After three years, the Fringe Festival has come back with live audiences. With it brings a show that aims to bring hope after the pandemic with a cast and a crew who have not worked with each other since finishing their post-secondary degrees.

The End of Everything, written by Natalie Skov in 2018 after the death of a family member to help deal with the loss, is a sci-fi play about “two lonely people finding each other,” during a hard time in each of their lives, says Skov. In 2019, Skov submitted the play and was put on a wait list. The show was finally accepted after a three year hiatus from the festival and has made its’ debut on July 6.

“I just sort of wanted to write an expression of that grief, with an ending of optimism and hope, because that's what I like to put into my work. I want everything to have an optimistic outlook,” says Skov. “I felt like the hope and optimism was even more important at this point. Because I just know that I felt some hopeless moments over the last few years, and so I really wanted to translate that into the work.”

The show has reconnected Skov with two other people from their time in school: the co-star of the production Samantha Dodds and the director Kael Buryn. Buryn was contacted by Skov to be the director. The End of Everything marks Buryn’s first time directing a live play.

“I'm also trained as an actor so I have a lot of performance experience in that. It's a very different kind of relationship to have control over a piece because as an actor, you have your control over kind of your one, your one part of it. As the director, you're kind of overseeing the whole thing,” says Buryn.

Dodds on the other hand heard about the show and auditioned for the role of Mae which she got. This role is Mae’s first time performing since the pandemic has ended. Dodds being friends with Skov, knew about the show when it was first pitched but could not audition at the time as they were working on another show.

“Getting a chance to audition for it again, to actually work with Natalie and Kael, it was just so exciting to have the opportunity. I haven't done much acting since the pandemic. So I was just so excited to jump at the opportunity to try and be in a show again,” says Dodds.

With all Skov and Dodds meeting in 2016 and Kael in 2017 the three have over five years of built rapport. All three of them say that knowing each other for over half a decade made getting the show ready to perform a breeze. Dodds says that knowing everyone made it easier to jump into the production. For Buryn the baseline trust made it easier for them to “join hands and just jump in together.”

“We have this sort of shared language from when we went to the same school. We have this language that our professors would use to discuss things with us, which then now we can use and we all have basically like a shorthand that we understand, we're like, okay, you do this, that I know what you're what you mean,” says Skov.

As the End of Everything wraps up this week, the future for the three is uncertain. Skov says they are going back to school and will not have time to write and produce another play for Fringe. Dodds will be trying again to get into another production for Fringe. Buryn says that while he does not have any certain plans they would like to do it again and possibly submit their own show for Fringe.

The show is performed at the Tarragon Theatre on July 12th, 13th and 15th.

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