YEEEEAH FRINGE!!!

Pictured: Detail from the 2011 MN Fringe Festival Show I'm currently involved in: "Knit One, Purl the Other". An extremely hilarious and entertaining mock-trailer can be seen here. I WANT you to go see it!


Giggity Giggity Giggity...it's that time of year, friends! Tomorrow is the beginning of the 2011 MN Fringe Festival. It's like the State Fair...for theater folk. Only with less deep-fry and more 4-H Talent shows. Whether you love it or hate it, if you're in it in some capacity you're bound to get feeling like a frisky kitten. For me, rehearsal has felt like any other rehearsal until we hit tech yesterday at TRP- and when it was over and I was leaving? Boom. Fringe-bomb. (And trust me...I love theater. I love my friends. But there are quite a few folk out there in Facebookville who have Fringe-bombs going off...verrrrrry early. Hence, someone disabled their event notification starting in mid-July. Ahem...)

This'll mark my (hummuna hummuna hummuna) 4th Fringe appearance? 5th? I first started seeing Fringe shows waaay back in '98 when an old girlfriend I was chasing was performing in a 2-woman show at the old Loring theater. Not having had a lot of knowledge of what the hell the Fringe was, and moreover not really "whelmed" by that show, I was ready to write it off and go back to drinking the summer away in solitude when on a whim I decided to check out the one-woman show that followed it. (Two-woman show to One-woman show. I was downsizing?) The production was about the life an Irish woman and her descendants through three generations. It was called "Slap". And it was terrifyingly good. (Which should be a testament. I can barely remember the "okay" Fringe shows I've seen, much less the terrible one's I try to strike from memory. Granted the last 12 years of Fringe has been usually accompanied with copious amounts of booze between and sometimes during shows)

I ended up checking out a few more shows that summer including a romantic mind-f#ck that another buddy was in as well as a dance piece that was narrated by a poem called "Go Ahead Cling to me Dear". (Which, as a non-fan of the genre I enjoyed immensely) Those awesome shows, coupled with seeing theater-buddies schlepping around and the camraderie, the feeling of being an actual community versus competing theaters jockeying for audiences, the waiting outside in lines with your Fringe schedule accruing liters of swass in the hot early-August air? Well I left the festival of 1998 thinking that this is something I want to be involved with. And sure as sure can be in 1999 I found myself experiencing my first Fringe show. And my first experience with a shitty Fringe show.

Which happened to be the same show.

For those new readers who haven't heard this tale. (Back when the only way you could get any sort of "word of mouth" on the quality of a Fringe show was by waiting for the local rags to write something you could read about the next day. Or people walking out of a show saying "Suck. It suuuuucked" etc.) I was in a production called "Swing Time Radio" which---to date---received my faaaaavorite review ever: (Minor paraphrasing) "Some shows miss the mark. Others miss the target entirely. 'Radio' puts on a terrible 40's radio show by a group of non-actors that is difficult to sit through. Non-Hammy efforts and sweet accapella singing of 40's standards by (Actor I agreed to do the show for), (Actor I had a crush on and coerced into being in the show), and (Yours truly) fail to save this production. This show is painful to watch."

Yeeeeeah. Like my old man said: "At least they spelled your name right"

Now most folks might be traumatized by that experience. Not me. With the exception of 2001 I've kept coming back. And while as an audience member, I'm not as voracious with my attendance as some of my more dedicated Fringe-Friends (I think seeing 9 shows last year...that I paid for? Was a record.) I can still say I've seen some engaging and memorable productions. (And some turds. There are many) As a Fringe performer I've been afforded the opportunity to work with some talented casts and crews- many of whom I'm still happy to be friends with. As an actor I've been able to be a 40's radio singer, a re-enactor of the short films from the Prelinger archives, a ninja, a reality show contestant who strips down to a banana-hammock, and now- and this is crazy- a normal guy who acts as a sounding board in a very sweet alternate-reality play that revolves around knitting. And I don't knit. In the show. (To be honest, this is probably the most linnear narrative in a Fringe show that I've either seen or been involved in, as well as the most normal character I've played. Am playing. Whatever. I wear khaki's)

So, by way of pleading like we all plead- I'm very pleased with this show. The cast is solid and if you're looking for something you can bank on? I feel I would very much like to see you in the audience at Theater in the Round for "Knit One, Purl the Other". And if I don't? I would very much like to see you milling around the various venues and would very much like you to give a fellow Fringer a sweaty hug.