The "Real" Thing

6:00 PM, August 10,2009

Annnnnd....scene.

Many Thanks! After watching 35 or so shows in 9 days (I missed 2 out of 11 due to rehearsals,) I feel much better about the state of theater and its place in the cultural life of our little corner of the Midwest. The energy and commitment, the level of skill and inspiration, and the overall quality of the shows I experienced just blew me away. Many, many thanks to Alan for giving me the opportunity to see them all, and to share my thoughts with y'all over the past two weeks. For those who actually plowed through my meanderings, I hope reading them was even 1/4 as rewarding as the experience of being forced to put into words all the reactions bouncing around my head. Thanks, too, to my fellow bloggers, Travis, Ben, Anna, John and Marya, each of whom shamed me at least once over the course of the week by finding and exploring an angle I never would've thought of, in a way I couldn't. It was great Fringing with y'all. You rule, big-time. And thanks, of course, to all the performers, directors, designers, tech crews, volunteers and staff of the 2009 MN Fringe Festival. It was an amazing success, and we've all come a looooong way since the first year. Everyone whould be proud. Before I hop on the horse and ride off into the sunset in a cloud of love and flowers, though, for what it's worth I have a couple of humble suggestions for next year. The Trouble with Quibbles... 1) I love the idea of the unjuried festival. I've said it before, though, and I'll say it again: I think there should be a certain number of slots allotted each year, say 5-10, for the best-selling acts, and maybe for selling out 96 or so % of a smaller venue, PROVIDED they come up with a new show. It's still unjuried, but the Fringe rewards success and ensures, as much as possible, that it will have at least one "guaranteed" tent-pole successes to anchor each space. In the completely unscientific survey I did testing this idea, not a single person disagreed. 2) I've been to two Fringe final parties now, and they both, to put it charitably, sucked. I'm sorry, but there's no other way to say it. One was 2 years ago on the roof of Joe's Garage, in which the entire Fringe was served grossly overpriced beer by a single bartender. The other was last night at Sea Change. I don't know who is to blame for the decisions to hold the "party" at the Guthrie, and then to allow them to be almost completely unprepared for the huge influx of hungry, thirsty people that seemed to surprise everyone when we arrived. It was the most unwelcome I've ever felt at what should have been a huge celebration, leaving a bittersweet aftertaste to a phenomenal week for me and for everyone within earshot. Where were the music, the staff, the complimentary appetizers, the decorations and even adequate signage that would have made it seem like an actual party? The kitchen closed at 11, for god's sake. If Bedlam is good enough for the rest of the Fest (and I think they did a terrific job!), why penalize them, the performers and the Fringe-goers by making us drive to a non-central location, park again, and pay much more for MUCH less? Happy Trails Anyway. I don't want to dwell on quibbles, but I just needed to get that off my chest; ultimately everything worked out just fine last night. As soon as I could finish my beer (the one I waited--literally--15 minutes at the bar to get) I left for Bedlam with about 100 others looking for a real party, and together we had a grand old time putting the Fringe to bed for another year. Fringe on, y'all! 6:30 PM, August 8,2009

