tippiseagram’s blog

Tippi invited back to Calgary to perform in ‘The Best of the Fringe’ Series

October 4th, 2008

Wonderful news for Miss Tippi! The Calgary Fringe festival has invited her, as one of only 4 groups, to take part in the ‘Best of the Fringe’ Series March 19-21st, 2009! I will post further details as they become available but I’m very excited to be returning to Cowtown!

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A One Night Stand at The Staircase Theatre and another mention in Xtra West!!!

September 30th, 2008

Join me for a one night stand of Who’s Afraid of Tippi Seagram? at The Staircase Theatre…yes, you will probably still feel a little dirty afterwards, and you may even have regrets but on the upside you won’t have to worry about STD’s….so it’s fun for all!!!!…and besides, my good friend Shannon Bell will be there performing her very funny brand of ‘no holds barred’ standup…so now you can even cross having 2 women at once off your wish list!

Friday October 3rd @ 8:00pm
The Staircase Theatre
27 Dundurn St North
Hamilton On
905-529-3000
www.staircase.org
Tickets $10-$12ea
Restricted to 18+

Xtra West Out In The City - Vancouver gay and lesbian events
Everything and everyone worth doing for the weeks of Wed Sep 24 to Sun Oct 12

Excerpt taken from COCKED & Loaded by Sean Horlor (click for link to full article)

In other news, I have found a new hetero lifemate and her name is Tippi Seagram (played by actress Colette Kendall). Who’s afraid of Tippi Seagram? proved to be one of the most popular shows at this year’s Fringe Festival.

Colette Kendall’s Tippi Seagram is one part Sharon Stone and one part Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous. Her show was jampacked with queer content, which ranged from pop culture references to American politics/gay rights. She even had time for a quick roll in the hay with Osama bin Laden. But in my opinion, Colette Kendall truly shines when she improvs and reveals her comedic talents by taking the piss out of her audience.

You heard it here first: a one-woman, tour-de-forced-entry, Colette Kendall is not a woman to be trifled with. Her tongue is sharper than a vodka high colonic. If you missed the show at the Fringe this year, make sure you check it out in the next instalment of the Tippi saga next year.

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An Absolutely F*cking Fab recommendation in XTRA West-Up your Alley Blog

September 13th, 2008

Who’s afraid of Tippi Seagram?
I sat in the comedy-world equivalent of sniffer’s row with my good friend Miguel last night for a long-awaited viewing of Who’s afraid of Tippi Seagram? at Performance Works on Granville Island. Bold that we were to sit so close to Canada’s favourite starlet, we had no idea what we were getting into.

A one-woman tour-de-forced-entry, Colette Kendall is not a woman to be trifled with. Her tongue is sharper than a vodka high colonic. You’ve been warned, now get out and see her before the Fringe closes on Sunday.

Colette Kendall’s Tippi Seagram is one part Sharon Stone:

And one part Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous:

She spends most of the show wandering through the audience in a sexy black cocktail dress and leopard-print heels, like a smarter, sassier Kim Catrall. Sure she has her standard comedian material, which ranges from American Politics, pop culture references, gay rights and even a quick roll in the hay with Osama bin Laden, but Colette Kendall truly shines when she improvs and takes her comedic talents to her audience.

Who is afraid of Tippi Seagram? I fucking was. I’m not exactly a wallflower, but spotting me in the front row of tables, Kendall laid into me early and hounded me all night. Yes yes, the “meet me backstage after the stage” jokes remind me of a Saturday night out on Davie St (though I was still flattered), as did the young ‘un and kid jokes, but her going so far to find a set of keys in her purse to dangle in front of me (I do like bright shiny things and couldn’t help batting my hands at them) definitely took the interactive element of her show to a new level for me personally. Loved it. Loved Tippi. Loved Kendall as Tippi. That said, everytime she wandered off her stage into the audience, my heart started racing and throughout the night, I noticed many men and women in the crowd avoiding making eye contact with Kendall lest they become fodder for the next string of jokes.

