Andrew Wade acting, writing

A great review from The Calgary Herald!

Wade is so convincing as the timid loser that he easily wins the audience’s sympathy, especially when he recalls what it meant in junior high school to finally have an actual friend to talk to instead of an imaginary one, or the first time he worked up the courage to kiss a girl.

The truly remarkable thing about The Most Honest Man in the World is the character that Wade creates is so real, that it’s easy to forget he is as skilled an actor as he is a writer. The Most Honest Man in the World is fringing at its finest.

https://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/theatre/fringe-review-schtick-runs-thin-while-honesty-holds-true

Andrew Wade acting

Coming to 2021 TotE and Winnipeg Fringe… William vs The World!

William and his trusty companion, Chuck the Cactus, will be digitally featured as part of Salmon Arm’s Theatre on the Edge Festival and the Winnipeg Fringe Festival this July!

Recorded at Barigord Studios, this is the epic adventure of a geek and his cactus as they try to do nothing. A show written pre-pandemic for anyone who has fantasized about never leaving home again.

It’s a little weirder of a concept now.

Andrew Wade living

2019

I started 2019 in Calgary, having just landed the day before. I woke up in a rented apartment with fairy lights and an almost impossible quiet. I had told myself for so much of my adult life that my super-power was that I would always be okay… and then something happened near the end of 2018 and for a good long while, I wasn’t okay. And I needed to run away. I had to figure out where to go from there.
 
January 1st 2019 was the first day of ten calendar months that I would be away from home. Last year was a year with more alone-time than maybe any other in my life — a quietude which I tried to fill and inflate with endless podcasts and music and books and time spent on facebook. From day one of the adventure, I knew I would have plenty of time to indulge my inner introvert, but having all that time made me… afraid. Afraid of collapsing into that not-being-okay. Afraid of the lonely dark. So I gave myself a goal, a resolution for 2019.
 
I taped up an affirmational poster in my room: 2019 was the year I told myself, ‘I am an Avatar of Excitement!’. A year to be a force in the world for unexpected tinglings and happy nerves. A year that was more than just running away. That was my new year’s resolution. I feel I accomplished a fair amount of that. I tried.
 
Thank you to everyone who made my year feel worthwhile. Thank you to Evan and Kendra and Sydney and Cameron and Matthew and Mandie and Ashton and Kristin and Becca and Toby and Helen and Jamie and Shannon and Carly and Bea and Jacqui and Ian and Gareth and Josh and Charlene and Olivia and Ken and Kelly and Rachel and Miranda and Danny and Abigail and Nyala and Kieran and Katelyn and Alina and everyone else.
 
I don’t know what my goal for 2020 will be, if I choose to have one. Still sussing that out. But I’m happy to have had my year of adventure.
Andrew Wade acting

Quotes for actors from Bryan Cranston’s ‘A Life In Parts’

I recently read Bryan Cranston’s ‘A Life in Parts’. The dude knows his stuff (obviously). Go read the book!

Here are a few of the great pieces of advice for actors that I pulled out for future pondering:

 

When you first start out in the business, you have to expend a lot of energy. Hustling isn’t complicated. How much energy you put out dictates how much heat you generate.

You can teach someone how to drive a car or throw a fastball, but it’s hard to teach someone to let go.

The best teacher is experience.

Finding love is about being open, letting someone see you as you really are – not some fascimile of what you think someone wants.

He cries, he laughs, he kills, he hits all the emotional notes. If he didn’t hit his mark, it was worthless. He wasn’t lit properly. Or he was out of focus.

It was important for the actor to speak loudly enough so the sound could pick up what he was saying but softly enough to maintain intimacy if intimacy was required… private but detectable.

On camera, when you walk into a room in your own home, you must know where the light switch is. You can’t need to look. Or else it’s a lie, which is like giving the audience a pinch of poison… if your character has a longtime girlfriend and you’re tentative or formal with her, touching her as if she’s someone you just met Another pinch.

Wallace Stevens wrote, “The imperfect is our paradise.”

This whole business is a confidence game. If you believe it, they’ll believe it. If you don’t believe it, neither will they… I don’t feel entirely comfortable hiring someone who doesn’t emit confidence… Confidence is king… actors need to have an arrogance about them. Not in public or in their private lives, but when they work. Actors have to have that drive, that instinct that says: this role is mine.

When I started getting a lot of guest-star roles, I’d make postcards and send them to casting directors to alert them. Watch Bryan Cranston in Matlock this week! Don’t miss Bryan Cranston’s guest turn as Tom Logan in Baywatch! Tune in to Amazon Women on the Moon for a special treat: Bryan Cranston stars as Paramedic #3. I knew 99 percent wouldn’t watch, but they would see my name. They would see my face. And they would get the message, even if only on a subliminal level. This guy works a lot.

You’re acting. You have to have some boundaries. You have to look out for your fellow actors. When someone gets hurt on the set, it spoils everything. The fun you’re having, creating – if someone gets hurt, it all goes away.

Jerry (Seinfeld) had a rule about jokes: If you’re in the group, you can make the joke. If you’re not in the group, steer clear.

It’s more important to have a dream than to achieve a dream.

If you want to be a successful actor, mental toughness is essential. Lay your whole self-worth on getting the role, on the illusion of validaton, before long you’re left angry, resentful, and jealous. You’re doomed.