A TheatriFringical Theory of Everything, Part III: The Reckoning

After attempting to explain in just 2 parts what makes a successful TheatriFringical production, I of course find myself adding a 3rd. Surprise. (No, not, “Sarcastic exclamation of mock shock at my completely foreseeable inability to foresee that, based upon my intense resistance to both lists and structure;” “Surprise” is actually the 3rd Part of my Theory.) (And “I don’t know” is 3rd Base.) The Communal Gasp I don’t necessarily mean 6th Sense style twist endings, although those can be incredibly satisfying. There was a terrific article that I can’t seem to locate in the NYTimes a couple of years ago, celebrating the kind of communal gasp that occurred, I believe, in the plays Proof and The Beauty Queen of Leenane, as entire audiences, night after night, felt their understanding of the world of the play rock beneath them in the utterance of a single line of dialogue. In the article, the reviewer lamented the rarity of that response in modern theater. As many dividends as the modern ethos toward individualistic subjective experience has reaped, he argued, the demise of the “well-made play” means we too often miss (and dismiss) the value of that kind of choral, almost ecstatic group response. I agree with the basic lament, but his diagnosis is too reductive, as though there is a single formula for eliciting that kind of full-body audience reaction. And attempting simply to repeat that kind of surprise can render it trite and mechanical, like desperate TV execs scrambling to plagiarize last year’s smash hit, So You Think You Can Marry Your Mother. The moment itself doesn’t have to be the result of an unexpected plot development, but can arise even in classic tragedy. Events can seem Fated, inevitable in retrospect, without being predictable. There can—and should, I think—always be a sense that tonight’s reenactment of the ritual of retelling this story might finally break the cycle. If the audience truly believes a character doesn’t know how her story will end, and that she is in fact making it all up as she goes, it allows for the possibility of real suspense as we share both her bated breath and the surprise of her eventual discovery. What are We Really Trying to Say? Surprise, though, doesn’t necessarily have to revolve around plot, at all. When I say Surprise, it’s really just my attempt to find a way to say “tension,” “juxtaposition” or “resonance” or God help us, “frisson” without sounding like a total asshat. Sounds obvious, right? And it should be obvious. But how often does it actually happen in the theater? Be honest. And without surprise, without a sense of in-the-moment discovery, theater can provide all the Ownership and Authenticity in the world, and still feel like hard work instead of play, more intellectually engaging on the ride home, or while reading the program, than it is in performance. Favorite Fringe Surprises The best moments of theatrical surprise aren’t found in a printed script. They pop up out of nowhere, the result of an abrupt but emotionally supported shift in tone, like the sketch comedy that momentarily veers into real drama in 2 Sugars Room for Cream; or a coup-de-theatre like the literally jaw-dropping visual surprise at the end of Buyer’s Remorse, when we’re caught laughing in disbelief that something so simple can take us so off-guard; in the collisions between words and movement in Casebolt and Smith that suddenly open deep wells of emotion and ideas where seconds earlier there was only abstraction; or in an expression, like Noah Bremer’s “Eureka/Duh” moment in Untitled Duet with Houseplant when he finds an escape from his brilliant variation on the mime box routine; or in the many communal moments of laughter Scream Blue Murmur pulls from us in Summer after the Summer of Love, a poetry jam-fest about Civil Rights; or in the ridiculous fact that an audience of 100 jaded adults can be seduced by Squawk’s sheer physical invention into an emotional relationship with a penguin puppet. All of these moments are surprising, but more than that, in each instance, the surprise completes a circuit between performer and audience that binds our nerve endings with an electric jolt—joy, empathy, laughter, horror, or some indefinable combination—lifting us up, together, beyond any place we can reach on our own. Surprise is not an end in itself, then, but the consequence of all other forces aligning in precisely the right way. Yes, those moments are the reason we all leave the comfort of our couch and go to the theater in the first place, they are what we should be able to expect to find there, but it’s rare enough to be a source of childlike wonder and delight when it actually happens. My Top Pick of the Fringe Sometimes that giddy sense of discovery can last for an entire show, depositing me on the street afterwards grinning like an idiot and feeling like a 4-year-old at Christmas. That’s what happened when I saw Sideways Stories from Wayside School which just edges