Brian "Father Fringe" Paisley
Brian “Father Fringe” Paisley, the founder of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival, is ill. Brian’s family has created a GoFundMe – please visit their page to learn more.
We are so grateful for Brian’s vision, creativity, and leadership. He’s transformed the landscape of theatre in Edmonton and arts and culture across North America.
Our hopeful hearts are with Brian and his family in this challenging time.
Brian created North America’s first Fringe Theatre Festival in Edmonton in 1982, inspiring Fringe events across the continent in the years since. He is a playwright, screenwriter, and author who has been instrumental in shaping Edmonton’s and Canada’s arts scene. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta in 2023 and from Athabasca University in 1990. He was inducted into Edmonton’s Cultural Hall of Fame in 2001 and named a member of the Order of Canada in 2010 as “a cultural visionary who has left an indelible mark on Canadian theatre.”
Read on for Brian’s Convocation Address at his 2023 Doctor of Letters Ceremony.
Founder of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival
Be tenacious.
Be ready.
Be kind – be as human as you can be.
Convocation Address – Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta – June 7, 2023
It is a privilege and a pleasure to be here.
Thank you to the University of Alberta for this wonderful honour. Thank you to my colleagues and friends who have taken time out of their busy schedules to participate in this honour – it is shared in spirit with so many people – and I’m doubly-honored to be here today in the city where I spent the critical middle years of my life. In Edmonton, Alberta, a most unique and diverse northern metropolis, where I found the opportunity and the friendships and the community support to help transform an undeniably absurd idea into an annual tradition. Thank you as well to all the Fringe teams over the years, and into the future; artists, management, boards and volunteers.
We’re also here today to help celebrate the ceremonial passage of yet another crew of eager, talented young people as they set sail from the relatively safe harbour of academia into the harsher, storm-tossed realities of daily life as professional artists, where poverty, setbacks and sacrifice are the norm, and success can often be a vague glow on a very distant horizon…
Where I spend my time these days, near a long, sandy, surfing beach on the southern Pacific coast of Oaxaca, there is a rare and mysterious sunset phenomenon known as a ‘green flash’. Every evening in calm, clear weather, locals and tourists alike line this beach to watch the sun go down. The evanescent ‘green flash’ occurs over the last arc of the sun as it sinks beneath the horizon. It lasts just seconds and only manifests itself on very rare occasions. If you take your eyes off the horizon for a mere second, you’ll likely miss it. Some people who haven’t been lucky enough to see a ‘green flash’ say it’s a ‘trick of the eye’, an optical illusion, a fanciful myth brought on by too much mezcal. Others with a more scientific bent suggest when such a flash happens, if it happens, the Earth’s atmosphere is acting like both a prism and a lens; it is both an oceanic mirage and a strange, final dispersion of sunlight.
Success in the arts is a lot like a ‘green flash’. No matter how well your day and your career may be going, no matter how much you would like it to happen, personal triumph is an unpredictable occurrence, often unrecognizable and perhaps most heartbreaking of all – like the ‘flash’ – it is always ephemeral.
Yet if success is so elusive, how does a working artist dispel the constant looming darkness of potential failure? In my experience, there is a way, there are guidelines, signposts to success – here’s one: Be Curious. Cultivate friendships, seek out colleagues, tolerate differences, admire a unique approach. Right now, I’m working with a couple of young filmmakers, each with wildly different cinematic visions, but who are both committed to the stories they want to tell. Find people like that, be open to their aesthetic vibes, their unique passions – they are you at another age perhaps, in another environment, at another waystation on their artistic journey.
Founder of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival
Perseverance is a key attribute for every sunset-watcher and would-be artist. I’m sure you’ve learned that truism already. No committed artist I’ve met or worked with has lacked the tenacity to stick to their dream, no matter how far-fetched it might seem. Be Tenacious. An artist is on a mission. There is always a way – and if there isn’t, if imagination has failed you this time, there is always another dream to be conjured up.
Perhaps the most essential signpost on this path to artistic creation is the one extolling you to Be Ready – be ready to let inspiration and the muse overwhelm you, seduce you, spur you to action. Whether you aspire to be a writer, a filmmaker, an actor, a dancer, a designer, a musician, a painter, a potter, a poet, or an historian… whatever. Liminal artists will always suffer their share of disparaging comments or mediocre reviews along the way, yet those who will eventually break through to succeed in their chosen field are the ones who believe in their own talent and continue to hone their unique skills.
No matter how you define it, as an imaginative leap, as insight, applause, further inspiration or monetary reward, success in the arts is always possible. There is such a thing as a ‘green flash’ – I’ve seen it. It’s momentary, yes, but it is also undeniable and real. And I know people who’ve seen it more than once.
Be Curious.
Be Tenacious.
Be Ready.
And the D’Artagnan to these Three Arts Musketeers..? Be Kind – be as human as you can be.
So, from this aging swashbuckler, a final “gracias” to all of you for your support, your kindness, and your generosity – along with my ultimate Polonial pronouncement to the Graduates of 2023: “This above all…”
To live a life focused on the arts while retaining your equilibrium, your sanity, your heart and your rent, you’re going to have to learn to… laugh. A lot.
Good Luck!