I focus on process rather than outcome. I wasn’t going to the audition to get anything: a job or money or validation. I wasn’t going to compete with the other guys. I was going to give something. I wasn’t there to get a job. I was there to do a job. Simple as that… my job was to focus on character. My job was to be interesting. My job was to be compelling. Take some chances. Serve the text. Enjoy the process.

And this wasn’t some semantic sleight of hand, it wasn’t some subtle form of barter or gamesmanship. There was to be no predicting or manipulating, no thinking of the outcome. Outcome was irrelevant. I couldn’t afford any longer to approach my work as a means to an end.

Once I made the switch, I was no longer a supplicant. I had power in any room I walked into. Which meant I could relax. I was free.

I learned to take control of the room. If I felt the scene called for the two characters to be standing, I might ask the casting director to please get up.

I’d learned that if a character wasn’t in the script, I had to infer it or imagine it. I had to take it on myself to build it.

An actor needs a core quality or essence for a character. Everything rises from there.

Character is both formed and revealed when we are tested, when we are forced to make decisions under pressure. That test can either make us stronger or it can highlight our weaknesses and crack us into pieces.

Difficult (actors) and creatively engaged (actors) are not the same. Having an engaged, invested cast and crew comes through on a molecular level.

As an actor, you have to be able to endure repetition without losing emotion or energy. You’re hysterical? Do it again. You’re experiencing the most piercing loss? Do it again. And again. How to be honest and true and feel all of those feelings on command? Then repeat? You just do. To get through, to communicate, to move your audience regardless of the problems, that’s the job.

How he decides on a role (weighted in this order): Story first, then Text, then Role, then Director, then Cast/Misc, then Time. Of course, every now and then, an offer comes up that’s too good to refuse.

It’s okay to be afraid. Being afraid can actually be a sign you’re doing something worthwhile. If I’m considering a role and it makes me nervous, but I can’t stop thinking about it – that’s often a good indication I’m onto something important.

I think you run a tremendous risk of getting complacent if you don’t keep looking for changes. You should never be too at ease on stage. Get too rehearsed, too relaxed, you lose focus and slip into autopilot, and then you’re not listening… some actors panic; some assimilate mistakes and correct course. If you’re paying attention, if you’re present, more often than not you can rise to the occasion… you have to be open and present and willing to adapt. If you tell me a play is locked at opening night and there’s no room for exploration or change, I’d say I’m probably not the best actor for your play… every performance needs to have its intimacy, its difference.

 

Andrew Wade acting, living, money

Finding the Right Dayjobs as a Theatre Artist

(This post was written as a podcast article for the wonderful Broad-WHAT? podcast put together by Ryan Nunez and Theo Budd. You can find them at https://broadwhatpodcast.com/ and this particular podcast at https://broadwhatpodcast.com/2019/06/11/june-blog-month-episode-2/ )

*******************

Hello Broadwhatniks!

I’m Andrew Wade, and I’m here to talk to you about life with dayjobs as a theatre artist. This isn’t advice persay, because goodness knows I don’t have a perfectly arranged life, but I thought I’d share a few ways I’ve seen people somehow both manage paying their rent and working in theatre, and what I’ve found works for me.

First, if you’re a Vancouver artist who makes their whole living doing what you love… bravo! You have my respect. Whether you’re someone who managed to slowly increase the percentage of your income earned by theatre work, piece by piece, until it made up the whole of your income, or one of those brave souls who quit everything and leapt face first into the profession to great success… I’m impressed.

I know of one fringe artist who works his butt off all summer long. He travels from fringe festival to fringe festival, using those May to September months to earn his income for the entire year. It seems like half of the time, he didn’t even win the draw to be in the particular fringe festival, but he hounds the organizers for open spots, and when some company drops out at the last minute, as often happens, he seizes the opportunity, flyers like a madman, and draws crowds. Now, this is Fringe Festival money, not investment banker money, so to survive off his earnings he then lives the rest of his year in somewhere with cheap living expenses, like an island in the pacific ocean. Earn quick, live cheap.

That’s a sort of balance. But for most of us, we need day jobs. Personally, I’ve always been enamoured by the idea of working like someone out in the oil fields, going hard for four months of the year, and then having enough money to take the rest of the year off to make art, act in shows, write. But then I’d have to work in the oil fields, and with these delicate hands? Pass. But if you can find high paying seasonal work, amazing.

There are also plenty of people in our community who choose to work the full time joe job that lets them act in one solid production a year, and if that’s your life, all the more power to you!

But for those of you like myself who want to hustle all year ‘round, going to auditions and seeking out roles, maybe booking the odd stage management or directing gig, you’re going to want to look at finding flexible work where you get to opt in to all of your working hours rather than constantly needing to get shifts covered. Many theatre artists do the 9am-5pm, full time job, and then straight to rehearsals and performances every evening, but in my view, those fifteen hour days just aren’t sustainable.

When looking for a flexible day job that will let you take time off to work that theatre contract, there are a couple of categories. First, there’s the job that you can do ANYWHERE, AT ANY TIME. My own part-time role as Executive Director for the Richmond Arts Coalition is like that. 98% of the job is spent online, updating websites and databases, sending off emails and scouring the web for arts events to compile into even more emails… all stuff I can do at 2am or whenever it’ll fit into my schedule. Other theatre artists I know do transcription work – writing up the words spoken in videos for a fee. These are jobs that are guaranteed not to be double-booked with the moment you’re about to go on as Lady Macbeth.

