Episode 65 – Making it Punk (SLUGS)

Gabrielle Martin: Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I’m Gabrielle Martin, Push’s artistic director, and today’s episode highlights connecting to the pleasure of the scene, defying genre categorization, and making it punk.

I’m speaking with Sam kruger and S.E. Grummett, creators and performers of Slugs, which is being presented at the Push Festival January 29th to 31st, 2026. From the creators of Creepy Boys comes Slugs, a techno punk concert, clown show, and basement puppet nightmare about trying to have a good time while the world burns.

Fusing DIY absurdity with electronic comedy songs and trash puppetry, this brilliantly smart and beautifully stupid hit from Edinburgh spirals from chaos into catharsis. For tonight, we are free. Creepy Boys are real life lovers S.E.  Grummet and Sam Kruger proudly making joyful, deliciously funny, big-hearted queer comedy and theater for the intrigued.

Sam is a performer, sound designer, and recent immigrant to Canada whose original theater draws on Lecoq-style physical theater, Gaulier-esque clown, performance art, and surrealism. And Grums is a queer transgender theater artist from Treaty 6 territory whose original work has toured internationally and celebrates queer and trans stories through puppetry, video, and self-creation.

Here’s my conversation with Sam and Grums.

Hi, Sam. Hi, Grums. 

S.E. Grummett: Hi. 

Sam kruger: Hello. 

Gabrielle Martin: Hi. Um, okay. Well, here we are, 8:00 AM for me, uh, pre-show in Denmark, I think, for you, but we’re gonna talk about where you are in a moment. I’m just gonna ground, um, by acknowledging the land that I’m joining this conversation from, which is, uh, the unceded traditional and ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

And Slugs, to me, plays with this tension between a quest for independence from social responsibility and the reality in which we’re always implicated as part of a wider society or as part of wider society, uh, just as we are connected to this land, its histories, and to one another consciously or not.

And where are you joining this conversation from? 

Sam kruger: Uh, we are right now in Copenhagen, um, in Denmark, uh, which, um, it has its own sort of colonial history to it. Um, I don’t know if, uh, if everyone in Canada is, is always aware of this, but it is, was a colonial power of, uh, it colonized Iceland, um, as well as if you were paying attention throughout this year in particular for we- weird reasons, also colonized Greenland, which both places, uh, over a number of the last, like, 20th century and decade struggled to gain independence.

Um, Greenland still, uh, has- uh, Denmark exerts a certain level of economic and military control over, but it has more independence, and that’s an ongoing situation. Um- 

S.E. Grummett: Yeah, and we’re on tour here with our, uh, what we call the old show. Um, so yeah, we are the most visitors in this place. Um, but I grew up on Treaty 6 territory, um, the traditional territory of the Nehiyawak, the Nehiythaw, the Nakoda, the Lakota, Dakota, Nakoda, and Dene peoples, and home of the Métis Nation, also called Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Sam kruger: Um, and I grew up, um, uh, at the, uh, traditional ancestral lands of the Dakota and the Lakota and the Nakoda peoples, as well as the Northern Cheyenne and the Ojibwe peoples, which is sometimes called Minnesota. 

S.E. Grummett: And we spend most of our time kind of traveling around- … like little, little medieval- Guys with our little wares going from town to town with our shows, so 

Sam kruger: Like if you’ve ever seen a movie where they have like a little cart shows up and then they come out with a weird puppet show and then like make a bunch of weird noises and like maybe there’s some fire or something.

Sometimes it feels quite literally that is our lives. Yeah. 

Gabrielle Martin: I have questions about your tour life, but I’m gonna get into that a bit later. Um, I just wanted to talk first about the show. So, uh, Slugs is about nothing, uh, until meaning starts leaking in. How did this piece start? How did it develop into a techno punk concert clown show puppet nightmare with a lot of…

It’s a lot, uh, in, in the best way. Um, yeah. 

Sam kruger: Well, uh, Slugs is, has a kind of a weird, long history. In, in some ways we have sort of always been working on Slugs. In some fashion, we actually went back. We were curious about like when it really sort of really first gestated. The word slugs came up when we, like a month into us dating in 2019, where we had already been like, “We’re gonna make one show.”

