2009 FRINGE FESTIVAL www.vancouverfringe.com
SPONSOR REVIEW
All photos by Brice Ferre unless otherwise noted.
Above: The Fringe bridge banner welcomed visitors to Granville Island. Below: Our logo was the opening slide to our Opening Night Gala Slideshow.
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hat a Festival! We staged 471 performances of 68 plays for an audience of 24,503—that’s a 6% increase in our regular Festival programming! We formed a spontaneous village of volunteers, artists, and fans to celebrate theatre! For a Festival that doesn’t jury its programming, there was a great depth to this year’s lineup including heavy hitting veterans from the local theatre community and a bumper crop of newcomers and international touring artists from as far away as Australia and the UK. One respondent to our audience survey said that the best part of the Fringe is “Seeing local actors pushing themselves, international performers that amaze with their talent, and, once in a while, finding that one piece of theatre that knocks your socks off.” And with 92.41% of respondents saying they’ll come back next year and 0% saying “No Way,” we know we made a good impression! We celebrated our 25th Anniversary with a new awards component to celebrate the successes of the Festival in a lasting way, a fresh Fringe Bar location, and many first time and committed sponsors. Thank you to all who made this year’s Festival a resounding success!
Thanks Sponsors!
Signature Partner St. Ambroise McAuslan is a big supporter of the arts across Canada. They sponsor the St. Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival and have a grant program for musicians! St. Ambroise sponsored our Fringe Bar, an amazing place for Fringe Festival patrons, artists, staff, and volunteers to socialize with tasty beverages! St. Ambroise has signed a multi-year contract, so you can expect them to make a big splash in coming years!
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ringe Festival sponsors play an important role is contributing to the success of the Festival. Cash donations and increased in kind donations from our sponsors supported Festival operations and added to the Fringe’s success as British Columbia’s largest theatre festival. Sponsors were recognized at each venue, on our website, in our program guide, and through our marketing, especially our e-mail based marketing to our huge database of patrons. A big thanks to our returning sponsors: CMHC Granville Island, CTV, Vancouver 24Hours, Speedpro Imaging, Cocoa Camino, Industry Images, The Mark Anthony Group (Wildhorse Canyon), and our oldest sponsor, the Aquabus! Although everyone gives at different levels, sustained support is integral to the ongoing health of our Festival. Your renewed support makes us feel like one big happy family!
Leading Partner Photo by Debby Reis
St. Ambroise beers and Wild Horse Canyon wines on sale at the 25th Anniversary party.
Welcome To Our New Sponsors M
any new sponsors joined the family in 2009, some of which approached us out of the blue! Thanks for joining us here at the Fringe!
A line up around Waterfront Theatre for a performance of Red Bastard.
Mac Station has been in business in Vancouver for 16 years and also sponsors the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and Arts Umbrella. This year they powered our box office by providing us with additional computers to service our online and in person ticket sales! They also lent us extra computers for our staff and they gave us an iPod Touch to give away in our “iFringe and Win” contest!
Supporting Partners Hatch Creative Group specializes in clean, bold, and fun design. They made us look better than ever, designing our program guide and additional
Above left: CTV was the naming sponsor at the False Creek Gym. Above right: A patron peruses the poster clothes line outside of Performance Works.
advertisements in Vancouver 24Hours, the Georgia Straight, and Geist Magazine. Agro Café purchases their coffee beans from the farmers working with AGRODEV, an NGO that works with small scale farmers in Kenya to create employment opportunities through sustainable and organic agricultural practices. Agro hosted the Fringe Bar at their Granville Island location and made sure there was staff on hand to feed the hungry Fringers! Origins Organic Coffee roasts all their coffee by hand and according to their website they’d “go bonkers if [they] weren’t always sniffing, listening for pops, and using [their] highly trained eyeballs.” Origins welcomed us into their storefront, which we transformed into a mainstage venue. They also provided much needed coffee for the Volunteer Centre.
Dockside Restaurant has one of the best views in the city with a patio to match! They tantalized our tastebuds with tasty tidbits at our 25th Anniversary Party and the Opening Night Gala, not to mention that they provided a space for our staff meetings leading up to the Festival. The Yellow Pages Group first published a directory in 1908 and have been part of communications culture ever since. They supported us with free web advertisements.