Second, there are the day jobs with opt-in scheduling. These are jobs that send out or post a schedule each month and say ‘what days can you work?’ and then they fill their shifts accordingly. The key to these jobs is to be valuable but expendable. You want them to want you to work as much as possible, but to not NEED you to be there. For me, I have wonderful employers at SFU Woodwards and Gateway Theatre who work this way for my Front of House Manager jobs, and my event shifts at Science World and for a company unfortunately acronymed as BBW work similarly. They’re delighted to have me, but the roof won’t fall in if I’m not there, because I’m one of a fleet of workers they have to fill those shifts. The shift opportunities themselves are quite irregular and they couldn’t have full time workers if they wanted to as the shifts only happen when there is a show or an event!, so they can’t expect their workers not to have other things going on in their life.

I’m told that serving jobs often pretend to be like this, but are often a trap, leading to angry employers demanding their employees be there for the busy Saturday when they’re supposed to be at rehearsal. I’ve steered clear of those jobs.

The downside to this kind of work is that it tends not to pay a whole lot, admittedly. That’s a sacrifice I make for knowing I can build a survivable, steady income whenever I don’t have a theatre gig to take up my time.

You may have noticed that most of my own day jobs are arts related. That is no coincidence! I’ve surrounded my work life with bosses who love the arts and want me to succeed as an artist, and that support is invaluable. There have been a lot of company rules bent in my direction to help me along my path because my bosses believe in the arts, and they believe in me.

To emphasize that point, I just came off of a dinner theatre contract that kept me in Alberta for five months, and might have gone as long as eight months. I was real nervous about it – I accepted the gig in late November and left December 31st. Not a whole lot of notice. I was sure I was going to lose some of my Vancouver safety net, but you know what? To a person, my bosses were all delighted for me. They told me not to worry about it, and that they’d look forward to offering me shifts when I got back into town. And now I’ve accepted a second dinner theatre contract that’ll take me back to the prairies from mid July until either January or April, and they’re still happy for me.

So that’s my advice – if you want to be theatre-flexible all year round, find jobs with bosses who love the theatre where you can be valuable but expendable, so that you can disappear for that two month contract when you book it. My own financial anxiety finds the idea of dropping all day jobs to pursue my art full time to be far too intimidating (and frankly, I’m not sure I’ve got the talent to achieve a lofty goal like that in Vancouver), so I keep dayjobs like these, with my schedule flexible but my rent payments steady.

It works for me. Thanks for listening.

Andrew Wade living, writing

The Dandelion

!

The Dandelion

!

I broke her heart as a dandelion.
She saw me as a flower
when I wondered if I were a weed.
We grew stubborn roots
that kept us together through two breakups.
Though my petals leaned away,
something deeper kept its grip,
brought me back to the soil of us,
to the school field and the ocean air,

And then it didn’t.

I was a dandelion,
and I could feel the change in the seasons,
my petals turning to seeds,
with the lightness and lift that comes from them,
and I couldn’t remain a bright flower for her;
I couldn’t be her wine.
It was in my nature;
I longed for a steady wind
to cast me about in five hundred directions,
to grow again, apart from that place
and from her.

So I left.
A weed and a flower,
a flower and a weed,
I launched into the breeze,
billowing about through winters
and springs,
summers and falls,
at first without aim,
at the whims of the wind,
hither and thither,
learning my shape and my size,
my weedness and my florality,
the pest and the prize,
until now,
at last, I gaze out of the gust
and hope maybe for a garden
with soil and a soul
in which to root.


Photo by Greg Hume

Andrew Wade acting, money, travel

My 2018 Fringe By The Numbers

 

Every year (2013) (2014) (2015) (2016) (2017) I have put out a blog post with financial breakdowns of my fringe festival experiences. I only spent time in Salmon Arm and Vancouver last year, but as I sit second on the waitlist for Vancouver Fringe this year, I figure I shouldn’t break the streak! So here’s how we did:

 

“I just want you to know, your show will stick with me forever. Thank you.” – a woman who recognized us at a diner, a couple of hours after a Salmon Arm performance

 

For 2018, I applied for a number of festivals with Hullaboo and The End of Everything. As is statistically probable, my lottery luck was not with me: Winnipeg Fringe (nope), Calgary Fringe for the first time instead of applying for Saskatoon (they take place at the same time) (nope), Victoria Fringe (nope), Nanaimo Fringe (nope), CAFF Lottery (nope), Edmonton Fringe (nope), and Vancouver Fringe (nope, but got in as a Bring Your Own Venue). I also submitted for Salmon Arm’s weekend-long ‘Theatre On The Edge’, which isn’t a Fringe as they select their entrants, but is otherwise similar to one.

Note that I have NEVER gotten into Edmonton or Winnipeg… I think that by now, including CAFF lotteries, I must be a startling 0 for 16 in lottery draws to get to those cities.

So, the tally for 2018? 0 for 7, mitigated by finding a BYOV for Vancouver Fringe and finding a juried festival that would take us.

Keep in mind that while I produced the show, all profits were to be shared between myself and the lovely Katie Purych (with our Stage Manager Bonnie Duff receiving a fee for Salmon Arm).

