Fringe in the News!

Source: Edify Edmonton
Author: Areeha Mahal

Why She’s Top 40

Advancing preventative health care while strengthening our theatre community

Age: 35

Job Title: Market Development Manager for Alberta Blue Cross and Board Chair of Edmonton Fringe Theatre

By day, Elizabeth Hammell is shaping preventative health initiatives at Alberta Blue Cross. By night, she’s cheering on performers at North America’s largest and longest-running Fringe Festival. At first glance, the worlds seem far apart. But Hammell thrives where structure meets creativity and strategy dances with imagination.

Source: 12thnight.ca
Author: Liz Nicholls

In Tough Guy, an exhilarating new play by Hayley Moorhouse, a queer up-and-coming filmmaker tries to justify turning their camera on their friends, survivors of a shooting in queer nightclub mere days before, and reeling from the death of one of their circle.

Emerson (Autumn Strom) has arrived back home too late for the funeral (“I lost track of time”). Their artistic concept, in progress, is a film capture of “queer joy,” something visceral and powerful (also words in the Emerson lexicon). They’re arguing for the idea of art, self-expression, the compelling need to put the queer story out there in the world and thereby restore “agency” to the queer experience. And their friends, shattered in various ways, aren’t buying.

Source: Edify Edmonton
Author: Caitlin Hart

From winter light-ups and food fests to theatre, art and 1940s swing — here’s how to make the most of Edmonton in November.

Toughen Up

October 28 to November 8
Tough Guy, a new play by local playwright Hayley Moorhouse, follows a group of friends navigating the aftermath of a shooting at a queer nightclub. See this complex exploration of grief, healing and joy at Fringe Theatre Arts Barns.

Source: 12thnight.ca
Author: Liz Nicholls

Do you remember where you were when you heard …?

There are moments in life when you know your answer will be instantly available in your memory, forever. Hayley Moorhouse, whose new play Tough Guy premieres Thursday in a Persistent Myth production directed by Brett Dahl (part of the Edmonton Fringe Theatre season), distinctly remembers driving to work one morning in 2016, listening to the radio. En route the news came on: a horrific mass shooting in Pulse, a queer nightclub in Orlando. “I’m not normally a big emotional kinda guy,” says Moorhouse, who indeed has a brisk, articulate sort of thoughtfulness and good humour in conversation. But they found themself “sobbing so hard I couldn’t see and had to pull over. It hit me so hard.”

Source: CTV News
Author: Adrienne Lee

The Fringe Theatre is opening its 2025-2026 season with an award-winning stage production next week.

Tough Guy by Hayley Moorhouse will kick off the theatre season next Tuesday at the Backstage Theatre at the Fringe Theatre Arts Barns. It explores themes of tragedy and “queer joy” as the story follows a group of friends after a traumatic shooting at a queer nightclub, according to the theatre’s news release on Thursday.

Source: Edify Edmonton
Author: Zachary Ayotte

How do we make art about trauma? The question is age old, and the answer, ever evolving, is often best expressed by the art itself — the paintings, movies, novels and performances that try to communicate how a traumatic event can change a person’s life.

It’s in this vein that Tough Guy, the new play running from October 28 to November 8 at Fringe Theatre Adventures, opens on the funeral of someone killed in a mass shooting at a queer nightclub. From there, it follows a group of friends, many of them also survivors of the shooting, as they try to process a collective trauma — together and alone — and grapple with irreversible loss.