not made by a single critic in any of the seven cities the play has been performed in.
Teaching the Fringe tells the story of Keir receiving this letter, and his reaction to it. Along with other stories of encounters with strange audience members. TJ directs again. The play is packed with hilarious comic insights, and is told with a biting sarcastic edge.
Much more on the show at http://www.keircutler.com
June 16th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
[...] when I’m planning these posts I worry that I’m stepping on Keir Cutler’s show, but I will hold to the adage that it’s the singer, not the song. The most common question [...]
June 17th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
[...] Keir Cutler’s Teaching the Fringe opens on Monday June 23, and runs until the 29th in the SAW Gallery (BYOV2). [...]
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:38 am
REVIEW in THE MONTREAL GAZETTE, Brett Bundale, June 18, 2008
“TEACHING THE FRINGE:
You have to wonder what Montrealer Keir Cutler is still doing in the Fringe circuit, but if you want to be seriously entertained by a phenomenal performer, don’t miss this. From the playwright and performer of the award-winning solo play Teaching Shakespeare comes Cutler’s first autobiographical show. Directed by Fringe favourite TJ Dawe, it’s a witty and urbane look at the menace of rogue audience members. In addition to holding a Ph.D. in theatre from Wayne State University in Detroit and a playwriting diploma from the National Theatre School, he’s also really, really funny.”
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
YOU HAVE TO GO!
If you didn’t see “Teaching As You Like It” at the Ottawa Fringe last year, you missed one of the best shows in town. I went twice. Here’s an excerpt with some great improv showing Keir’s real talent as an actor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9isKZbRn1o
This is the show that provoked the idiotic reaction from a Winnipeg audience member who obviously doesn’t understand the premise and role of theatre. Especially Fringe theatre. We usually ignore the idiots but because there a few very dangerous idiots out there who are hell bent on ruining a good thing, I’m gratified to see Keir Cutler has turned righteous indignation into such fine art.
I’m not sure if non-facebook people can actually view the following, but it’s a 2 minute preview of “Teaching the Fringe” and gives you a good inkling of what you can expect: more of Keir’s great writing talent and a very confident, competent delivery.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=24879756130
Put this on your “must see list”, turn off your cell phones and laugh where appropriate.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:54 am
He’s a funny man; I laughed. But the contest wasn’t fair - Keir took
most of a year to craft a line-by-line (or, at times, word-by-word)
rebuttal of a three-page hand-written letter from a nut. The results are
predictably devastating; HOWEVER, in the back of my mind, I was thinking
“hey - pick on someone your own size”. It was like one of those email
replies you get, where someone has taken what you wrote in haste in five
minutes and spent two weeks refuting every word you used, with references.
I would have found it funnier if Keir had invented the letter, rather
than showing us how a real letter got so under his skin that he felt
obligated to conduct a public tar-and-feather of the writer.
Alas, it is such a good tar-and-feather that I almost forgive him for
using his intellectual sledgehammer to swat her emotional fly. Almost.
“Do not try to teach pigs to sing. It can’t be done, and it annoys the pig.”
June 25th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I feel like Ian(!), above, might have missed the point of Keir Cutler’s hilarious solo show, “Teaching the Fringe”. As Keir himself says, this is his first actually autobiographical show — prior to this, he’s played characters in his solo productions, never himself. The seed of this year’s play is that a complaint letter about his previous show interpreted his invented professor character to be HIM (KEIR). The letter-writer couldn’t discern fact from fiction (among other problems, of course), and real-life Keir was troubled enough to break his usual convention and write a show about the REAL him, reacting in REAL life to a REAL (if hilariously dysfunctional) situation, thus taking us through the very very funny and universal journey of “what do you do when you’re grossly misinterpreted?” In other words: it’s the REALITY of the letter that lets us see the REALITY behind being a Fringe actor, a touring performer, an insecure-yet-bold artist committed to facing that crazy cross-section of humanity known as an audience every single day. Fictionalizing this story would take away all its authenticity and urgency. Furthermore, the letter serves mostly as a DEVICE — a plotline — to tell many other stories and anecdotes; it’s not the sole source of content in the production!
It’s a great, funny, clever play, “Teaching the Fringe” is — a highly relatable story of the way we ALL feel helpless against the unwashed masses we encounter in our work, set against the wonderful, quirky specifics of Fringing life.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Definitely one of my favourites to date. What a great story, although maybe not so great for Cutler to experience at the time. He has such a great way of telling it, too. Aside from Totem Figures, this is the only show I’ve seen all Fringe where the actor is really acting as themselves with no other characters joining them along the way. Oh, I’m sure there are true autobiographical elements to almost all of the shows, some more than others, but to me both Totem Figures and Teaching the Fringe push my notion of what a play really is. It’s kind of like a spoken word performance meets a play, do you know what I mean? I mean, Cutler was acting, but as himself. As for the show, I don’t want to say a whole lot as I really enjoyed watching it all unfold. But I will say I am really curious to see how this show is met in Winnipeg. Keep us posted, Keir Cutler!
June 26th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
After the show, Scott Florence, Artistic Director and co-founder of A Company of Fools says to me: “It’s very funny.”
Thank God, it’s not just me.
Depending on the show, I normally laugh at Keir Cutler’s humour. Often. Sometimes very very loudly.
For his best show, “Teaching As You Like It”, I laughed often, very very loudly, and very guiltily. The topic, a teacher’s lust for an underage student creaped me out. Especially the laughably delusional rationalizations with which the main character tried to justify and normalize his behaviour. But I couldn’t turn away, as though looking at some awful road accident that wouldn’t let me go.
Cutler earned kudos, and high praise reviews from critics and audience members alike. His houses were packed.
Then Cutler entered the Twilight Zone. He was accused, in writing, of teaching the luring and seduction of young girls and reported to Child Find Manitoba.
Teaching the Fringe is his artistic response to that accusation. It is also his response to the numerically small nutbar fringe that he somehow attracts to his shows. Keir Cutler, nut magnet.
That Keir Cutler should defend his reputation with his skills and talents does not surprise me. That he could step back from this affront and get me and the rest of the audience to laugh, in the face of such a seriously warped interpretation of his work, impresses me. That he could turn that defense into art (with the assistance of T.J. Dawe as director) amazes me.
Yet Wednesday’s audience was restrained, myself included. (Reviews have reported gales of laughter at other shows.) What held us back? What held me back?
I’m with Scott Florence. This is a very funny show. But the fact that art can be threatened by such misguided accusations chills me.
To the bone.
A must see.
June 28th, 2008 at 9:54 am
An absolute riot! Everyone was telling me to see this show and I am so glad I did. Now, I’m passing it on. GO! DO NOT MISS!