 

EXPENSES:

Failed Fringe Application Fees:   (application fees don’t come cheap!)
Winnipeg: -25.00$
Calgary: -35.00$
Victoria: -30.00$
Nanaimo: -25.00$
CAFF Lottery: -25.00$
Edmonton: Full fee of -761.25$, with 724.50$ returned six months later = -36.75$ (plus whatever interest I would have earned on that money in the interim)
Total: -176.75$

Edmonton Fringe continues to have a very awkward and irksome application fee system.

 

Salmon Arm Theatre On The Edge Expenses:
Festival fee: -225.00$
Gas money: -80.00$
Stage Manager fee: -100.00$ (Bonnie Duff adamantly refused to accept payment, was happy for the job training and adventure, demanded I put the fee towards paying those failed application fees.)
Total Salmon Arm Expenses: -305.00$

 

Vancouver Fringe Expenses:
Application fee: -50.00$
BYOV fee: -450.00$
Carousel Theatre Venue Fees: -895.00$
Postcards (1000): -74.05$
Carousel Theatre Taxes: -44.75$
Posters (25): -16.40$
Facebook ad: -20.00$
Tape for posters: -13.62$
Videographer: -60.00$
Total Vancouver Fringe Expenses: -1563.82$

 

Fortunately, a lot of the Hullaboo expenses – such as puppet creation and costuming – were covered in last year’s over 1600.00$ loss on putting up the show in Saskatoon.

Expenses not included:
– Food eaten / groceries bought
– Lost income from not working dayjobs

 

And now let’s look at what we earned!

INCOME:

Salmon Ticket sales (after festival took their percentage cut): +845.52$
Vancouver Fringe Ticket sales: +1564.00$

 

Which means that our overall profits were:

Salmon Arm: +540.52$ (with 220.26$ going to myself, 220.26$ to Katie Purych, and 100.00$ as per Bonnie Duff’s request, going toward paying failed festival fees)

Vancouver Fringe: +0.18$

0.18$.

 

Seriously. We made eighteen cents in Vancouver.

 

+1564.00$ in sales, with -1563.82$ in expenses.

 

We should be running a non-profit.

 

Katie respectfully refused to accept her nine cents of profit and told me to put it toward the next production. 

 

For those who are interested, here is how our Vancouver ticket sales spread out from performance to performance:
Exchange Vouchers (comps we gave out to a group that sends low-income families to shows): 5+0+0+5+5+0+0+0 = 15 (0.00$)
Super At Door / Superpass (comps): 1+2+2+1+1+6+2+1 = 16 (0.00$)
Rush Pass (comps for volunteers and performers): 0+7+2+0+14+8+1+5 = 37 (0.00$)
Half-Price Ticket (second show only) (11$): 12 (72.00$)
Frequent Fringer 10 or 30 Pack (9$): 1+0+0+2+2+1+1+3 = 10 (90.00$)
Frequent Fringer 4 Pack (10$): 0+0+3+0+3+0+1+0 = 7 (70.00$)
Regular Tickets (12$): 6+0+12+9+28+12+11+33 = 111 (1332.00$)

 

My Kindergarten Teacher!

And for a day by day breakdown, our audience sizes were:
13 – 21 – 19 – 17 – 53 – 28 – 16 – 42 .

Those 53 and 42 size audiences were huge confidence boosters. One of them also included BOTH my kindergarten teacher AND my high school drama teacher, who both loved the show. My kindergarten teacher said I was one of the most gifted kids she ever taught. My drama teacher overheard this and said something along the lines of, ‘Well, I wouldn’t go THAT far, but I’m glad to see you’re doing well’. 😛

Overall, we made +463.95$ this summer (with 220.26$ going to Katie Purych), which compares thusly to prior years:

2017: -296.62$
2016: -58.21$
2015: +897.63$ (due to fee for writing TITUS)
2014: +83.51$
2013: -1671.16$

All the gratitude I have in my heart goes to Katie and Bonnie for adventuring this past summer with me and giving Hullaboo and The End of Everything some life!

Hopefully he will emerge out from under the bed again sometime!

Andrew Wade living

High Fidelity

So,

I just finished reading High Fidelity, the book (obviously) – read the last close-to-two-hundred pages in a single go. That’s one thing I’ve really enjoyed about taking this contract – I’ve become a reading person again, and that’s one thing I’ve really missed from childhood – being the kind of person who can just sit and read a book, submerged between its pages, for hours on end, because I need to find out how it goes, because I’ve emotionally and intellectually connected to it.

I’m also a bit of an empathic person in that I tend to adopt the voice of what I’m reading or watching for a little while. Which is why I’m writing this out now, and probably why I don’t watch scary slasher flicks. (Also, I just typed the word ‘flick’, which is British, so apparently High Fidelity has turned me slightly British.)

So it’s sort of a book about a jerk. I don’t entirely relate to that (and please don’t argue the opposite). I’ve been real stupid in life, but rarely with a vindictive sense of malice to it. Not since grade school, anyway, when I would plot to fill peoples’ desks with dirt because I thought they were mean to me. Nah, most of the time, if I’m thinking someone deserves negative stuff in their life, that person is me. But I’ve an affirmational poster on my wall (yes, I’m that guy) that says ‘I am a Good Man‘ (sharpie underlined), and I believe it, most of the time. My friend Jacqui added a ‘And we ❤ you!’ to it that I quite appreciate.