Small Business Partners CiTR 101.9fm is UBC’s university and community radio station, offering alternative views, music, and info to the lower mainland. CiTR was involved at the Fringe Bar with dance inducing DJs in addition to creating podcasts for every night of the Festival! Nate Organics sources materials
from the Organic Exchange and the Organic Trade Association ensuring all their clothing is sustainable. They printed our volunteer t-shirts and offered free t-shirts to every auction winner at the Opening Night Gala!
Logo Exposure O
ur sponsors’ logos were include in 30,000 Festival program guides, transit shelter advertising, posters, print advertisements, our website, on sponsor recognition boards on site at all Festival venues, and in our e-newsletters. Signature sponsors’ logos were also included in the Granville Island Bridge banner which hangs on the bridge entrance to the Island, greeting all visitors.
Venue Naming Once again our Signature Partners had the opportunity to sponsor a mainstage venue on and around Granville Island. Naming sponsors were recognized in the program guide, the curtain speech, and with a banner placed outside the venue throughout the Festival. These three methods encouraged Festival patrons to recognize the active role that these sponsors played in the Festival.
Program Guide In 2009 we repeated our tabloid style program guide format from 2008 but with a hot pink cover that garnered us lots of attention. Designed by Hatch Creative Group, the program included advertisements from all of our sponsors. The guide was once again distributed at Blenz Coffee locations, as well as theatres, libraries, Vancouver Farmers’ Markets, and community centres.
Website and E-Newsletters Our website was redesigned and launched in April 2009 so that we could improve our patrons’ experiences. On our site you can find detailed information about the Festival,
Our program guide, designed by Hatch Creative, looked great, and it was easy to use!
shows, fundraising, and of course, our sponsors (including links to their websites). Vancouverfringe.com is regularly updated and we’ve clocked over 110,000 visits in the past year, with nearly 43,000 visits to the site in September. Our e-newsletters are sent out to a list of over 22,000 people. Not only are logos included in each newsletter we send out (monthly, with more frequency just before and during the Festival), but we’ve also been
including sponsor profiles. We highlight the latest news from our sponsors, their history as an organization, or their involvement with the Fringe and include links whenever possible so that our patrons can get a more in depth understanding of our sponsor community.
The 2009 Fringe! I
n addition to the Festival itself, we held some special events. Many of our sponsors got involved and added to the party atmosphere!
25th Anniversary Party: July 16
The “sandwich board forest” was steps away from the Fringe Box Office (powered by Mac Station), enticing people to purchase tickets to a few shows.
Since 2009 was our 25th Festival, we had to have a party and invite alumni artists, staff, volunteers, and our current sponsors! The night focused on 25 Stories in 25 Minutes which included tales of Fringes past! In addition to stories, our appetites were satiated with delectables from Dockside Restaurant and beverages from St. Ambroise and Wild Horse Canyon.
Left and centre photos by Debby Reis. Right photo by Brice Ferre.
Good times at the St. Ambroise Fringe Bar at Agro Cafe. From left to right: The Creaking Planks perform on Opening Night. Our Executive Director, David Jordan (centre) hams it up on stage with volunteer Emilio Rojas (left) and Anna Baignoche of Anna B. and the Heartbones (right). The crowd mingles at the bar.
Opening Night Gala: September 9 The Opening Night Gala is the Fringe Festival’s premier fundraising event. It’s also the spark that ignites the Festival as a whole! After sampling tasty hor d’ourves from Dockside Restaurant and the Edge Café, and bidding on a wide range of silent auction items (including art work, spa packages,
tickets for cultural events, and more) the audience was welcomed to the Gala by Renu Bakshi, reporter and anchor at CTV. The night was emceed by comedian Charlie Demers, who returned to host the Gala for the third time. To mark our 25th Anniversary, we included performances from veteran Fringe artists as well as preview performances of artists in the 2009 Festival. David C. Jones, auctioneer
for our Live Auction segment of the night, wooed $4,000 from the crowd— that’s about a $2,000 increase from 2008! In total, the night raised over $20,000 for the Festival! As everyone headed towards the St. Ambroise Fringe Bar at Agro Cafe at the end of the night, they were handed a thank you card with a morsel of chocolatey goodness from Cocoa Camino. Yum!
The Fringe Festival: September 9-20
Photo by Dan Fairchild.
Bennett Hui from Speedpro Imaging installs the Buzz Board. By the end of the Festival, every inch of space was covered in writing and drawings.
