“[A] hilarious look at the world of touring children’s theatre.”
From press release:
Solo performance sensation Jeff Leard is coming back to the Toronto
Fringe Festival (July 3-14) with a hilarious new autobiographical tale about the travails of a children’s theatre company touring through northern Rocky Mountains.
In The Show Must Go On, Leard relates war stories of the six months he spent in a van with a hot young ingénue and a grizzled veteran of the school circuit, bringing a production of Rumplestiltskin to
schools in BC’s isolated mountain communities. Over more than 5,000 kilometers travelled, Leard performed for incontinent children, was nearly stampeded to death by a herd of caribou, and was robbed
at gunpoint of all his belongings – all in the name of bringing art to kids.
Leard is best-known to Fringers for his hit solo show Gametes & Gonads, a high-energy physical comedy that turned the human reproductive system into a multi-character sci-fi epic in the vein of Star Wars, which toured Canada and played at the Toronto Fringe in 2011. The Show Must Go On sees Leard once again display his mastery of athletic physical comedy, mime, character voices, and brutally funny observations to tell a personal story about the power of art to transform both the artist and the audience.
Leard, a Victoria native who now calls Toronto home, created the show with direction from his father James Leard, a fixture of the Victoria theatre company and owner of Story Theatre Company, which creates
children’s shows to tour to elementary schools in British Columbia.
The Toronto Fringe is just the beginning for The Show Must Go On, which is touring the Fringe Circuit across Canada this summer, playing festivals in London, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, and Victoria.
The Show Must Go On, presented by the Random Samples Collective
(in association with the Toronto Fringe Festival) plays the following dates at the George Ignatieff Theatre (15 Devonshire Place):
- July 5, 7 PM
- July 6, 11 PM
- July 8, 2:45 PM
- July 9, 7 PM
- July 11, 9:45 PM
- July 12, 1:45 PM
- July 13, 11:30 PM
Tickets are$10 and can be bought at the door, or purchased in advance at fringetix.ca or by phone at 416-966-1062, extension 1. Additional fees apply to advance purchases.
Please note that latecomers are never seated at Fringe performances.
Photograph of Jeff Leard by Dahlia Katz.