There’s a show tonight and a show on Sunday. Get your ass out to Granville Island. For showtimes, check: www.fringefestival.com

You can check out Tippi’s blog here: www.tippisblog.com

POSTED BY Sean Horlor
http://www.xtra.ca/blog/vancouver/

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Jerry’s picks Plays to catch this week

September 12th, 2008

Jerry Wasserman, The Province
Beyond the Fringe (Shadbolt Centre, Burnaby, to Sat.):
Three of the Fringe Festival’s best and funniest performers play their shows in the Burnaby ‘burbs between gigs on Granville Island: Greg Landucci (Mr. Fox),
Collette Kendall (Who’s Afraid of Tippi Seagram), and Andrew Bailey (Putz).

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The Vancouver Courier review-Who’s Afraid of Tippi Seagram?

September 12th, 2008

Be afraid, be very afraid. Only, that is, if you’re uptight and always politically correct. Tippi (Colette Kendall) is neither and, indeed, she grows raunchier–but in a classy, little black dress sort of way–with age. Sexy young women, she comments, are called “kittens” while sexy older women are called “cougars.” It all depends, she says, on the condition of your pussy. Still with me? This show is not for those with fragile sensibilities and probably works best after 10 p.m. with a slightly liquored up crowd. But amidst all the naughty bits, Tippi delivers some hilarious but uncomfortable truths about women and aging, women and men, celebrity, and much more. This is the second part of a trilogy, and Kendall tells me she’s pushing Tippi as far as she can. Does she cross the line of good taste? Sometimes. There’s a crack about Pamela Anderson that raised some “eeuuws” from a 3:15 p.m. Sunday crowd. But–and here’s the trick–Kendall gets away with murder because we all believe that under that curly blond wig, there’s a really, really nice mother of three who probably has to put a loonie in a piggybank every time she says “damn” around the house. Well, that’s my rationale for loving the incorrigible, tell-it-like-it-is Tippi
Jo Lendingham

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Review Vancouver…review

September 8th, 2008

Hey ladies, it’s time to tighten the leash on your boyfriends. That martini-swilling, self-professed cougar, Tippi Seagram is back in Vancouver and bringing with her a brand new, tour-de-force, sexy comedy show. The good news is: if you saw Tippi Seagram’s Happy Hour a couple of years ago and enjoyed it (most did), then you won’t be disappointed. The bad news is: this show is cruder and ruder and even more irreverent than the last. But wait a minute! Maybe you like crude, rude and irreverent? So the bad news is good.

Over the course of the 50-minute show, this (gracefully) aging starlet leaves no famed turn un-stoned as she dishes over celebrities (Ben Mulroney, Sally Struthers and Paul McCartney in particular) marriage, sex, relationships, aging, kids (preferred lack of), and just about everything (except religion?). Tippi is the alter-ego creation of Hamilton-based Colette Kendall, who offers a rapid-fire collection of smart, off-colour comedy, and a barrage of politically incorrect one-liners that will keep anyone with a heartbeat in stitches. Fringe-ers coming to see Kendall’s “Tippi Show” shouldn’t expect to quietly hunker in the seclusion of the tenth row. Tippi is renowned for engaging her audience, often on a one-to-one basis. She (Tippi) laughs with her audience, not at them, in a propitiatory Rita Rudner comic style.

Who should be afraid of Tippi Seagram? Well, maybe twenty-something boys – and their girlfriends.
John Jane

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The Globe and Mail says Tippi a ’surefire bet’

September 5th, 2008

GOING OUT: LIVE THEATRE
MICHAEL HARRIS

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FRINGE FESTIVAL

If you’re looking for a sensitively curated selection of theatrical gems, hold out for the Push Festival (Jan. 20 to Feb. ; the Fringe is, unabashedly, charmingly, a crapshoot. Starting today and running to Sept. 14, 68 performance groups visit a clutch of venues on Granville Island and deliver more than 500 performances (most of which are less than an hour, allowing multiple gambles per evening). From the jumble of sometimes half-baked endeavours, a few stalwart crowd-pleasers are always in attendance. Some surefire bets, to get you started:

-Who’s Afraid of Tippi Seagram
There’s something comforting in the trashy, politically haphazard monologues that Colette Kendall’s boozy character spouts. Seagram is a riff on the fabulous-yet-wounded diva - an Ab Fab sort (entitled and brash, but always charming). Her latest outing runs the gamut from gay marriage to Osama bin Laden. 60 minutes.