And but then the second show, it might be, I think it’s called Slugs, and we didn’t know what that meant. We were attracted to the label. For a long time it was like, maybe it’s a band, maybe it’s a show band. Rum said- 

S.E. Grummett: Maybe it’s a puppet show band … 

Sam kruger: because it, it started to like over time it’s began to layer on these pieces that things like all these things that we thought we would love, it sort of became this like nexus of that.

Um, Rums has like a big background in puppets. Um, in like the, like sort of around COVID I got really into synthesizers and so, and we both share this like language of clown and comedy, and we’d always sort of imagined that we’re like, “Well, maybe there’s this thing eventually. We don’t know what it is.” And at a certain point, um- 

S.E. Grummett: And then we, we sort of started touring and going to these bigger, um, fringe festivals, the Edinburgh Fringe, Adelaide Fringe.

And we were seeing, um… Once we sort of stepped our toes into comedy land, we started seeing that, that there were a lot of comedians being praised for shows that didn’t delve into political topics. And on the one hand, we were frustrated by that, but on the other hand- Mm-hmm … it was like we were longing for that too, as like queer and trans people, of going like, “When do we get to have our show about nothing?”

Um, yeah. 

Sam kruger: And I think there’s like another element too we, we kept talking about, was like we, we love like clown shows that sort of disappear in front of you. That they feel this like moment of play that you experience in these little rooms, and also frustrated by who gets to do that, and, and the… and what is of- sometimes papered over in terms of, uh, uh, gender and, and race, and, and- And class

and class. Yeah. And, and those are kind of, uh… And how this, uh, it particularly become really clear at these big sort of pay-to-play festivals. 

S.E. Grummett: Yeah. 

Sam kruger: Um, and it’s- 

S.E. Grummett: But larger artistic environments as well. 

Sam kruger: Yeah. 

S.E. Grummett: Um, and then, I don’t know, we, we… It sort of solidified into I think it’s musical comedy songs, like electro-punk songs, and we think it’s live feed video and puppets, which, um, are two of our big loves.

And we kind of went, “Is this anything? Does this make sense all together?” And we genuinely, I don’t think, weren’t sure until we put it in front of an audience. 

Sam kruger: Yeah. But I think like ultimately we became driven by like we, we made a joke after… at, at a certain point that we were frustrated that we had made this previous show that was this kind of chaotic cl- comedy show, clown show, and felt that a certain a certain type of reviewer of a certain age bracket th- seemed to say, “Oh, that seems…

There’s no way to understand what that’s about.” And we sort of would jokingly one night went like, “Well, you know what? Next one, it’s about nothing. Screw it. Let’s just make it all about nothing. Fine.” And in some ways, like when we kind of came together and sort of started like planning the next show, all those things kind of came together and we thought, “Okay, what is…

What would it be… What would it mean to do a show about nothing? And what if we took two people and sort of kicked them off and tried to do, to do that and see how, how much they could implode?” 

Gabrielle Martin: I, I find it so, um, like energizing, uh, refreshing, um, because these are things that I think about all the time as well, right?

This tension between arts for art’s sake or, you know, what is the role of art in society? Can we ever create independently? Is, you know, creating as an individual independent from society just like a liberal ideology? Like all these tensions. So I was just there for every moment of this show, and also because of all the other elements you speak of.

Um, can you talk a little bit, uh, more about your creation process? I know you worked, um, with the dramaturg. I know that… Yeah, I actually don’t know that much about the process. I’d love to just hear a little bit more about, like, how it comes. I mean, I understand all the different ideas, but then once you actually get into the studio to work on it.

Mm-hmm. 

S.E. Grummett: Yeah. We… And we make stuff in a pretty messy, fluid way. Um, so we started with two weeks of just the two of us, um, m- sitting down and sort of going into research mode of how do we wr- how do we write music? So we’d listen to songs, uh, that we thought were kind of this genre and the style we were going for, and, like, break down how they work, what are the different musical elements, what are the different storytelling elements within that.

