ON the Canadian fringe circuit, sex sells.

The just-ended Toronto Fringe Festival was an unusually randy affair, offering four opportunities to see exotic dancers in shows like Miss April Day's School for Burgeoning Strippers, which is also playing at this year's Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. Another offering that's coming here from Toronto, Hot Pink Bits, promises a romp through the knickers of the global sex trade that climaxes with a peeling scene.

"Some years it's all Shakespeare, this year it's all stripping shows," says June Morrow, who took her clothes off for seven years in Toronto under the stage name April Day.

<p>The 20th annual Winnipeg festival opens tonight with a record 139 shows, a buyer's market if ever there was one. With that magnitude of competition, a wily fringe performer must find a way to stand out. Some depend on their reputation, others on a fresh theatrical approach or a clever title. Others turn to the fringe mainstay: Sex.

It was ever thus.

At the inaugural Winnipeg fringe-a-thon in 1988, people lined up to see Sexual Perversity in Chicago, many because it originated from the potent pen of David Mamet, more because it sounded like something naughty. Ditto for See Me Naked, which did boffo box office for a Seattle actress at the 2002 fest.

There is always an audience for this stuff, like the guy who each fest declared his own Nudity Day and attended all the shows with nudity warnings.

"Sex seems to be on everybody's mind at the fringe and on some people's all the time," says Daniel Thau-Eleff, co-host of SEX? An Interactive Theatre Experience, opening tomorrow at 1:45 p.m. at Red River College (Venue 11). "Our main goal is to get the audience on stage talking about sex."

Thau-Eleff and his partner in Act Now! Theatre company, Loc Lu, are using forum theatre to help people with their sex lives. They will solicit anecdotes about sex-related conflicts from the audience and perform them on stage with the aim of playing out alternative solutions.

The 26-year-olds are confident not one piece of clothing will have to be doffed to have one of the more revealing productions in the festival.

"People love talking sex," says Thau-Eleff, who starred in his solo show Three Ring Circus in 2004. "It's the easiest sell we've ever had."

Caberlesque! is hoping to trade on the success of last year's appearance at the festival by returning with another lineup of foxy frauleins singing in skimpy costumes. One of the highlights is a traditional fan dance that steams up the room.

"Sexiness is part of the show -- it's not the aim of the show," says Saskatoon-based performer Jeffrey Pufahl, who wrote and performs in Caberlesque!, which opens tonight at 11 p.m. in MTC Backstage at the Mainstage (Venue 1). "It doesn't hurt. People do want to see something a little edgier, sexier."

One of the most notorious musicals of its day, Hair, is being revived for the festival by the University of Winnipeg beginning tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at PTE mainstage (Venue 16). An enduring symbol of the '60s, Hair first appeared off-Broadway in 1967 and, while it may not have been the first example of total nudity on a legitimate stage in North America, it was certainly the most memorable for its linking of skin, crude language, political protest and a good beat.

U of W theatre professor and Hair director Kayla Gordon took in a Toronto production last year and found the nudity to be brief and unimportant. She is leaving the decision about whether to get naked to the discretion of her students.

"I don't think it gets people as nervous today as it did 15 or 20 years ago," says Gordon, former artistic director of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre. "It's all over the fringe. If you look at the program, it's full of it. We're not doing the production because of it."

The 37-year-old Morrow hopes to bring some authenticity to her musical comedy about being a peeler. She was a bored bank teller, who after winning $300 at a Ottawa strip club, decided to turn pro.

"I liked the attention. I think everyone likes to be told you're hot and sexy," says Morrow over the telephone from her home in Toronto. "This was my introduction to the world of entertainment; not a very realistic one, but it was still fun to be on stage."

While grinding out a living during her seven-year career (1995-2002), Morrow earned a college diploma in business administration, completed a Second City acting program and saved up for the journalism degree she attained from Ryerson University. Miss April Day debuted last October in Toronto and opens here tomorrow at 9:30 p.m. at The Conservatory (Venue 7).

"The stereotypical stripping is not the experience I had," she says. "I want to educate audiences. You'll learn something."

Morrow was astonished to discover that the real money in stripping is made offstage with lap dances and kinky customer requests.

"My show is not for everyone," she says. "I know some people will come to see the show based on the title alone. My audience is usually a group of girls giggling together, some older couples and a smattering of single men sitting at the back."

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

© 2007 The Winnipeg Free Press. All rights reserved.

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