What the book is more about, though, is the triumvirate of the excitement of new relationships, dealing with break-ups, and figuring out what to do in the middle of a relationship. It’s about how much mental space and energy and OHMYGOD these things take up inside a person’s soul. It ends with pretty much an ode to marriage and commitment, because, heck, all of the above just take so much EFFORT, going through those first few steps of a relationship over and over and over again, and long term relationships take effort too, but it’s a different kind of effort; it isn’t the same, stuck kind of effort repeating itself over and over again.

My week has been emotionally a bit rough, probably in part due to this book. It’s all about fixating on past relationships, and, well, it’s not hard to see why that is an issue if you’ve read the second paragraph up there about empathy. And I don’t know if people with regular nine-to-five, five-days-a-week office dayjobs feel like every day is the same, but performing a show is quite LITERALLY SAYING THE EXACT SAME WORDS AND REPEATING THE EXACT SAME ACTIONS EVERY DAY.

(I actually love it, and every audience has a slightly different vibe, and let’s be honest, I usually slightly fumble a couple of dance moves or reverse a line or sing a verse with a slightly different intent, so it’s never exactly the same, but the metaphor is too precise to ignore, so stick with me.)

ANYWAY, as I was saying, I needed to get to the end of the book, so I read it with an intensity – I was trying to divine some sort of wisdom from these pages to help me out, or at least to feel a sense of closure – moreso than I feel from my own life right now. I don’t want to be Rob (the main character) from the beginning of the book. (sidenote: No one should want to be the person at the beginning of the book – they’re the person who hasn’t yet learned what they need to learn to be a better person.) He’s a mid-thirties man who still acts like a teenager because his life got stuck somewhere along the way, and he blames everyone else for it happening. And I, by contrast, am an early-thirties man who is excited to read a book from cover to cover because the very act of doing so makes him feel like a pre-teen, who isn’t sure if this theatre tour he’s on is a life derailment, a career advancement, or a period of being stuck in relational limbo. Probably all three. And I mostly blame myself for how my life is. But I could be more of Rob at the end of the book. Sure, it’s a bit of a cop-out that someone else fixes most of his exterior life, but inside himself, he makes some realizations and he feels the heartdeep of what makes commitment and long-term relationships so meaningful.

Let’s be honest. I’m a 32-year-old man who had only been in a relationship with someone for longer than nine months before my last one, once, and even with the age difference, that really probably was my first time with that heartdeep, that continuity of companionship and all that comes with it, and now you’re feeling awkward reading this because these are the kinds of thing that twenty-year-old men accidentally blubber about when they’ve had too much to drink, or the kinds of things said by pathetic old men still pining over old flames, or maybe those are both images I’m projecting over myself, but I’m going to say the obvious anyway, which is that I want that heartdeep again.

I’m also probably not emotionally prepared to have it again – not that that stops some people – and anyway, I’m on tour now, hopping from Calgary to the Cayman Islands (to visit a happy, committed couple with a kid) to Edmonton and then maybe to Winnipeg and I have NEVER been good at long term planning, always been the person to embrace the ephemerality of life and that’s what I’m living in for the next three to six months whether I want to or not, and I’m going to do my darndest to enjoy it, goshdarnit, to find ways to make peoples’ lives exciting due to my being temporarily, ephemerally in them, as I continue to crawl back percentage points of my heart (yes I think of it in percentages – it’s not a null sum game – the heart can grow! – but percentages all the same), but when I finish leading this webisode, short-story, elseworlds edition comic book time in my life, and have more of my heartdeep to offer, I’d like to find a deep, long novel with someone to live in.

Anyway, this has been my book report on High Fidelity. Cheers.

 

Andrew Wade living, writing

The Preference

The Preference:

There was a me, then,

When I was with her,
A me who was better than the me who came before.
I preferred the me who was with her,
the man who knew he was loved,
who didn’t have that sense of desperation, of longing,
of will this conversation lead to a romance I need a romance I think I need a romance,
that the previous me had,
a me who was less selfish,
who knew fully what it meant to go all in on loving someone,
who knew his good qualities because she told me all about them,
because I could see them in the sparkle
in her eyes
when we shared our lives.

And then we didn’t.
And now we shouldn’t.
So here I am.
Here we go.
Without a choice.

We are always becoming,
no matter how firm we try to grip to what is now,
or to wave away the waves,
to reject the flowing tide,
we are ever-becoming
who we are
next,
the next me,

And my optimistic, foolish wish
is I want to prefer to be that person too.

(Photo from 2012)

Andrew Wade living, writing

How I’m Doing

 

 

People have been asking how I’m feeling.
Here’s where I’m at.

I feel like time is moving strangely, impossibly slow,
as though yesterday were a week ago,
three days ago, a month,
and last month, as far back as my time in Victoria.
Last week’s happy experiences
and hard conversations
feel like they took place a year ago, happened to someone else who existed back then.
Individual events and chats and moments feel so small,

whereas the lingering feelings,
the semi-constant emotional states
that continue
from one minute
to the next,
these feel neverending,
the ocean compared to the waves,
part of who I’ve been for all of recent memory.

Earlier tonight I worked a shift at the Drake concert at Rogers Arena.
When I arrived, they put me in the elevator,
to sit in the elevator for seven hours,
to press the buttons to go up and down
and down and up
and up and down
and down and up
and up and down,
with the occasional interesting ten second conversation
peppered along seven hours of that lurching
stomach feeling
of being stuck
in an elevator.

Andrew Wade acting

Hullaboo and The End of Everything

I didn’t want to do it all alone anymore.