And then we came up with, like, structures for our songs in the show. And then from there we went and we took those, I think we had 12 songs or, uh, 12 ideas. 12. Yeah. And then we, um- Went and made, turned them into five finished songs with our musical co-writer Shirley Noone, who’s, like, a JUNO-nominated musical comedian, and she was sort of our musical doula for those.

Um, and then we went and we worked with our dramaturg, Cayley Crow. Um, so we, we hung out in her basement with her pug, Señor, and we, like, wrote the journey of the show. Um, and with Cayley, we took all of the ideas that were on all the different sticky notes and made it into something coherent and a journey for these characters.

Sam kruger: Yeah, so, and, like, i- in a general sense, it feels like it goes through these waves, where, where often w- like, it’ll begin for process-wise, a- as, like, a big literal board of sticky notes, where we’ll put lists of, like, things we wanna d- that we sort of dream of doing in the show that are disconnected from, you know…

We, we, we… I think we didn’t even have an idea of, like, what sort of the journey is, what sort of, what are, what are characters, what is the relationship with the audience. Like, like, to really break it down to as, like, as, as small as we can, granular as we get about, like, what are we sort of, like, excited by as, like, as a format, as a, as, like, we’re like, “Oh.”

The 

S.E. Grummett: things we can do on stage. 

Sam kruger: Like, lit- there was, there was a series of ones that was like, “Okay, Gra- Grumms wants to play, uh, an instrument live in the show.” Fantastic. For a bit, we thought it would be a thing called an EWI, which is, like, an electronic breath device. Does a bunch of crazy stuff. But, like…

And, and then settled on this, like, ukulele, but, like, we’re gonna fuzz it really up, and s- we’re gonna… Yeah, it’ll be really screamy. Or… And then within that process, like, some pieces of Slugs! come out of, like, the years prior of us, like, being at… We, we live together. We’re partners. And just, like, singing songs to each other.

Like, like, um, there is, there’s a big moment, like, in the show now just quite angry, and it’s about, like, m- money and famousness. Mm-hmm. And that literally started as a, as a joke in the summer, like, two, like, I guess two summers ago, where Grum was singing it to me, just, like, while we were cooking. And we were like, “Oh, that was funny,” and we recorded a little voice demo, and that just, like, got shelved.

And so all this stuff starts to get, like, exhumed as we’re trying to search for, like, what the center of the show is. Which is, like, we, we… There’s a phrase that we sometimes use, which we took from a, a, a friend of ours named Charlie Peters out of Alberta. And, uh, Zier told us this story about, um, producer, producing directors going to the, the, the TV series Miami Vice And that they would be, when they would go, New Direction would go, the, the main showrunner would take them around Miami and then point at things and go, “That’s Vice.

That’s not Vice. That’s Vice. That’s not Vice.” As a way to get, like, key you in about what’s the… What is it? What’s the ephemeral sense of it all? And I feel like we often are, like, searching for, like, what’s Vice? What is Slugs? That’s Slugs. That’s not Slugs. That’s Slugs. That’s not Slugs. And slowly it starts to, like, tonally come together.

S.E. Grummett: With Kaylee and Shirley’s help- 

Sam kruger: Yeah … 

S.E. Grummett: to, you know, help filter that. Yeah. ‘Cause obviously not every idea can make it into the show. 

Sam kruger: Yeah. 

S.E. Grummett: And then we went and we worked with Zach Dorn, who’s, like, a live animation puppet specialist, on sort of the big puppet sequence in the show, um, and creating, like, what’s possible with the cameras.

Um, I learned a lot from him about how to build the puppets. And then we got back together with Kaylee and her partner Sasha, who became sort of our outside ears in the room. Um, together they’re in a punk band, and so we constantly went to them and went, “Is it punk enough? Is it punk enough?” And Ch- Sasha taught me how to play a ukulele solo.

