I mentioned native storytelling last year because I was trying to suggest things that don't appear at the Fringe which would broaden it. There is a lot out there where the people doing it might not define themselves as artists, so they may overlook the Fringe, yet still be good at doing what they do.
And then wham, here's a native storyteller, even from the Pacific Northwest. And we get to contrast her style with the storytelling that usually happens at the Fringe. This is creation storytelling, not "Joe went out on the ocean and a funny thing happened to him..." And there's a style to it different from what we normally see, though there is movement that makes for good spoken word. She even used a microphone, which maybe should be announced, I don't like the acoustics in that venue and haven't been in there for years, though suddenly I've been in twice, two shows I couldn't ignore. The microphone helped.
This is different performance art, which helps to make the Fringe diverse. But, of course it also brings a different voice to the Fringe (I like the two years when the Kanawake Theatre Company did shows at the Fringe, but at least one of those shows was fairly mainstream, about safe sex).
Coincidentally, the 40th anniversary issue of "This Magazine" (it started out life as "This Magazine is About Schools", complete with at least one piece by Bill Ayers) has a bit about "Native Earth Performing Arts" in Toronto. "so few places exist where any of us can hear Aboriginal voices live and unmediated", which is true.
During "The Oka Crisis", CJAD had regular reports from the Kanawake radio station, about the Crisis, yet once it was all over, that disappeared. Most of the time, the only stories we hear from there are about cigarettes or other squabbles, not about the library, or that they want to build a new sports complex.
Most don't get to stay the night at Kanawake and hear the clump, clump, clump of someone in boots walking around all night, he staying up to keep the woodstove going so we'd be warm, or know the woman who loved cashews, or the guy from AIM who said, after two concentric rainbows appeared on the plains of South Dakota, "that's nothing, I once saw three rainbows at a time". Or meet Floyd Westerman before he became a movie star, or have that guy carrying the medecine bundle come over and say something when he knew I was feeling a bit off. I was once in a crowd of 500,000 people in New York City and suddenly there was someone from Kanawake who remembered me. Most people don't get that, just regular people.
I'd like to think I did cause this show to appear, someone reading what I posted last year and thinking "I can do that". But I fear it was more sculpting by the Fringe, someone perhaps whispering in the right place so they'd know about our Fringe. Fine if it's Joe Nobody doing the whispering, kind of tampering if it's the Fringe.
