Hooray! My skeleton and I are heading to the Winnipeg Fringe, the second-largest Fringe in Canada (and, I hear, maybe the most dedicated, where the whole city takes time off work to come). Come see us! You can buy Fringe tickets here: https://www.winnipegfringe.com/performer-detail.aspx?kw=Melissa+Yuan-Innes. And/or come to a free workshop and reading, below!

Performance Schedule: 

Melissa Yuan-Innes: I Am The Most Unfeeling Doctor in the World (And Other True Tales from the Emergency Room) at Venue 7, Cinematheque

Thu July 14 12:45pm

Fri July 15 2:45pm

Sat July 16 10:00pm

Sun July 17 4:30pm

Tue July 19 7:45pm

Wed July 20 9:45pm

Fri July 22 6:30pm

Sat July 23 11:00am

Sun July 24 2:45pm

Winnipeg has also welcomed me with two pre-Fringe events.

Playwriting (and Play Reading) 101 July 12, 5-6:45 p.m. (FREE)

Millennium Library, Carol Shields Auditorium

It’s free! Dean Gunnarson, the legendary escape artist who inspired Terminally Ill, signed up!

Sign up in advance: https://wpl.libcal.com/event/3674832

Big thanks to sponsorship by the Winnipeg Library, The Writers Union of Canada, and the Canada Council. They’re giving us the auditorium so we can play with lights and staging during the readings.

If you need inspiration:

“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”― Carol Shields, The Republic of Love

or, even more pertinent with the pandemic:
“Here’s to another year and let’s hope it’s above ground.”― Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

In honour of indigenous artists, I will also draw inspiration from Cree author/playwright Tomson Highway: “I like to convey joy. I want to convey that our primary responsibility on planet Earth is to be joyful: to laugh, and to laugh, and to laugh.”

Play reading at Little Brown Jug, July 12th at 7:30 pm (FREE)

Hey! Are you thirsty from working all day and/or playwriting and reading with me in the evening? Then come on down to Little Brown Jug!

I’ll give a sneak preview of I Am The Most Unfeeling Doctor in the World (And Other True Tales from the Emergency Room), with enormous thanks to The Playwrights Guild of Canada and the Canada Council for sponsorship.

Two talents will join me. Brian Langlotz, a Winnipeg playwright-performer specializes in work inspired by wartime. He’ll preview a new work, “Letters: War Within.”

TJ Dawe, the “wry, spectacled, star soloist of the Fringe circuit”, who has wowed audiences for over 25 years, will read from his new show, “Blueberries Are Assholes” (my son kindly censored it for the poster above).

So that’s it. Playwriting and performing at the library, drinking and reading at the brewery, and the Most Unfeeling Doctor hits the FRINGE! Wish me luck, this is only the second Fringe of my performing career! Plus I hear the mosquitoes are beyond bad this year, but never fear, I’m still coming. I’m that tough.

Massive thanks to my billets, who also own Across the Board Game Cafe, kitty corner from Cinematheque. I can play Scrabble in between shows. 🙂

Don’t be afraid to come. As Manitoba writer Guy Gavriel Kay wrote, “There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.”