out lots of other fantastic performances for my Top Pick of the Fringe. If the show is about anything, it is actually about surprise, wonder and discovery without ever seeming precious or coy—no mean feat in a play featuring adult performers playing children—somehow managing the equally difficult task of playing to kids and adults in the audience on the same level. No cheap pop culture references or double entendres to make mom and dad feel smarter than their children, no fart jokes just to keep the toddlers awake, just a constant—and I mean, literally constant—stream of gut-busting dialogue, images and stage effects from beginning to end: --A cookie tin that swallows children’s voices. --The irresistibly tempting pigtails that talk and writhe like snakes. --A clear plastic dry erase chalkboard that mysteriously reveals everyone’s pantomimed writing (when it isn’t busy possessing and releasing trapped souls.) --A teacher who only exists as various 6 inch to 12 foot tall flying dresses. --And of course, there's the slow motion duel between a mirror and a magical yellow slinky that turns the villain into an apple. All aided and abetted, by the way, by “invisible” mock Bunraku helpers in full body Ninja suits. And that level of invention somehow never flags. In each example you can sense the hours of rehearsal and discovery that went into discovering and honing the best choice, yet never feel the effort behind sustaining them. Silly, irreverent and sweet, but sharp as a tack, this show has made me a fan for life. Obligatory "Best of" list creatively packaged into oft-promised overriding Fringe theme? Done and done. SO. Let’s add up our Theory and see what we’ve got. Testing our Theory If that’s what audiences expect, let’s just give it to them, right? Performers Authentically inhabiting a story incentivize the audience to invest an Ownership stake in your production in order to grow Surprise. (Performer + Story) x Authenticity + (Audience x Ownership) = Surprise, or (P+St)Auth+(AudO)=Su. But what if there’s no story? In that case isn’t part of the job of Authentic performance to provide an implied one? And while we’re at it, is surprise really always our goal? I mean, there are bad surprises, too, right? So. We should specify that we’re looking to provide a pleasant surprise…call it S+. (PAuth)+(AudO)= Su+. But should the goal a producing A Long Day’s Journey into Night ever really be to provide a pleasant surprise? If it’s really a Theory of Everything, it should work for both comedy and tragedy, right? In the retail world we might just ask, “Did today’s experience exceed your expectations?” But theater is not a simple retail transaction. If we set our sights low enough, anything will exceed our expectations. And who aspires to “Not as awful as it could’ve been,” or “surprised that the journey isn’t even longer,” or “at least it was air-conditioned,” as the goal of a communal experience. Damnit. Revising our Theory No. Okay, so what word describes the feeling I had at the conclusion of Sideways Stories…? What about “Delight?” Can one feel Delight at the end of Oedipus Rex? I’d have to say unlikely but definitely possible, and I’d sure like to try. It’s how I felt at the end of the Guthrie’s recent production of Kushner’s Intelligent Homosexual…, which was about betrayal and assisted suicide. I left the theater emotionally and physically spent, my brain still reveling in ideas and images, my heart beating a little faster, my soul a little bigger, but delighted, yup, delighted to be a human being in the world. I think that’s not actually bad. Performer Authenticity + Audience Ownership to the positive exponential power of Surprise equals Delight. (PAuth+AudO)^S+=D. Oh, that’s not bad at all! Okay team, so now we have our Theory, now let’s go make some magic! A Friendly Reminder Can it really be that easy? Of course not. But neither does it need to be as agonizing and ethereal as we often make it. You can’t diagram theater like a PowerPoint presentation. But since we sure as Hell won’t be paid as much for doing it anyway, we might as well make it fun. And maybe that’s the key to this entire TheatriFringical experience every year: using it to recharge our batteries and remind ourselves to at least try, as both audiences and performers, to keep this same sense of gleeful abandon, playful experimentation and childish delight going for the next 356 days, until we do it all over again. 6:30 PM, August 8,2009 Turns out this blogging thing everybody makes fun of is actually pretty hard! If you’re supposed to blog about a particular experience, you have to go out and actually have the experience, first. Then think about it. Then write. (I have noticed that, if you skip the second step, it does tend to make things easier.) THEN, try not to change the name of your blog accidentally so people won’t be able to find it anymore… But anyway. One final postponement before tomorrow, when I finish the 3rd and final piece of my 2 Part TheatriFringical Theory of Everything.

