The Fringe Festival’s need for volunteers is almost as urgent as its need to get people’s bums in theatre seats.
(Hamilton Spectator, June 26, 2025)
People do things for all kinds of reasons. Like volunteering.
Max Herman, for example, needed to fulfil the 40-hour provincial co-op commitment.
Susan Heslop so enjoyed one of her teachers at Sheridan College she volunteered to work with her.
Susan Lagacy had a friend who owned a bar and needed hands.
The one thing these three volunteers have in common: The Hamilton Fringe Festival.
The festival’s need for volunteers is almost as urgent as its need to get people’s bums in theatre seats.
Volunteers number between 200 and 250 yearly, on top of around 50 contractors — “tech, the stage builders, the sound and light guys,” said Christopher Stanton, executive director of Hamilton Festival Theatre Co., the Fringe’s parent company. Those people clock in some 900 staffing hours before and during the festival, primarily as ticket-takers and ushers and all-around question-answerers.
Herman answered a HFTco. request for volunteers to staff the annual Fringe Festival during the pandemic lockdown. The Fringe felt natural, given his love for theatre, planted in grade school while at summer camp at Theatre Aquarius, but then “I stuck around, helping with communications, marketplace, artist liaison, sorting documents, lots of busy tasks while staffers had other things to do.”
This year, having graduated from Mohawk College’s TV and communications program, he upped his game by videotaping interviews of artists participating in the Fringe this year and whittling them down into two- to three-minute promotional videos answering the question: “What’s your HFTco. story?”
Herman’s story is not so odd, apparently. HFTco managing director Franny McCabe-Bennett said the Fringe has had many high schoolers volunteer over the years to fulfil their co-op commitment.
“I’ve seen parents drop their kid off to volunteer and tell me, ‘They’re coming out of their shell,’ ” Bennett said.
And, like Herman, many volunteers come back year after year.
“Some friends of mine had a bar in a little house across the street from Theatre Aquarius,” recalled Susan Lagacy recently over tea at a café on King William Street, a block away from HFTco.’s office.
“They’d made a bar upstairs from their apartment and people came in to see performances there. It was entertaining, friendly, a great community to be a part of. I switched off with my partner in the bar to see shows.”
The next year, however, her friend didn’t open the bar, but Lagacy figured she’d had such a good time, why not volunteer?
That was 20 years ago.
In Fringe years, Lagacy intimated it felt even longer: Show patrons paid in cash, there was a coloured ticket system indicating different ticket prices for adults, children, media, performers, all of which had to be considered by the volunteers so performers could be paid. And paid right then and there after the show.
“When we changed over to an electronic system from cash, I wanted to throw out the computer, we were struggling to connect to the internet. And then you had people coming in five minutes before showtime!” Lagacy said.
“In the intervening years, I have done just about every job before finally settling down as venue captain,” Lagacy said, before describing venue captain as her dream job if only because she gets to make what’s called “the bucket speech.”
The bucket speech is where, before each performance, the venue captain thanks Fringe sponsors, indicates that all shows start on time and there’s no late admittance.
The captains still handle the money, but mostly it’s their job to “make sure the performers are happy.”
Heslop sees volunteering more in terms of public relations.
“You’re the first point of contact. That’s exciting, but it’s a lot of responsibility,” she said between sips of iced tea. “Being a successful volunteer is about taking information you’ve learned and translating that into something informative and rewarding for the patrons. The idea is getting as many attendees as possible,” i.e., bums in seats.
“It’s a customer service type of position,” she said. “You need soft skills.”
Heslop started volunteering in 2023 after meeting McCabe-Bennett at Sheridan College. Heslop was a student in the performing arts-prep program and McCabe-Bennett was teaching choir.
“I just had to be part of it,” said Heslop, who has since translated her volunteerism into a staff position as co-ordinator of what’s called the “placemaking” team.
In that role, she’s responsible for all aspects of the festival’s outdoor programs, Fringe Boulevard, the fest’s hub, with a bar, stage and vendor tents, and Fringe on the Streets, a free hop-on-hop-off walking tour that aims to make theatre more accessible to festivalgoers.
One of the benefits of volunteering at Fringe, Herman said, is seeing shows free. “You can see one show for every four hours you volunteer,” he said.
Heslop figured she put in enough hours to see more than 12 shows. For his part, Herman one year put in enough hours to see 24 shows. (For the math-weary, that’s 24×4=96.)
Lagacy’s desire to volunteer 20 years ago led her into a lifetime of volunteerism. She now gives time to Festival of Friends, Frostbites (a Fringe offshoot), GritLit, Binbrook Festival, the Women’s Institute and Stoney Creek re-enactments. Plus she does face-painting for kids every summer along Concession Street.
All the while, Lagacy has created a family. And what does family do? They stick by you. “The Fringe people are like family,” Lagacy said. “They are family.”
When a fire in a townhouse caused severe damage to her nearby home on Mother’s Day weekend in 2022, that Fringe family went into action and raised over $1,000 to help Lagacy replace needed items and get back on her feet.
Less than two months later, Lagacy was delivering her bucket speech.
To volunteer for this year’s Fringe, visit hftco.ca/volunteer/.
Raymond Beauchemin’s play “3 Hours, 10 Minutes” will be performed at the Hamilton Fringe Festival in July.