Theater/Geek 08/13/2012 10:21am

Unexpected geek references in a show: one of the singers in a cappella love wearing a Star Trek t-shirt, who had a monologue about how being dumped is like being the Red Shirt on an away mission. This year featured fewer out-and-out nerd shows. Perhaps after last year's plethora of Shakespeare mashups and fairy tales, we burned ourselves out. Even my favorite show of this year, Joe Dowling's William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet on the Moon, featuring Kate Mulgrew as Lady Capulet, was largely about how transferring the show to a science fiction setting was a really, hilariously bad idea. How hilariously bad? The Friar was portrayed by a robot of such cheesiness that it made Tom Servo look like Optimus Prime*. The last show I saw this year was Fear and Trembling. It struck me that here, in the very last slot, I was seeing the first "fringe" show of the festival: raw and uncomfortable (and I mean that in the best possible sense), it mixes observation stories from his own life with some very dark fiction. I've seen several of low's shows (spoiler alert: he's another friend of mine), and this was very different from the adaptations of Arthurian myths (his geeky obsession) and lightly fictionalized autobiographical pieces. He was doing something different. He was pushing himself, and the audience. We talked before the show that he feels like there are two Fringes, one where the audience comes in expecting to see a polished, finished show, tightly written and performed, and another, smaller Fringe where you can experiment, try something different, try something that you don't know what the result will be. One of the things I love about Four Humors is that they are always pushing themselves. Their shows share a certain underlying sensibility, but are so different in execution. One year it's a creepy comedy set up as a medicine show, the next it's a puppet show on a small stage, and this year they condensed Candide into a series of blackout sketches. You cannot predict what they're going to do next, other than to describe it as "It's a Four Humors show, you should see it." They are consistently one of the best groups at the Fringe, and they always take chances. The best thing about the Fringe is that it gives you the freedom to fail. If you can come up with the application fee, a lot of the production expenses (venue, technicians, some of the promotion) are taken care of. So if your show bombs, you're not left destitute. I was talking to a first-time producer who went through a list of all the mistakes he made with the show. "But," I said, "now you know not to do that the next time." The Fringe exists, from the artists' perspective, not just to let us build and audience, but to advance as theater artists. And I think I need to take advantage of that. To step outside my comfort zone. To do something because I wonder if it will work on stage rather than because I know it will. Hm. Well. See you at the lottery. ------ *From the original TV series, not the films. I can't believe you even have to ask.