The Crossword Puzzle Effect

Ask people what they love about the Fringe experience, as I’ve been dutifully doing for the past week to pay for the amazing privilege of wielding a fabled Golden Ticket (cue song!) and there are several things I hear every time. They’re not incredibly surprising, because they’re the same reasons I love it, but it re-reminds me not to think of myself as a separate species from the exotic and inscrutable Audience. Cuz I’m not, and cuz I said I would: 1) Hedging Your Bets If they have one night to spend on a show date, they are less likely to have a “bad night” if they see four shows instead of one. Add a sitter and parking—which, if you plan a Fringe night right you only pay once—and the Fringe beats the rest of the year hands down. For roughly the same amount of time and far less money (using any form of Fringe pass) as seeing an average length musical at the State or the Ordway, you can see, as I just did, the funny/sexy/witty/naughty awesome show by Lily’s Burlesque, Squawk, a Fringe-perfect cocktail of Penguin puppetry, flightless waterfowl puns, talented performers, and social commentary, and Jurassic Dork which wouldn’t tempt me at all the rest of the year but somehow seemed just right, today. And it was. Gamely performed with just the right combination of reverence and parody by John Skelly, it was quite a bit more fun than I thought it would be, even featuring—just when I thought there was nothing else to mine in the premise—a Very Special Guest ex Machina to bring us all home. And now I have an hour to eat and type at Bedlam, and then off to see Allegra Lingo, the Four Humours Children’s show and a show about Joan of Arc by way of Leave it to Beaver! And even after a week of mind/body overload, I can’t wait to get back there. But only after I quaff a pint of Oatmeal Stout and devour a delightful Rachel Sandwich with veggies. Oh Bedlam! You had me at “quaff!” 2) Conversation Fodder Even if each of the four or five individual shows you can see in a night would provide nothing of substance to discuss over drinks, comparing the sounds they make when they collide can be fascinating. The utterly charming, completely innocent Duet with Houseplant seems somehow vaguely sinister after viewing Monster, which unearths often humorously creepy linking threads between otherwise unrelated characters and an act of inexplicable violence. The choreographic clichés and over-earnestness of the dancing in You/Provoke/Me would not have seemed nearly as egregious had I not watched the masterful Casebolt and Smith, which mocks those very qualities, immediately beforehand. Finding patterns. Ranking favorites. Labeling winners and losers. Our brains love this stuff! 3) Rooting for the Home Team As I’ve mentioned before, the Fringe is like a Farm Team for the rest of the year when it’s possible to track your new favorites as they go off, not necessarily to The Show, maybe only to small venues where they produce their own stuff, but still. What seems to many a huge risk of time and resources the rest of the year (see #1) is mitigated by emotional investment and familiarity. 4) The Crossword Puzzle Effect In summary. Ever notice that when people do crossword puzzles in the movies it always works the same way? One character, stumped, will say, “What’s a 6-letter word for ‘survive’?” and the other will immediately answer, “Endure.” This establishes one character’s superior intelligence and makes the screenwriter feel smart for sticking a 2-syllable word into his script for “Mutant Gopher Go Go Girls Gone Wild.” Thing is, you can’t work a good crossword puzzle that way: there is more than one 6-letter word for ‘survive;’ sometimes the answer is a phrase, such as ‘live on;’ sometimes the answer is a terrible pun; and the likelihood of other variables coming into play depends on the day of the week. Most importantly, the word has to fit with the surrounding words and often with the theme of the day’s puzzle. Somehow, though, the ostensibly smarter character, ignoring all of those variables, is able—without hesitating or requesting to see the puzzle—to blurt out the right answer. But successful navigation of the Fringe Festival, as both a producer and an audience, is like that Crossword puzzle. On a busy theater day in town there are probably fifteen shows playing at the same time. With the most minimal of planning, a particularly addictive personality could see them all before they close. But the shows are so different that almost no one does. Among a pretty tiny group of people, some conversational fodder is generated. You may see some of the same folks at a couple of the shows, but chances are you’ll do little more than smile or nod at them. But the Fringe gives Minnesotans, whose personal space usually extends at least 6 feet in all directions, an excuse, nay a mandate, to interact with strangers. Because very few people make reservations for a show they’re planning to drive to, park, and purchase tickets in the next half hour (!) an element of giddy absurdity and mad adrenaline binds the participants together. They’re no longer doing the crossword at home, but holding it on the bus, pen in hand, and spying other people doing the same thing. Now it’s a club. The person isn’t asked for a five letter word, they’re asked, “Did you get 22 down?” And you both shake your fist in the air at Puzzle Master Will Shortz for making your brain hurt, because you know that “endure” doesn’t fit! And you run/bike/drive your Prius giddily back to Bedlam for another beer with your new friends, confident of your place in the universe: I may be a dork, but I’m not alone! 9:30 AM, August 8,2009

