The FrINgeSIDER

Two themes are beginning to emerge for me at the 2010 Fringe Festival: "how" and "love."

How
Maybe it's the shows I've seen so far, but I spend as much time thinking about "how" the stories were told as "what" was being said. I've seen stories told through dance, pantomime, puppetry and multi-media.

Most of the shows I've seen have not been content to tell their stories using a unifying mayonnaise of one theatrical style. Instead, they've tossed together vibrant salsas of realism, theatricalism, surrealism and weirdism.

Often the whole show doesn't quite hold together - like this metaphor (too much cilantro) - but the fun is in seeing people try stuff out. And the thrill comes in those moments when it all works.

CSI Ben McGinley uses storytelling, video, projected images and words, music, sound and stylized movement to try to get at...something. I couldn't say exactly what journey Ben is on. But he's smart and funny and inventive and it's worth it to spend forty-five minutes on the journey with him. The story of CSI Ben McGinley is not as important as the way he uses everything at his disposal to try to get at something real and important. And I'm proud to be his creepy, fictional father.

#Ringtone purports to be a play about technology and how it's changing our lives. This is a lie, but more on that later. The show is a very strange mix of video, sound, realistic little scenes, then scenes FROM THE FUTURE! - all really contemporary stuff. But it's shaped by a formal, stylized, almost Classical sensibility. It's as if Aeschylus was the executive producer of a reality show.

Deviates from the Master Plan / Apprentice & Sorcerer Trip on the Light Fantastick tells two really simple stories. Stock characters. Few words, and none in English. They're going after something very human here. Nothing cultural or contemporary. They're after something deep and true about being alive in the world. Leif Jurgensen's frustrated wood nymph and ambitious sorcerer are both sort of magical. I don't know why he's so happy, skipping through some strange landscape with a plastic bottle of water in a little basket. Or why he's so desperate to capture a glowing, floating softball. But I've known quiet pleasures and overwhelming longing. And Sigrid Sutter in a pair of servant roles is simply beautiful. Aren't we all servants? Blind and handcuffed and thirsty, hopping madly back and forth at the world's capricious demands? Wearing a maid's uniform? (No?)

A Sad Carousel has no business being a play. It's an unholy mashup of insult comedy, film noir, infomercial and the theatrical (meta-fringe-ical?). It employs a ridiculous amount of excellent sound cues. The performers are hideous and gorgeous. No reasonable person would ever think up a play like this. I loved it.

Which brings me to theme two: Love
My wife once explained to me that any play worth doing is about love. I'm still not sure I understand exactly what she meant. But I know that the plays mentioned above and the other plays I've enjoyed most at this festival have all been about love at some level.

#Ringtone thinks it's being all cool and smart about computers and cell phones and social media - but really, it's about love. CSI Ben McGinley is about love. The Sorcerer Deviates is about love. A Sad Carousel is about love.

Love between individuals, yes, but also a bigger love. A love for humanity - for us. Not in spite of our flaws, but because of them. Our weakness and silliness and ridiculous passions and self-aggrandizing lies and our pain and grief and joy and longing.

Love, baby. It's all about love. And I love that.