-Putz
-Jem Rolls

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The Westender Review

September 4th, 2008

* * * * ½
The only people who should be afraid of Tippi Seagram are those who take themselves too seriously. Tippi will sense your uptightness and exploit it like the fabulous sabretoothed bitch that she is. The best part about her show is that it will change on any given night depending on the audience reaction. Let loose and let Tippi knock you down a few pegs. And though Tippi would be as fabulous as ever in any venue, it would be an even more enjoyable show if the audience were able to down a couple of martinis right along with Tippi.

Bill Stuart

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Vancouver International Fringe Festival returns to risk-taking-The Georgia Straight

September 3rd, 2008

By Colin Thomas and Kathleen Oliver
The Straight’s critics saw 14 shows that are coming from the Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival to the Vancouver International Fringe Festival this year. It’s a bumper crop. But it’s no secret that the Fringe circuit has been losing its edge of late. What started as an opportunity for experimentation has been getting increasingly middle-of-the-road. However, the trend is going the other way this year. Almost all of the shows we saw in Victoria are technically accomplished, and many—including the funniest—take risks.

Who’s Afraid of Tippi Seagram?
If you missed Tippi Seagram when she last graced our shores two years ago, you’re in luck: the aging Hollywood starlet has again deigned to rescue us from our dreary Canadian lack of glamour. This time, she’s even more outrageous. “I adore stalkers,” Tippi (Colette Kendall) rhapsodizes, “the obsessed kind, not the stabby kind. They make the best personal assistants. They’re already keeping track of everywhere you go, so you may as well employ them.”
Tippi’s humour is associative and brazen; she takes on everything from American politics to the unfortunate gravitational effects of aging: “Last week, I gave myself a surprise mammogram when I shut my laptop too quickly.” Be prepared to be shocked—and to laugh yourself silly.
At Venue 5, Performance Works, on September 6 (10:30 p.m.), 7 (3:15 p.m.), 9 (10:15 p.m.), 11 (10:45 p.m.), 12 (6:45 p.m.), and 13 (5:15 p.m.) > KO

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A Woolf in silk clothing-Preview Article in the Burnaby News leader

September 2nd, 2008

New Westminster News Leader
By Brent Richter - New Westminster News Leader

Published: September 02, 2008 7:23 PM

When most people have a midlife crisis, they make some stupid purchases, get a prescription filled and then settle back in to what they know.
Not Colette Kendall though. She was called to a higher service—comedy. When her youngest daughter was old enough to go to school, the stay-at-home mom from Hamilton, Ontario thought she would just try to find a 9-5 job. “My boyfriend said, ‘oh, you’ll hate a job. You’re funny. Go do stand-up.’ I thought, what the hell, I’m 40. I’m just going to go for it.” Kendall quit her home business making Victorian crafts and Christmas ornaments and stepped into the less refined world of improv.
As a birthday gift to herself, she rented a theatre and wrote a show for a troupe she assembled, calling them The Below Jobs. The show was a big hit and Kendall stuck with it.

Flash forward four years, she has crisscrossed the country skewering western culture and sensibilities and even had one of her shows nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award. Now she is bringing her crass yet poignant humour to Burnaby for two shows at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts as part of the Vancouver International Fringe Festival Sept. 11 and 13.

Kendall’s hilarious one-woman show is called Who’s Afraid of Tippi Seagram? Her character, Tippi Seagram, is a fallen, iconic Hollywood diva, too over-the-hill to be in her glory days and too oblivious to know it. Kendall describes Tippi as an amalgam of the Gabor sisters with Katherine Hepburn and a bit of Roseanne mixed in.
Tippi speaks her mind on issues ranging from aging and sexuality to Osama Bin Laden and, what she calls, “the gay panic of the Bush administration.”
“Basically she’s a character that just kind of shoots from the hip,” Kendall says of Tippi. “In my mind she’s the kind of woman that is taking her kids to kindergarten first thing in the morning and is already drunk.” “She’s just eventually aged and fallen out of the limelight, but she is tenaciously holding on to that. She will remain that diva in her own mind.”

During the show, Tippi and her ego mingle with her audience from the front row to the back of the theatre. Kendall uses her conversations with people in the crowd to fuel Tippi’s politically incorrect tangents. “She’ll come here to Canada where she sees it more like a charity mission. She figures she’s a cultural Mother Theresa to this colder Calcutta, Canada, here to rescue us from our god-awful Canadian content,” Kendall says.