Granville Island was all a buzz with the Fringe Festival this year! We increased Festival attendance by 6% over last year’s regular program figures and you could tell! There were lots of people zooming from venue to venue, to the Fringe Bar, to the Volunteer Centre, and to the Box Office! People loved the Festival and you could tell they were excited about the shows they’d seen because so many of them wrote words of encouragement, mini reviews, and drew illustrations on our Buzz Board. Presented by Speedpro Imaging, the Buzz Board was a vinyl covering on the windows of our office that patrons could write on! This was a unique
sponsorship opportunity that we were proud to develop with Speedpro that promoted them and improved the Festival experience for patrons. We applaud Speedpro for coming to the table with creative new ideas! During the Festival we also launched our Sweet on the Fringe campaign. These were 10 minute pitches to audiences before selected shows where we educated our patrons about our non-profit, charitable status, and played fun music encouraging audience members to donate to the Festival. After the show, patrons were awarded with chocolate from Cocoa Camino! The response was great and we raised new funds and awareness!
Photo by Dan Fairchild.
The audience at the Fringe Opening Night Gala was all riled up by David C. Jones’ auctioneering tactics.
St. Ambroise Fringe Bar at Agro Café The place to be before, after, and between shows this year was at the St. Ambroise Fringe Bar at Agro Café. This was the inaugural year for the Fringe Bar at Agro, which was transformed each night from its daytime coffee house status, to a bar with a combination of live performances and DJs (some from CiTR)! We expanded the daytime patio so that the bar took over Railspur Alley on Granville Island. The Fringe Bar was also the location for Plank Magazine’s Plank Club, a meeting where patrons could discuss the shows they’d seen at the Festival. In addition to having multiple St. Ambroise beers on offer, we also sold Wild Horse Canyon Wines while Agro Café provided staff to serve coffee, Fringe Fries, and other bistro bites.
Photo by Dan Fairchild.
Goodies from Dockside Restaurant are all laid out just before Fringe alumni arrived for the 25th Anniversary Party.
Fringe Awards Night: September 20 Not only did the Awards Night Celebration announce the Public Market Pick of the Fringe winners, but it was also where our other Award winners were announced. Most winners received some chocolate
Photo by Brice Ferre.
Ryan Gladstone (The Seven Lives of Louis Riel) accepting his novelty cheque for a print credit at Industry Images and his chicken award from Plank Magazine for winning the Talk of the Fringe Award.
from Cocoa Camino or wine from Wild Horse Canyon. Industry Images, Michael Sider Video, and Plank Magazine collaborated on the prize for the Talk of the Fringe Award, which was awarded to the show with the most marketing savvy. Congrats to the winner, The Seven Lives of Louis Riel! We’re hoping to develop our Awards in the coming years and bring on our sponsors to support the winners.
Plans For 2010 Photos by Dan Fairchild.
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e’re already planning for next year with expanded opportunities for audience feedback, developing our Awards, and offering mentorships and workshops for artists. We want to include you, our sponsors, in these developments as our partners in building the Fringe Festival’s reputation as purveyors of “Theatre for Everyone!”
Left: David C. Jones rallies the Opening Night Gala Audience. Right: Kathryn Shaw performs a vignette from a vintage Fringe show a the Opening Night Gala.
Photos by Dan Fairchild.
Left: Cara Yeates, winner of the Joanna Maratta Award, performing Some Reckless Abandon. Right: Jem Rolls perfoms his Leastest Flops.
Photos by Dan Fairchild.
Above: Becky Poole played the musical saw in murder, hope. Right: Candy Simmons in AferLife. Far right: Jono Katz in The Accident.
Clockwise from top left: Chris Gibbs as Vaguen in The Power of Ignorance cartwheels (photo by Dan Fairchild). Robyn Dann enjoys goodies from our food sponsors (Origins Organic Coffee, Whoopie Dee Doo, La Baguette, and Lee’s Donuts) in the Volunteer Centre. Program Guides (designed by Hatch Creative) await delivery. Gareth Duncan, our Fundraising Coordinator, flies paper maché planes through the audience for the Sweet on the Fringe campaign (afterwards Cocoa Camino chocolates were handed out). The Fringe lights were projected at various locations around Granville Island (photo by Dan Fairchild). Eric Davis as Red Bastard gets “friendly” with an audience member.