After some twenty or so festivals of performing my own one-person-shows with stage managers acquired along the way, I felt it was time to collaborate. So when I decided to put together Hullaboo and The End of Everything, I looked to see where I could include other people along the journey – people with skills and talents beyond my own. My dear friend Fairlith Harvey designed Hullaboo’s delightful costume. My fringe friend Shelby Lyn Lowe built me a giant puppet monster. And I wrote the show as a two-hander.

Hullaboo, the imaginary friend, and Mikaila the Magnificent, the girl who needed him.

Hullaboo - Claws 1000pxI wrote the script, designed the postcards and poster, bought the plane tickets, filled out the forms, and learned the main part, true, but at its core, the project wasn’t just mine anymore — it was ours. I like that feeling.

There were trials and tribulations in getting this show up on its feet. The script itself is my third try to turn Hullaboo into a show. And two and a bit weeks out from heading to Saskatoon Fringe last summer, the other actor (playing Mikaila) got an amazing theatre contract opportunity and had to drop out.

One desperate plea to facebook later… and Katie Purych agreed to step into the role. A role with a mere two weeks before we needed to be on flights bound for Saskatoon. A role that required taking two weeks off of work on very short notice. A profit-share role for a show that was likely to see very little profit.

And yet she jumped right in. And thanks to all the wonderful people around me, the show really works. It’s powerful. It’s fierce. It’s touching. It’s a Pixar movie on the stage, according to one review.

We took the show to the Theatre On The Edge festival in Salmon Arm last month, and in a restaurant, we were stopped by an audience member who told us that our show would stay with her forever.

I couldn’t have done it without the wonderful people around me.

Next up, Hullaboo comes to the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Hope to see you there.

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Hullaboo and The End of Everything

 

Performed by Andrew Wade and Katie Purych
Written by Andrew Wade
SM: Bonnie Duff. Monster Design: Shelby Lyn Lowe

 

The story of an imaginary friend who refuses to be forgotten.

 

Hullaboo has been Mikaila The Magnificent’s sidekick for as long as he can remember, going on incredible adventures and fighting the evil Scowl. But now Mikaila is growing up without him and a monster is hunting Hullaboo. What can an imaginary friend do to survive?

“It’s smart, funny, and poignant – Fringe theatre at its finest…
If you ever wanted to see a Pixar movie at the Fringe, this is it.”
– Saskatoon StarPhoenix

From the creator/performer of The Hatter (4.5 stars, StarPhoenix), The Most Honest Man In The World (part of TOTE in 2017), and William vs The World. Wade also wrote the book/lyrics for a Vancouver Fringe ‘PICK OF THE FRINGE’ winner, TITUS! The Light and Delightful Musical Comedy of Titus Andronicus. (5 stars, Vancouver Sun)

LOCATION: Carousel Theatre (on Granville Island)
1411 Cartwright Street

TICKETS: 15$ + Membership fee
Cheaper if purchased as part of a package.
Purchase at http://tickets.vancouverfringe.com/ or at the door.

SHOWTIMES: (show length: 50 minutes)
September 6th (Thursday) – 6:15pm
September 7th (Friday) – 10:30pm
September 8th (Saturday) – 10pm
September 9th (Sunday) – 7:30pm
September 10th (Monday) – 6:15pm
September 12th (Wednesday) – 10:30pm
September 15th (Saturday) – 10pm
September 16th (Sunday) – 7:30pm

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Andrew Wade: actorwade@gmail.com 778.985.1617
Vancouver Fringe: publicity@vancouverfringe.com 604.257.0350

Hullaboo - Audra Balion Art smaller
Beautiful fan art by the lovely Audra Balion.  https://www.facebook.com/AudraBalionArt/

 

 

 

Andrew Wade acting, money, travel, writing

My 2017 Fringe – By The Numbers

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Hullaboo - Riding 1350pxFor the past few years (2013) (2014) (2015) (2016),I have put out a blog post with financial breakdowns of my fringe festival experiences. With draws for Vancouver and Victoria fringe festivals coming up, I figure it is long overdue for me to write my annual Fringe Financials post for 2017!

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In 2017, I decided to go ambitious with my new project, Hullaboo and The End of Everything. I had a costume designer friend help me create a custom look for Hullaboo. I wrote a TWO PERSON show (twice my regular number of people), knowing that it would also double my transportation costs. I booked a photoshoot just for this show. I had a puppet-maker friend help me out. The challenge for 2017 was going to be making a very professional-looking show.

In reality, the challenge ended up being that AND finding a new co-start with less than two weeks to go when the original actor got a long-term, paying contract elsewhere (which I totally understand and was okay with versus the uncertainty of profit-share fringing!).

So how did our 4.5/5 star-reviewed show do?

“This is a show that I can recommend enthusiastically. It’s smart, it’s fun, it tugs at the heartstrings — if you ever wanted to see a Pixar movie at the Fringe, this is it.” – Saskatoon Starphoenix

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And at what cost?

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For summer of 2017, I applied for seven lottery/first-come-first-serve draws: Saskatoon Fringe (first-come-first serve, put on waitlist, later got in), the CAFF lottery (did not win), Winnipeg Fringe (did not win), Edmonton Fringe (did not win), Calgary Fringe (did not win), Vancouver Fringe (did not win), Victoria Fringe (did not win).

So, I went 1 / 7.