Um, and then we worked with a couple different collaborators in- as outside eyes, bringing them in to sort of, I don’t know, tell us what’s working, tell us what’s not working. Yeah. Give us a little bit of direction. So we worked with Deanna Fleisher, who’s a clown, interactive comedy expert. We worked with Justin Miller, who I’ve worked with before, and works a lot in Buffon and clown, and then with Kaylee again.

So it was really, like, it really took a lot of different people- 

Sam kruger: Yeah … 

S.E. Grummett: in a lot of different steps. 

Sam kruger: Yeah. ‘Cause, like, it, I feel like when we work, work together there’s, is, there’s rarely, like, a script. Like, we don’t, like, write a script and then rehearse a script . And it’s, it’s, it, it feels like it’s these waves, it’s these, like, cyclical waves of, like, coming back and being like, “Well, we think we know for a long time…”

We didn’t know the ending of the show probably until, like, on- like, uh, two weeks or so before we did it for the first time. There, and w- there’s all these, like, the, these sticky notes live and we, and, and collaborators come in and, like, lend their, their, their, their eyes, like, and, and thoughts. So, so much of Slugs particularly w- was spent with Kaylee, like, like, really trying to hammer through, like, the dramaturgy of the, of, of the show because it’s, it’s, it can…

We, we knew it was gonna feel really disparate, and it was gonna feel sort of like this, like, like, moving m- many different styles piece. And so we wanted to feel really, like, rock solid on the, like, what do we, what are we saying? What do we mean? How do we, how does it advance forward? How do we feel these people that are versions of ourselves?

Like, you have to go through, particularly as the show reaches a certain, like, intensity at the back half. 

S.E. Grummett: Yeah. 

Gabrielle Martin: And you arrived, and you arrived. Like, you know, it was great. When I encountered the show, I think you were just nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award, and it was very hard for me to get a ticket.

It was, like, sold out. Um- And yeah, it seems like it’s, it’s not a coincidence or it’s not random that it was so successful. There’s such a thorough process and such a well-resourced process behind it. Um, thank you for walking us through that. I wanna know a little bit more about the origin of Creepy Boys.

So I mean, as you mentioned, you’re real life partners, uh, making queer, chaotic, big-hearted comedy and theater. Can you tell us about the origin story? 

Sam kruger: Um, maybe just to start, so we met, um, at the Ottawa Fringe Festival- Yeah … 2019. We both were little ping pong balls picked out of a little hopper and met in Ottawa, Ontario.

Um- ‘Cause they’re 

S.E. Grummett: all, they’re all lottery-based. All the Canadian Fringes are lottery-based. So literal, you know- Yeah … luck of the draw that we met. Yeah, 

Sam kruger: yeah. And, and sort of, like, fell in love, like, over the course of that summer as you, as the sort of Canadian Fringe circuit, like, moves across the country.

And, and, uh, Grumz had been sending me a series of playlists, and they would be named things like… ‘Cause I was doing a show about a vampire, and they’d be like Bat Boy, and then, like, Space Boy, and, like, a version of that. So when we- … kind of met back up, we were together in Vancouver, of all, of all places. It, they wrote on my pro- Vancouver Fringe program the words Creepy Boy, and we thought it was just, like, a funny joke.

S.E. Grummett: Yeah. 

Sam kruger: Um- 

S.E. Grummett: And then they have, there’s a flashlight cabaret during Vancouver Fringe, and we thought, “Oh, it’d be really funny to do a parody of friends of ours who do a show.” They’re also a couple, but they both play, um, Edgar Allan Poe. We thought it would be funny to do a parody of them called The Creepy Boys.

Sam kruger: And we came to them. We were like, “Hey, can we, like, borrow your costumes for this cabaret?” And 

S.E. Grummett: they- And they said no. 

Sam kruger: Absolutely no. 

S.E. Grummett: And that was fair. 

Sam kruger: We were like, “That’s cool. That’s cool. We get it. We get it. We get it.” 

S.E. Grummett: And so we had to, like, figure out our own costumes and figure out this cabaret bit. Yeah.

