Broke at Heart 08/03/2011 10:00pm
Editorial
Fringers! This is Rebekah Rentzel. I love theater. Last year, I moved to Minneapolis the day the Fringe Festival opened. Bleary eyed and broke like a joke, I managed to see 12 shows on $10. One year later, I’m still broke and I’m still in love with theater. In my sparse amount of free-time I like to find free or cheap things to do in the city and I co-write a blog about it called BrokeassMPLS.
For MNPLaylist I will be blogging about my brokeass running around this festival. This will include some helpful tips on how to see shows for cheap, ideas on schedule planning for the vehicularly impaired, places to grab some food on the go, and what I thought about shows. We all work hard for the money and want to get the most out of it. So, to start us off, here are my thoughts on volunteering:
DO IT.
Last year, I paid for the majority of those 12 shows with my blood, sweat, and ticket-tearing abilities. Volunteering is a relatively painless process. You go to a quick orientation meeting, put on an orange shirt, and do what your house manager tells you to.
WARNING: You may be asked to use a calculator. Shifts only last about as long as a show does, and for every slot you work you get a rush pass to see a show for free. FOR FREE. Plus they give you a fringe button AND an orange shirt. Who doesn’t look good in orange?
Sign up sooner rather than later. I would recommend volunteering the first weekend of the festival. That way you are not eating your desert before your veggies. But I’m not your mother---do what you want. Last year, I crammed all my slots into a two day marathon at the end of the festival. Looking back, perhaps it would have been wiser to split my fringe days between volunteering and show-seeing. And, even if you end up marthonteering, the time flies working with a variety of awesome Fringe lovers.
Volunteering is the cheapest way that this brokeass knows how to see shows. Get these slots while you can at the Fringe Volunteer Website. And tune in next time for exciting adventures in the land of the Free and the home of the Broke.
http://www.fringefestival.org/volunteer/
