Victoria BC Fringe Festival Offers 400 Performances August 21-31

The 22nd Annual Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival will run August 21- 31, 2008. The Fringe is an unjuried, uncensored, international festival of live comedy, drama, dance, spoken word, and more.

Companies are selected by lottery in November. Anyone with a show can apply. In 2007, 16,000 people came to the Victoria Fringe and hundreds volunteered to help make it happen.The Victoria Fringe Festival is one of 23 fringes in Canada and operates under the Canadian Association of Fringe Festival‘s 4 principles: unjuried, festival participation is on a first come, first served basis; no censorship; 100% of the box office is returned to the artists; and, accessibility to all artists.

You may see anything at fringe; dramas, comedy, dance, stand up….even some things that may
make you say, “What the fringe was that?”

The Fringe Festival serves as a playground for artists, with some works getting picked up for
professional runs. The Drowsy Chaperone, Urtinetown, MacHomer and One Man Star Wars
Trilogy (by local playwright, Charles Ross) all started at the fringe and later hit the big time!
Come join 20,000 of your closest friends and 250 volunteers to celebrate this cultural explosion
in downtown Victoria. This year the Victoria Fringe runs from August 21 ? 31 with 11 venues,
50 international companies and more than 400 performances.

Getting to Victoria BC, Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands

The main way to get to Vancouver Island and Victoria from Canada is via BC Ferries, 1-888-223-3779, which operates a ferry from Tsawwassen (south of Vancouver) to Swartz Bay, a half hour drive north of Victoria. Cost is about $50 for a car and a little over $12 per person (more in peak season, and rising with fuel surcharges) each way. Payment can be made by cash or credit card, and debit cards can be used at an automatic ticket terminal for foot passengers, but not on the ferry or at the vehicle toll booths. Service runs on the odd hours between 7am and 9pm during the winter (with extra sailings at busier times) and every hour during the summer. The ferry ride is 1 hour 35 minutes. Reservations are never required, but recommended for vehicles during peak travel times, including weekends throughout the summer months. There is a $15 charge for reservations if made 7 days in advance; $17.50 if less than 7 days. Vehicles sometimes have to show up a few hours before they can actually board (there can be multiple sailing waits during peak travel times), so make sure that you check the website to see what the wait is, and make sure that you allow plenty of time to catch your sailing; as the ferry’s capacity is usually limited by the amount of space on the car decks, foot passengers can usually get on if they show up 15-20 minutes before their sailing. To get to the ferry take bus number 424 from Vancouver Airport to Airport Station and then change to bus number 620. Keep $3.25 CAD in change (per person) for this.

The second way to take a ferry to Victoria is via Washington State Ferries, +1-206 464-6400, which operates a passenger vehicle ferry between Anacortes and Sidney (about half an hour from Victoria) through the San Juan Islands. Passenger or pedestrian fare is US$16 each way, vehicle fare is $42.95 (increases to $53.70 May-October). This service does not operate during the winter season, generally from the second week of January until the end of March. The ferry system prefers that you make reservations via its website or by calling ahead.

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“Weird Al” Yankovic This Thursday at the Royal Theatre

North America’s foremost song parodist, the inimitable Weird Al Yokovic, will appear beginning at 7:00 p.m. this Thursday, August 22, downtown at the Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton Street. Tickets, from $50 each, are available at the McPherson Box Office, #3 Centennial Square.

Now enjoying the most successful chart topping CD, single and video of his career with STRAIGHT OUTTA LYNWOOD’S “White and Nerdy.” Live, the “WEIRD AL” show is a full multi-media extravaganza, complete with video, costume changes and his full band. “Weird Al” Yankovic, the undisputed king of pop culture parody, has sold more comedy recordings than any other artist in history. In a career spanning nearly three decades, he has amassed 28 Gold and Platinum albums, 7 Gold and Platinum-certified home videos and 3 Grammy Awards (with 9 nominations).

An accomplished director, Al has helmed many of his own award-winning music videos as well as clips for Ben Folds, Jeff Foxworthy, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Hanson and The Black Crowes. His video for “Smells Like Nirvana,” nominated for an MTV Video Music Award in 1992, was chosen by Rolling Stone as one of the “Top 100 Music Videos Of All Time.” Al also created the critically acclaimed title sequence for the Leslie Nielsen feature film “Spy Hard.”

The centerpiece of Straight Outta Lynwood is “White & Nerdy,” a parody of Chamillionaire’s No. 1 smash hit “Ridin’.”Al directed the highly-acclaimed video clip, which features hilarious cameos by Donny Osmond, Seth Green, Judy Tenuta and Mad TV’s Keegan-Michael Keys and Jordan Peele. The “White & Nerdy” video went straight into heavy rotation on VH-1 (debuting at #5 in their Top 20 Countdown) and quickly racked up a few million hits on YouTube.

Straight Outta Lynwood also features parodies of Green Day (“Canadian Idiot”), Usher (“Confessions Part III”), Taylor Hicks (“Do I Creep You Out”) and R. Kelly (the 11-minute epic “Trapped in the Drive-Thru”), as well as the now-traditional polka medley (“Polkarama!”), which this time includes accordion-fueled renditions of hits by such artists as 50 Cent, The Black Eyed Peas, Snoop Dogg, Coldplay, Weezer, Pussycat Dolls and Kanye West.

“Don’t Download This Song,” the first song and video released from the album, is a tongue-in-cheek look at the hot-button issue of mp3 piracy, set to original music inspired by the celebrity-driven charity benefit songs from the ‘80s.

Straight Outta Lynwood debuted at #10 on the Billboard charts, making it Al’s highest charting album to date. “Weird Al” Yankovic and his band (the same talented group of musicians that has performed with him since 1982) will be embarking on their next major North American concert tour in the summer of 2008.