DEAD CAT BOUNCE: Toronto 2010 Fringe Preview

From Press Release

“Snakes are like women:

don’t be afraid of ‘em and they won’t strike you.”

DEAD CAT BOUNCE

DEAD CAT BOUNCE is an urban comedy about winning, losing and life on the street, performed in the heart of Kensington Market, right on the street.

A stock trader falls for an indie blues singer who hangs out with a wily old homeless man known in the neighbourhood as The Mayor. Thomas plays by the numbers, calculates the risks and works his system, which is called the dead cat bounce. Amara is a free spirit who “can’t hold down a job, drinks too much, and is a singer!” Can The Mayor bring this unlikely couple together with his ramblings about everything from snakes to Billy Jack movies? Or has he some other insidious scheme in mind?

Toronto playwright Catherine Frid was inspired to write this play by a chance meeting, and then a series of lunches, with one of the most insightful men she ever met. “Don had an optimistic and down-to-earth approach to life, and astute observations about what was happening at his corner,” Frid says. “I told him I’d like to incorporate what he shared with me into a play and he thought it was a great idea.”

DEAD CAT BOUNCE

presented by Watercourse Theatre

as part of

The Toronto Fringe

Written by Catherine Frid • Directed by Molly Thom

Sound design by Angus Barlow

Starring Steven Burley as Thomas, Sochi Fried as Amara, Ian Orr as The Mayor

at KOS Restaurant Patio, corner of Nassau and Bellevue in Kensington Market

Wednesday June 30th, 7 pm
Thursday July 1st, 7 pm
Friday July 2nd, 6 pm
Saturday July 3rd, 8 pm
Sunday July 4th, 6 pm
Monday July 5th, 4 pm
Tuesday July 6th, 8 pm
Wednesday July 7th, 8 pm
Thursday July 8th, 4 pm
Friday July 9th, 5 pm
Saturday July 10th, 7 pm

Tickets $10 at the door

or book in advance at 416.966.1062 or online @ fringetoronto.com

Fringe Passes available after June 5, 2010, @ fringetoronto.com

For show info please visit deadcatbounce.weebly.com

***

DID YA EVER SEE A DEAD CAT BOUNCE?

Q.     What is a Dead Cat Bounce?

A.     A stock trading system based on the axiom: “Even a dead cat will bounce if you drop it from a great height.”

Investor slang: a brief recovery in the price of a falling stock.

Q.     How does a Dead Cat Bounce?

A.     A stock falls hard and fast. It then starts to recover with a sharp buying spree from bargain hunters.

Q.     Why does the ‘Bounce’ end?

A.     If other investors don’t follow the bargain hunters in buying the stock, the Bounce ends. Like a dead cat, the stock doesn’t have any momentum, and its price hits new lows. It doesn’t have the juice to sustain its price.
Q.     How do traders make money on the Dead Cat Bounce?

A.     Traders playing the Dead Cat Bounce wait until the Bounce appears to have reached its height. Then they short-sell the stock, basically betting that the price will go further down.

Q.     What’s an example of the Dead Cat Bounce?

A.     Nortel Networks tumbled from $130 in 2000, to $30 a share. Investors who remembered Nortel’s glory days saw it as a bargain and bought it at $30. This caused a short-lived bounce before it fell even further to $1 a share, pushed there in part by traders playing the Dead Cat Bounce. Nortel Networks went bankrupt in 2009.

SEE ALSO:

Baghdad Bounce: The rise in popularity that both George Bush and Tony Blair enjoyed following the fall of Baghdad in the Iraqi War. That popularity waned somewhat later when it became clear that pulling allied troops out of Iraq was likely to take longer than the public had first anticipated.

“If you threw a dead cat off a 50-story building, it might bounce when it hit the sidewalk. But don’t confuse that bounce with renewed life. It is still a dead cat.”

— Raymond F. DeVoe Jr, investment firm of Legg Mason Wood Walker.