And we had so much fun doing it, and then the following summer we were gonna make a show called Creepy Boys, and we were going down to Australia to work sort of the Australian Fringes. Um, and then COVID happened, and we were stuck in Australia for a year. And we, uh- 

Sam kruger: And, and ultimately, like, like, like I feel like a lot of people did, and we particularly did, we were like, “Well, let’s do a new thing,” which was like, let’s make a show for the first time with a new person that you also live with, which you’re also romantically wrapped up with in a little apartment- And you can’t leave

where you can’t leave. And we, like… We, we made this show about, oh, it’ll be about this, these two twins, and it’s- Yeah … they’re spoo- and maybe it’s Satan-ish, and I don’t know. 

S.E. Grummett: And this was our first show, and so we toured that for the last couple years. That’s what we’re on tour with right now. Yeah. Um, and I feel like it’s at the back end of its life.

Yeah. It’s lived a long life. Um, and then, yeah, Slugs was, like, our, is our second show together. Yeah. But we’ve also worked as collaborators. Um, I, we co-wrote a solo show for Sam last year. Sam’s been working on my next solo show. We’ve made, um, some work with, like, a larger group of collaborators as well. So we, we work together a lot.

Sam kruger: Yeah. And I think, like, something about that first show, like, exceeded both of our expectations and, and so we were like, “Okay, great. We’ll keep working on it. Oh, we’ll, we’ll keep going. Oh, maybe there’s this, maybe we’ll make another thing.” And in the kind of, I don’t know, y- y- this sort of- vein of like high energy, chaotic kind of clown, kind of comedy, kind of theater at the Same time.

We both found that really exciting. And so we were at a certain point, we were like, is that, maybe that’s just what we should call ourselves, this thing called Dreamy Boys. And it sort of s- like a lot of things, I think like that they stick around in ways that you find quite surprising and, uh, unintentional, but they’re with you nonetheless.

Gabrielle Martin: And how has your, how have, how have your interests and the themes that you’re working with, your creative approach, how has that evolved from 2019 or from your first show to where you are now? 

S.E. Grummett: I mean, I’m gonna speak for myself. I think Sam makes me a better artist because I’m the guy in the creative process where I go, “I think it’s good enough.

I think it’s good enough.” And Sam goes, “Mm-mm. No. No, it’s not” and pushes us to do more and to do better. Um, and I think because of the touring life some of our work has had, I’ve gotten to see things that I never would’ve- 

Gabrielle Martin: Yeah … 

S.E. Grummett: if I had stayed in Saskatoon and created for that community. Mm-hmm. Um, and I think seeing all those things and being able to experience all those things and know what’s out there and go, “Wow, you can do that on stage.

Wow, you can do that”- Mm-hmm … has really influenced, um- Mm … what… And I think that’s why Slugs felt punk is because we went, “What’s the furthest thing we could do- Yeah … that hasn’t been done in Edinburgh? Um, how can we push it further and further and further from, like, what I would say is polite theater that we sometimes see in other places?”

Sam kruger: Yeah. Like, I comple- like, totally agree. And I, like, I feel like we’ve been really lucky enough to get, get funding to, to travel o- like, over the last number of years, and I think it’s, like, such a testament to, to why that type of funding is incredibly useful for, for, for, for work in Canada is that we get allow, allows us to, like, engage in a wider conversation about, like, what is performance?

And, like, like, genuinely, Slugs is, like, in some ways, like… We, we both saw a show in 2023 called, uh, by Lucy McCormick, who’s this amazing, like, artist out of the UK, and did this show called Lucy & Friends. And it, we both left it being like, “That, I didn’t know you could just do that. I didn’t know you could just, just do that.”

And it was so, like, punk and exciting, and it felt like, like, willing to do whatever it takes. And we felt like we wanna, we wanna feel that way. We wanna feel like we’re doing whatever it takes. And I think that’s, like, such a testament to the ability to, like, travel and, and, and be able to be exposed to that sort of, of things.