All in all, those application fees (aka ‘put my name in the hat’ fees) set me back a fair amount:

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EXPENSES:

Failed Fringe Application fees:
CAFF Lottery: -25.00$
Winnipeg: -25.00$
Edmonton: -36.75$ (in a super awkward way of paying 708.75$ and then getting 672.00$ of that back, a month later)
Calgary: -35.00$
Vancouver: -50.00$
Victoria: -30.00$
TOTAL: -201.75$

Hullaboo - Claws 1000px
Hullaboo production costs:
Hullaboo tuxedo costume: -208.69$
Hullaboo costume shirts: -20.98$
Hullaboo costume make-up (green eyeliner): -22.40$
Hullaboo photoshoot (for posters and handbills): -131.00$
Hullaboo props: -1.40$
Giant puppet monster/costume: -100.00$
TOTAL: -466.47$

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Saskatoon-specific production costs:
Application fee: -50.00$
Festival fee: -680.00$
Plane ticket to Saskatoon (Me): -156.58$
Plane ticket from Saskatoon (Me): -156.58$
Plane ticket to Saskatoon (Katie): -156.58$
Plane ticket (Katie left a couple of days before I did, on a slightly more expensive flying day): -183.88$
Total cost to switch plane tickets to work for my wonderful replacement actor: 0$
(actual cost was 262.50$, but the first actor reimbursed that amount)
Handbills from eprintfast: -63.25$
Poster printing from Clubcard: -13.33$
Packing tape for posters: -3.35$
TOTAL: -1463.55$

Expenses not included:
– Fringe bar beers
– Rent paid back home
– Food eaten / groceries bought
– Lost income from not working dayjobs.

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Ooof! That’s a significant amount for a guy who doesn’t earn all that much.

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So let’s take a look at the income:

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Hullaboo - Scared 1500px

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INCOME:
Ticket sales: +489.49$
TOTAL: +489.48$

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…
…
Eeeep.

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How’s that? Let’s break it down:

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Ticket sales:
Advance ticket sales (12$): 0+0+0+0+2+2+4 = 8 sales (+96.00$)
Company/volunteer comps: 4+8+4+9+6+7+5 (I let volunteers in) = 43 tickets (0.00$)
Rush Media: 0+1+0+0+0+0+0 = 1 ticket (with that review quote above! 0.00$)
Frequent Fringer 5 Pack (11$): 0+2+0+2+0+0+1 = 5 sales (+55.00$)
Frequent Fringer 10 Pack (10$): 0+0+0+0+2+0+1 = 3 sales (+30.00$)
Frequent Fringer 20 Pack (9$): 0+1+0+0+1+2+0 = 4 sales (+36.00$)
Frequent Fringer – Child (7$): 0+0+4+0+0+0+0 = 4 sales (+28.00$)
And then this fringe removes GST (the only festival in the country to so do): -31.52$
= 489.48$

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Needless to say, that profit share with Katie didn’t really work out. We still had a fun time, though.

 

Hullaboo - Cross 1500px

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BUT ANDREW, YOU GOT A GREAT 4.5 STAR REVIEW!

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Yes, yes I did. Unfortunately, they never printed the review in their print paper – it was only online, if you scrolled down a bunch. They didn’t even include it in their ‘best of fringe’ feature where they reprinted reviews, even though that feature included a large number of shows with worse review scores. Alas. And Saskatoon is a ‘reads the paper’ kind of town. That’s my guess as to why so few people saw the show. But I really don’t know.

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FINAL FINANCIAL VERDICT: -1642.29$

Compare to 2016’s -58.21
Compare to 2015’s +897.63$ (due to fee for writing TITUS)
Compare to 2014’s +83.51$
Compare to 2013’s -1671.16$

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BUT!

Let’s not leave it on that rather dour (albeit tax deductible) note. For there were other fringe-related developments in 2017! I took part in a number of non-fringe festivals with previously fringe shows, and performed a few of them at the Heritage Grill as part of Way Off Wednesdays (run by the lovely Devon More). Let’s take a look at those:

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Non-Fringe with Fringe Shows:

In March, I performed my Hatter show twice in New Westminster at the Heritage Grill as a by donation show:
First Performance Donations: +134.90$
Second Performance Donations: +10$ (yeah, it was a bit of a bust)
I also performed The Most Honest Man in the World at the same location that month, by donation:
Donations: +102.55$
And in December, I performed Hullaboo and The End of Everything once at that location, by donation:
Donations: +156.40$
Profit share to Katie: -78.20$
Heritage Grill by donation total: +325.65$

Due to previously being in Port Alberni during their fringe, I was invited back to their Solstice Festival to perform William vs The World:
Solstice artist fee: +650.00$
Ferry Expenses: -16.95$ (there)
Ferry Expenses: -16.95$ (back)
Stage manager pay: -66.09$
Solstice total: +550.01$

I also took my show, The Most Honest Man in the World, to a separate non-fringe festival in Salmon Arm, Theatre On The Edge, for two performances:
Festival fee: -225.00$
Greyhound to Salmon Arm: -62.90$
Return trip cost thanks to the lovely Andrew Bailey and thanks to his lovely girlfriend: 0$
Artist take-home from ticket sales: +757.90$
Salmon Arm total: +470.00$

I also performed in a Geekenders show (Slumber Here) at Vancouver Fringe, but it did not make any money. Which was to be expected, as we had to hire a live donkey for the show!