The TheatriFringical Theory of Everything Part II: Authenticity

In my many years of restaurant work I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the indignant plea, “Don’t you have any Real lettuce?” “Real,” of course, meaning “iceberg.” You know, the kind with no nutritional value or taste? “Real” meaning, “What I’m used to.” While we can disagree about our lettuce preference, most people would agree that homemade salsa, for example, is more “real,” more authentic, than the store-bought variety; it may not taste good to us, it may not be nutritionally superior, but if it’s served to us at a party, we at least appreciate the effort. When the lights mercifully rose after a recent Fringe performance I and everyone I sat with intensely disliked, someone commented, “I could forgive this shit if it was autobiographical; maybe they just had really horrible, limited lives. But they didn’t write this script, someone else wrote it down, and they chose it!” Tellingly, we would have partially forgiven the same masturbatory sloppiness and tedium had it been “the real thing,” (which was, remember, the slogan for a beverage comprised primarily of water, food coloring and corn by-products.) But why? Authenticity in art is a slippery beast, almost impossible to pin down, but crucial to its success. The penny began to drop for me several years ago—now bear with me, here—upon hearing a co-worker express his preference for the movie A League of their Own over Prelude to a Kiss, not because of any technical considerations like the quality of the acting or writing, but because the former was more "believable." Why? Because it was "Based on a True Story," and "Prelude" was about a dying old man and a young woman who trade souls when they kiss. Which was apparently “kinda fakey.” I argued that the former, based on the Fable of the Frog Prince, was at least as "believable" as the Hollywoodized "true story" of the first women's baseball team, because it was presented, for the most part, with wit and emotional truth. But the fact remained that one movie allowed my co-worker to experience its story while the other shut him out. And clearly he’s not alone. We Artists assume that all those Real People out there want us to give them the hard-hitting, Capital T Truth, probably because that way we feel like we’re performing a valuable societal function instead of just playing dress up. But it ain’t necessarily so. Or to put it differently, they want Truth, but not necessarily from us. At least as far as theater is concerned, then, there is a difference between “real” and “authentic.” A large part of authenticity is simply the authority to represent the story being presented. An ex-drug addict can talk to high school students about drug abuse where they’ll turn off, say, their guidance counselor or mom. Even if Mom is an ex-drug addict. It is not, however—and this is crucial—something we can decide that we have, but something we are granted. Audiences don’t necessarily look to us for revelations about their lives; they already have a mirror, thanks very much. And a journal. And a blog. By the end of the day they’ve had enough of themselves; sometimes they just want to be taken somewhere else. They want to eavesdrop on other people’s lives. Real people, preferably, or at least those who seem real. “Seems” is the key here. Aside from the obvious fact that some people prefer their cheese spelled with a “z,” our response to perceived reality is based on the baggage we carry with us. A friend of mine, who is from the South, said that for the first half or so of Concorde, Virginia, he intensely disliked the show because he assumed the performer’s ridiculous accent and the clichéd quality of the story meant that the guy was an imposter. Then he realized that the entire show was the performer’s autobiographical story about, you guessed it, growing up in Virginia. Contrary to popular lore, sometimes the customer is wrong. Well, he wasn’t wrong about not liking the show; he just blamed it on the wrong thing. (My friend shouldn’t feel too bad. When Theatre de la June Lune made their New York debut, one of the reviewers complained that Dominique Serrand and Vincent Gracieux did not have believable French accents.) Oh, and if you see The Flickering Wall at the Illusion Theater and the elevator doors close behind you and 34 other people and won't open for over 15 minutes? That isn't part of the show. It might seem like it is, because the entire show is an exercise in creative theatrical misdirection that questions the nature of reality, but it turns out that those capacity limits on elevators aren’t in quotes, and we reached ours. And yet, even after the show let out exactly 20 minutes after it was supposed to, even after the artistic directors of the theater apologized personally, several members of our party would not believe that it wasn’t supposed to happen. We want reasons aside from the obvious. It couldn’t be that the elevator was simply too heavy to lift; that would just be stupid. When serving on juries, a significant percentage of us will deliver a “not guilty” verdict because our standards for proof are so high. Screw “reasonable doubt.” We expect the same certainty in our real-world evidence as we find in an hour-long-TV case. This tendency, which adversely affects criminal cases, even has a name: the "CSI Effect." And it’s at least one reason scary numbers of Americans believe that the hole in the World Trade Center isn’t big enough to have been caused by an airplane, Saddam Hussein masterminded 9/11 because we’re the good guys and we don’t make mistakes, Barack Obama is from Kenya, and Evolution is “just a theory.” But. Anyway. I won't spoil any of The Flickering Wall’s planned surprises, except to say that the nooks and crevices of the Illusion Theater, through which we followed a guide through the action, were used to great advantage in allowing characters to appear and disappear mysteriously, imbuing the mundane surroundings with mystery and magic. And the twists and turns along the way, even when they sometimes grew annoyingly repetitive, slowly wound their way towards a stunning, gorgeous conclusion well-worth the often