Yeah. And, like, I, I, I also, I totally agree. Like, I feel like another element to, that’s really helped is just, like, so much of our, our work is it’s kind of, it’s, like, the deepening of our own, like, relationship and being able to work with a collaborator so intimately and, and feel like you, you can create a really intense shorthand for, for, for so much.

And l- And, and I think Slugs is a product because, like, our technical abilities and our, like, our collaborative abilities, like, gr- have grown to a level to be able- Yeah … to, like, execute a lot of those things in a way that when we, particularly the show we’re doing right now, it’s much more stripped back because we were still trying to figure out, like- Well, who are you?

Who am I? Yeah. Where do we come together? And like, and, and starting to discover the things that we both are like, “Oh, yeah, I feel like you and I really both are willing to like chew up some chickpeas and then eat them,” or super like or, or a certain level of like gross and, or, or really sweaty of like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s run each other into the ground.

It’s a lot of fun.” And I think you get that over time. Yeah. You know? And I think having, being able to have collaborators that you, you spend and deepen that relationship with is a really, really special thing. 

Gabrielle Martin: Yeah. I wanna ask you a bit more about form. Uh, so your influences, I know from reading your bios, that they’re wide and wild.

So Lecoq physical theater, Gaulier clown, performance art, surrealism, puppetry, video art. Can you talk about, uh, what these forms mean to you, how you became familiar with them, how they coexist in your world? 

Sam kruger: Um, well for me, I mean, I, uh, I came out of, uh, uh, I went to the, I trained with Philippe Gaulier, who’s this, uh, French clown theater guy, um, out in a school sort of just outside of Paris, uh, called L’Etant for, for two years back in the 2010s.

Um, and so a lot of, a lot of my practice is informed by that, that time and it’s, its influence o- it’s like insistence on, on play and, and, and pleasure as a driving force for what you, what you c- what you make and what the sort of theatrical moment is. As well as like an insistence that like you have to be really honest and in the room.

That if some- like, that, you know and I think that comes out in Creedboys and in Slugs a lot, with that there is no fourth wall, the audience is really there. There, r- there, there’s a lot of a, um, I think we’re both personally like very interested in like that audience-performer relationship and times where it feels you’re building complicity, complicite, which is a very Gaulier term about, ooh, the, the wonderful like relationship between you and the audience.

And, and times where you can s- you can strain it and pull it back and how we can flex those things. 

S.E. Grummett: Yeah, and I learned all of my clown training mostly on the job. Um, so I went to the University of Saskatchewan, which was a very, um, like classical theater training. Um, and, and growing up in the prairies as a trans person, there wasn’t parts for me after graduating.

Like I was going out for things and auditioning for things, and going like, “I don’t wanna be in Pride and Prejudice. What?” Um, so I started making my own stuff, and touring it on the Canadian Fringe Circuit, and looking for collaborators to work with. And so I feel like I’ve, I learned by doing, and I learned by making stuff.

Um, and then I’ve gotten, I’ve done some workshops with clown practitioners, kind of a little bit of everything from everywhere, but I didn’t do the full formal two years of clown school in France like Sam did. Um, but I, I feel like I’ve learned a lot from, um, mentors and things as, like, like Deanna, who I’ve worked with and who helped me develop my first show.

Um, like Yvette Nolan, who was my mentor when I was like coming up out of theater school, and, um, working on projects with her and seeing the care she brings to a room, into a project. Um, but a lot of it was like learned through doing, and I think that that has been a real gift Uh, to sort of like make my voice and gr- let it grow in front of an audience.

Sam kruger: I mean, and also just to, to, to like… I think a big thing that’s really helped, I feel like Slugs in particular, is Grums has a, a, like, background in, in both, like, doing in film work as well as, like, a sp- very specifically, like, video projection and the use of a very particular uh, uh, like, using of a s- a document c- a live feed document camera, which, which they worked on, like, for a whole bunch and are really, really, really skilled at.

And I think it’s, it’s been… I know I have been, like, such… Have been so, throughout our entire creative relationship, like so inspired by like, your willingness to embrace new tech, like, a love for tech stuff- … which has really f- felt like such a like, “Yeah. Oh, yeah, we can do it.” “You’re right.” 

