In Cars

"Numan is coming over for a drink," said AC as he hung up the phone. We had been watching a rerun of CSI on Spike TV, the channel for men, but it was one I'd seen three or four times before. I'm fascinated with Gil Grissom.

"Numan!" I reply, in my best Seinfeldian voice.

Numan is one of AC's oldest friends. They grew up together in Montreal, where Numan still lives.

"He's in town for the Infringement Festival," explained AC.

If I didn't know Numan as well as I did — which is to say, not very well, but well enough — I might have asked, as a performer or an observer? But I know Numan is an artsie at heart, like me; in fact, we were in English Lit at McGill together, though we didn't know each other back then. To say he is left wing is to say the Pope is a little bit Catholic.

I'd heard of the Fringe Festival, so I guessed that Numan's festival must be the fringe of the fringe. The fringe that makes the Fringe look mainstream.

According to the Infringement Festival's Web site, which hasn't been updated since 2004, the purpose of the Infringement Festival is to "emphasize both critical practice in the arts, and artistic practice in activism."

Numan's troupe call themselves theatre activists, not actors. He arrived at AC's with a handful of flyers, which AC quickly replaced with a handful of Bruichladdich.

CAR STORIES 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.
Shows begin every half hour in the alley behind Bar None.
Find the man with the coloured sunglasses.

My understanding of fringe theatre is sketchy, to say the least, so I asked Numan, "If the actors are in cars, where is the audience?"

"In the cars, with the actors. It's participatory theatre; we call them participants, not audience. Sometimes they are taken from one car to another location, then moved into another car. We did it in Montreal, once, with six cars. But here, we only have one car. Er, my car."

"And, what is the story?"

"There's a different story every night. A meta-story, actually. We outline the basic story, and encourage the participants to, well, to participate."

"So what was tonight's story?"

"It was about the Church of Shopping. The participants are consumers, being inculcated into the Church."

"Sounds like fun! What do you do, take them to Holt Renfrew in the car?" I joked, which is the wrong thing to do with Numan. He takes his left-wing politics very seriously.

He described the story in some more detail. It didn't sound like as much fun as I'd imagined.

"And what is your role in the production?" I asked.

"I write some of the stories," he replied. This is why I like Numan. He's a writer. "And in this production, I play God."

"Excellent! Let me guess: the novice shoppers have to justify their lives to you at the end?"

"Exactly."

In the next story, Postmodern Sass returns to the town where she met Jack.