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More generous end verdict:

If I balance these fringe show fees beside my fringe losses from Saskatoon, we get an end of 2017 financial figure of…. : -296.63$

Which doesn’t seem as bad. What do you think?

Hullaboo - Audra Balion Art

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Hullaboo - Poster

Andrew Wade acting, money, writing

My 2016 Fringe: By The Numbers – Vancouver Edition


My 2016 Fringe: By The Numbers – Vancouver Edition

Hello!williamvstheworld-image-01

Every (2013) single (2014) year (2015), I put out a blog post with financial breakdowns of my fringe festival experiences. This summer, however, I took a break from the tour as a whole and only performed in Vancouver.

Before I get started, I just want to give Vancouver Fringe kudos for making the ticket costs more transparent this year, at least online, clearly separating the amount of each ticket price that is given to the performer versus the fringe festival fee attached to each ticket.

This year (2016), Vancouver Fringe had 100 shows – more than ever before, but fewer than the advertised number of 110 due to ‘Generation HOT’ and special event shows – and gave $260,213.00 in revenues to artists.

Divide that number by the number of shows, and the average revenue per company would be 2,602.13$ . Given how successful many companies are, it’s safe to peg the median revenue figure somewhere lower than that.

(thanks to Shantini Klaassen for getting these numbers to me.)

So let’s take a look at how I did compared to the average!:

Vancouver audience numbers (for William vs The World):
# of performances: 9
BYOV Venue capacity (Arts Umbrella): 31
Total # of audience members: 10 + 30 + 23 + 24 + 23 + 13 + 15 + 30 + 29 = 197.
Average # of audience members per show: 21.8
Total # of paying audience members: 4 + 17 + 15 + 20 + 13 + 10 + 8 + 18 + 19 = 124.
Average # of paying audience members per show: 13.78

Comp ticket breakdown:
# of Kids Up Front ticket donation: 12
(I gave four comp tickets to each of my first three shows to https://www.kidsupfrontvancouver.com/ , a charity that Vancouver Fringe partners with.)
# of Super Pass comps (given to those who billet artists – let artists stay with them): 1
# of Exchange Vouchers (another option for those who billet artists): 1
# of Kick Ass Pass comps (free fringing given out by the festival to staff and big donors): 3
# of Artist Request comps: 5
(I had a few friends arrive late to one show so I booked them comps for another, and I traded show tickets with another friend.)
# of ‘Comp-Advance’ (any comps booked in advance): 17
# of volunteer/artist rush comps (Vancouver Fringe has an awesome rush line system where volunteers and other artists can see non-sold-out shows for free): 34

williamvstheworld-image-02

EXPENSES:

Failed Fringe Application fees:
Saskatoon: -50.00$ (actually got in, but had to drop out.)
Orlando: -33.43$
Winnipeg: -25.00$
CAFF (Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals lottery): -25.00$
San Diego: -56.99$ (got in, but dropped due to potential border issues due to citizenship problems)
Nanaimo: -25.00$
TOTAL: -215.42$

Vancouver Fringe fees:
Lottery draw (did not get in): -50.00$
Vancouver Fringe BYOV fee: -450.00$
Arts Umbrella venue fee: -500.00$
Arts Umbrella-required extra venue insurance: -43.75$ (+time to find insurance broker)
TOTAL: -1043.75$

Other:

Photoshoot: 0$ (reused content from previous year.)
Packing tape for posters: -3.55$
25 Posters from Clubcard: -12.26$
1000 postcard handbills from ePrintFast: -75.28$
Chuck the Third (cactus prop/character): -8.95$
TOTAL: -100.04$

TOTAL EXPENSES:
-1359.21$

Expenses not included:
Fringe bar beers (5?): Roughly -27.50$
– Rent paid (as I live here)
– Food eaten
– Lost income from not working dayjobs (although during the festival I DID admittedly work one Science World shift, one SFU-Woodwards front of house shift, and put in a few hours on Richmond Arts Coalition items in my role there as Administrative Assistant.)

INCOME:20160906_135729_west-11th-avenue

Vancouver Fringe:
Frequent Fringer 4: 10$ per ticket = 0$ to the festival, 10$ to the artist.
Frequent Fringer 10 or 30: 9$ per ticket = 0$ to the festival, 9$ to the artist.
Full ticket price: 14$ = 3$ to the festival, 11$ to the artist.

# of Frequent Fringer 4 tickets sold: 5 tickets :: at 10$ per ticket = 50.00$
# of Frequent Fringer 10 + 30 tickets sold: 29 tickets :: at 9$ per ticket = 261.00$
# of full tickets sold: 90 tickets sold = 990.00$
Average amount per ticket, paid to the artist: 10.49$

Total: +1301.00$

FINAL FINANCIAL VERDICT: 1301.00$ – 1359.21$ = -58.21


Compare to 2015’s +897.63$ (due to fee for writing TITUS)
Compare to 2014’s +83.51$
Compare to 2013’s -1671.16$


Conclusion:
William vs The World is a harder show to sell than The Most Honest Man In The World, and I didn’t have any other festivals this year to build any sort of momentum or media push, so I expected a smaller turnout, and that happened. All the same, the only reason the number was negative this year was due to festival fees for festivals I ended up not getting into or dropping out of, so I’m content. It was a lot of fun to get to be a part of at least one fringe this year.

Felt like home.

 

williamvstheworld-image-03-cropped-700x350

And a final image of how I transported my set to and from Granville Island. 🙂

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