S.E. Grummett: But tech stuff, but tech stuff that feels live.

Sam kruger: Yeah. 

S.E. Grummett: Like, I think that that’s something that- Yeah … was really important to us, and when we were talking about any work we make is like, I don’t want tech for tech’s sake. I want it to still feel live and feel like theater and feel like- Yeah … this can only be experienced in a live context. Yeah. So I think that that’s 

Sam kruger: an important piece.

Yeah. I think, I think, uh, uh, that’s like a big element is like particularly in the world that’s like, like of live feed and projection and like sometimes termed micro cinema on stage. Yeah. I think there’s always a tendency for it to get better and better, cleaner and cleaner and cleaner, which essentially becomes you’re, like- 

S.E. Grummett: Removed from the performer- 

Sam kruger: Yeah.

It just essentially- … and 

S.E. Grummett: their relationship to you, 

Sam kruger: so … it’s basically a YouTube video, and you’re like- … “Well, I just watched a YouTube video.” 

Gabrielle Martin: Mm-hmm. 

Sam kruger: How can it feel, still feel like it’s still happening right now, it is, it’s, it’s a, it’s always a live, uh, event regardless I think is a good thing. 

Gabrielle Martin: Yeah. I want to talk more about your, the fringe circuits, and like, you know, you’ve spoken also about how your, your practice has really developed through touring the work and, and being in these, um, you know, environments where you see all these other shows, like some of the fringes.

So, you know, you’ve toured across continents, performing in wildly different contexts, and often outside the traditional theater ecosystem doing… And, and you’ve done really well it seems from my perspective, um, and from where I’ve encountered you, you know, at The Fringe, uh, in Edinburgh. So yeah, and I know that Grums, your solo show, Something In The Water, won Best Theater at Adelaide Fringe, and you know, so yeah, it’s not just from my perspective.

It’s in your bios. Um, and I know that, like, the fringe model is something that a lot of artists understandably are intimidated by. It’s not the easiest environment. It’s very competitive. So I’m, I would love to hear about what- If you can actually just f- first of all just say, like, a little bit about what the Fringe model is for people who don’t understand, and then what draws you to that model and why you keep working in, within that context.

S.E. Grummett: So I think, uh, the Fringe model is so different depending on where you are in the world. Um, I think the first one was the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s the biggest in the world. I think it’s the largest arts festival in the world. Um, and it was a way, it was set up as a way of being an alternative to big curated festivals that were quite gatekeep-y, um, and artists wanted to be able to just do what they wanted, make weird stuff, and put it on stage.

The Canadian Fringe circuit is totally different in that it’s lottery based. So you throw your name in a hat, you pay a little bit of money, uh, com- in comparison to the Edinburgh Fringe, and then, uh, if your name is drawn, you do that festival. And it was a really great environment to come up out of theater school and make work in and try stuff.

Um, it was low risk. You got to- if you did a full tour, you were doing a show maybe 50 times across a summer to a variety of different audiences. Um, they’d house you, they’d, uh… And it was, like, this great environment to cut your teeth in, figure out how to market your show, figure out how to, um, write about it, how to, how to do, get, make your show better 

Gabrielle Martin: in terms of- And can I just say thank you?

So, like, in terms of, you know, the promotional images, the descript- show description that you already brought to us at Push is, it’s, like, makes our lives so much easier. And it, it just shows, you know? Like, that work that you’ve do- put in because you have to sell your show. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, it helps us-

sell your show. Yeah. 

S.E. Grummett: And that’s, and I, and then so from there, we pivoted to doing the Australian circuit, which is the next, uh, the second largest in the world, um, is the Adelaide Fringe. And, uh, we sort of did that on a fluke because we were stuck there during COVID, and it was one of the few festivals that was happening in 2021.

So I took my solo show there, and we premiered the sort of reworked full version. Mm-hmm. Um, but it is, these bigger Fringe festivals are so competitive. So for comparison, a Canadian Fringe circuit, the biggest I think is Edmonton. It has 250 shows, and Adelaide has 1,200 shows, and the Edinburgh Fringe has almost 4,000 shows.