Kendall uses Tippi to express a crass humor that she feels is usually only acceptable for people to hear coming from men. “When I tried this material as me, it was interesting because people would just look at me and say, ‘you’re a bitch.’ I do this as Tippi, I stick the wig on, people understand this is parody and they just say ‘oh, Tippi,’” Kendall says with sympathy in her voice.

Despite having just been yelled at after her show by an old woman in Victoria who didn’t like being included in Tippi’s conversation, Kendall says Tippi’s crude humour serves a noble purpose. “We tend to be almost anally politically correct about what we say. We seem almost to try to be sanitizing everything.
“I think it’s important that there still be voices out there that can push the line. These issues do need to be looked at from different sides and be laughed at as well,” Kendall says. Kendall adds that when Tippi does something like criticize People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, it’s not because she doesn’t care about animals. She uses the jokes to highlight serious issues.

When asked if it was intentional for her to do her Osama Bin Laden bit on Sept. 11, Kendall laughs. The coincidence, apparently, hadn’t occurred to her.

•Who’s afraid of Tippi Seagram? shows Sept. 11 at 7 p.m. and Sept. 13 at 9 p.m. at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts (6450 Deer Lake Ave.) in Burnaby. Visit www.vancouverfringe.com for ticket info.

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Vancouver 24 HOURS Graeme McRanor Recommends Tippi!

August 29th, 2008

Living on the Fringe
By GRAEME MCRANOR, 24 HOURS

The best thing about the Vancouver International Fringe Festival is, like Forrest Gump’s famous line about a box of chocolates, you just never know what you’re going to get. Performers are chosen using a lottery system that, while not ensuring quality, guarantees an eclectic mix of more than 500 performances by 65 groups from all around the world. So, whether you check out one of the Mainstage venues - like the Arts Club Theatre’s Granville Island Stage, Performance Works, and the Waterfront Theatre - or one of the BYOV (bring your own venue) shows, chances are it’ll be a unique experience.

Of course, if you like to play things safe, you could always hold out for the Pick of the Fringe. This year, the audience will use ballot boxes to vote on which shows get into the Pick and, from Sept. 18-21, you can catch the subjective best of the fest.

Still, the fringe spirit is all about letting it all hang out - you know, that whole risk and reward thingy - so check out the shows online and start planning your attack.

The Vancouver International Fringe Festival kicks off Sept. 3 and runs to Sept. 14. www.fringevancouver.com for more info.

THREE TO SEE

Here are three shows from Fringe veterans that we here at 24 hours think should be worth the price of admission.

- Who’s Afraid of Tippi Seagram? - Oh, Tippi. Having caught Tippi Seagram’s Happy Hour last year, we have no qualms recommending any show featuring this casting couch cougar, played by Collette Kendall. Always irreverent and always hilarious.
http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/Entertainment/2008/08/29/6602796-sun.html

Venue: Performance Works

- Barry Smith’s Baby Book: A Grownup Comedy About Stuff - Vancouver Fringe fans will no doubt remember Smith’s show, American Squatter, received the critic’s choice award at last year’s festival. Baby Book is a multimedia show about Smith’s rather compulsive need to document every aspect of his life from a very early age.

Venue: Waterfront Theatre.

- Totem Figures - Fringe veteran T.J. Dawe has been touring the fringe circuit for a decade and, in Totem Figures, he puts on a 90-minute monologue about personal mythology, with the idea that each of us is the main character in our own epic adventure.

Venue: Havana Theatre

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tippiseagram’s blog

Tippi invited back to Calgary to perform in ‘The Best of the Fringe’ Series

A One Night Stand at The Staircase Theatre and another mention in Xtra West!!!

An Absolutely F*cking Fab recommendation in XTRA West-Up your Alley Blog

Jerry’s picks Plays to catch this week

The Vancouver Courier review-Who’s Afraid of Tippi Seagram?

Review Vancouver…review

The Globe and Mail says Tippi a ’surefire bet’

The Westender Review

Vancouver International Fringe Festival returns to risk-taking-The Georgia Straight

A Woolf in silk clothing-Preview Article in the Burnaby News leader

Vancouver 24 HOURS Graeme McRanor Recommends Tippi!

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