So in order to, like, stand out in those environments, you have to y- you, you have to be able to, like, do, sell your show from both the grassroots, small-scale, you know, getting in front of people and handing them flyers and to the big scale- Mm-hmm … um, of selling it to industry, getting big posters and that sort of thing.

So it’s like, it’s all of it, and it really tests our producing abilities ’cause we’ve always been self-produced as well. Mm-hmm. Um, the thing with the Edinburgh Fringe and the Adelaide Fringe and, and those sort of circuits is they’re considered more professional. You know, you have big-name acts that are going there year after year.

You have, you have theater companies from around the world taking work there. Um, and then you have two scrappy little queers from the prairies that, uh, you know. So- … those festivals too, they have these big venue hubs that are curated. So you are seeing a curated program of, program of work, um, where venues and programmers are going, looking for a specific thing.

So it isn’t, while it is still open access, there are opportunities to find- Mm-hmm … a venue for just about everybody, there are more curated and professional opportunities. And so that’s sort of why we’ve- Um, moved over to doing those festivals And, 

Sam kruger: and just as a clarification, like, for if, if people aren’t aware listening, like, that when we say open access, often that means the difference is there’s not a lottery.

Um, and, and, and, and so- It’s not paid by- … in general you basically find, you find a venue. That venue is like, “Hey, we will charge you this much for this many shows at this time.” And you say, “Cool.” At a certain point you negotiate, you, you sign a deal, and then you do the shows. Yeah. And then you pay them the money.

Um, and even w- and within that there are, like Rum said, there are hubs that will still curate within that. But even still that’s not, like, they’ll curate, they’ll select you, then you can work out a deal to pay them money. 

S.E. Grummett: And- And it’s, it’s, those festivals which they started as something that was supposed to be super for the artists- Mm-hmm

are, have become really, really, really expensive to do- Yeah … and to tour to. Yeah. And so it’s, it’s a, it’s a big problem within- Yeah … those festivals right now. I think we keep going back to them because, uh, we’re often viewed as too weird or too niche or too fringe, and they use this word in, in, in a bad way, to be programmed in professional opportunities.

Um, and, and that’s why we keep going back there. 

Sam kruger: And I think may- and, and additionally I feel like the thing about what sometimes feels particularly special, particularly at Edinburgh itself, can feel like you don’t have to be afraid about something that’s unfamiliar. Because I think familiarity is such a thing that’s, like, kind of been on, I mean, both our minds, we talk about it a lot.

Like, in a lot of programming, uh, uh, and, and recently is, like, you know, when sometimes the word is used like, “Well, we don’t know what box to put you in,” or, like, maybe you’re, ’cause for As You Do that is sort of kind of theater. It’s kind of com- it’s kind of a comedy show. It’s kind of a performance show.

It’s kind of I don’t know what it is. Um, I think the thing we of- often feel like in practicality what it is is it’s about familiarity. If something seems unfamiliar, pe- people can get a little bit, like, um, uncertain at times, and I feel like that there are spaces and there are a lot of people really hungry for it, and I think it is sometimes that’s more of a gatekeep-y conversation within organizations.

But at, at, at places like, like, like fringe festivals, often there, that, that barrier disappears and, and there’s, and it, it, it, audiences re- often come and realize that, like, it’s not that it’s not that s- that strange. It’s actually quite straightforward. 

Gabrielle Martin: I am so looking forward to experiencing the work again in the room.

Our whole team is actually so excited, all the folks who didn’t get a chance to see it. Just from reading your amazing show description and seeing your photos, the whole team is super excited about your show. Um- Yeah … and I’m excited to see it again. So, and, and really to- Yeah, we’re, we’re- 

Sam kruger: Yeah. Yeah. We’re, we’re ab- so excited- Yeah

to get to, to, to come and, like- Yeah … do it, do it in Vancouver, and do it for Push. It’s, it’s such a, frankly a dream. 

S.E. Grummett: Yeah. Absolutely.