uneven shaggy dog meandering it takes to arrive there. One of my favorite things about shows like this and Re:Trace, another promenade-style show at the Fringe, is watching the audience explore their personal boundaries, as their twin desires to be a part of the show and to observe invisibly battle it out. How much involvement is too much? Will I be in the way? Is that part of the show? Re:Trace is filled with gorgeous images: dancers shed their outer uniforms like skins and leave them hanging on hooks; they become craggy rocks, and decorative gargoyles, huddling in silent witness or hanging above our heads; and the percussive writhing in the bathroom I only briefly glimpsed because because I was so transfixed by the flickering shapes (Miners? Ghosts? Fairies?) in the adjoining hallway that I forgot to move. But my favorite moment in Re:Trace was when the elevator doors opened, unplanned, on two real custodians standing next to real mop bucket. Confronted by what I can only imagine was the ludicrous spectacle of more than twenty theater-goers standing around watching five women rolling around on the floor, all obstructing the building they were attempting to clean, the blank shock on their faces was a hilarious but bracing splash of cold reality. So does all of this begin to explain The William Williams Effect Effect? How can such a no-frills, straight forward “straight” play such a successful Fringe show? Yes, it’s seamlessly directed, well-performed by a talented cast and difficult to fault on a technical level. The pieces are all there for an engaging experience. For me, though, there is an inherent limitation to its “just the facts, ma’am” minimalism: having no experience of this story outside of this hour-long production, I needed a way into this world. An artistic perspective on the material that I felt was missing. Why was this story important to them, and why should it be important to me? If there is controversy or doubt about the conviction of this man, whom we know from the beginning will be executed, I didn’t experience it watching the show, except for the cryptic mention (I think I heard that right?) of another man, who should know what “really happened.” What was surprising about the case? Part of authenticity to me is about completion. Not tidy resolution, not a lack of ambiguity or the sense that there is more to the story, but the feeling that this is the story you have chosen to tell me, and this is how it ends. You want my first response, upon leaving your party, to be, “what a great party!” Not, “I can’t believe they didn’t make their own salsa.” If you pour the salsa into a bowl, it will look homemade, and if you throw the kind of party at which homemade salsa is often served—a party with an atmosphere of familiar warmth and generosity, I won’t even question that. As George Burns said, “Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” (I originally typed "George Bush. Funny, that.) If, by contrast, you grow your own herbs and vegetables, mix them to your Mexican great-grandmother’s exact recipe into the most perfect salsa ever made and serve it in Tupperware—or worse, stand over my shoulder watching me eat it either apologizing that it’s not better or complaining that it took so long to make—I’m less likely to appreciate its authenticity. The creators of William Williams were generous, lovely hosts, but I left wanting more. (More on this next time.) My question, for now, is this: if our potential audience is so cynical that we assume we’re being lied to by our office-holders and each other, why are we naïve enough to feel betrayed when we’re lied to by art, which admits it’s lying? It’s called “make-believe” for a reason. The “magic if.” Actors and writers are conjurers, fabulists, creators of alternate realities whether their story is “based on” or “inspired by” a “true” story or not. Even an undoctored photograph, after all, is a lie of omission: in addition to losing depth and motion, we see only what the photographer has chosen to include, not what is outside the frame. But still we assume that it represents reality. So we've given the audience Ownership of the experience, we've provided all the Authentity we can and asked them to grant us what we lack. What next? It turns out there's a third part to my two part Theory of Everything, which I'll deal with more, later. For now, I'll just tease you with this. After the elevator doors closed on that beautiful moment in re:Trace, we, the audience, returned our attention to the show, real life continuing to haunt the building’s other stories, only occasionally reminding of its presence by the droning, vaguely creepy sound of the rolling mop bucket dragging across the floor over our heads. 9:30 AM, August 4,2009

A couple of random observations from the first half of the Fringe.

Shoving 17 shows into my brain in four days and expecting to find the insight and energy to say anything meaningful about the experience was less than brilliant. Saying something anyway...? Priceless. Without witty direction, a fantastic ensemble and a tight, funny script, calling your show Buyer's Remorse is just asking for trouble. But if you somehow manage to pull it off, and I sit on the front row, lapping it all up with a stupid grin on my face while trying to figure out how to gasp and laugh at the same time, what you receive instead... is my heartfelt thanks. If you buy a ticket for a show called Crackwhore: The Musical and you're surprised when it offends you, you're kind of an idiot. If, instead, you approach the show as a Director's Cut episode of South Park gone even more gleefully, horribly wrong than usual and allow director/writer Stan Peal to sleep on your couch all weekend because he's one of the sweetest, gentlest souls on the planet, like I did, you'll enjoy the hell out of it, knowing he's probably not advocating necrophilia, drug abuse, prostitution, child endangerment, murder or any of the other vices he writes about, and appreciate the fearless, outstanding performers, the witty, balls-to-the wall, no-punches-pulled satire, and the actually very surprising moments of chilling beauty contained therein. (By the way, if you watch it and aren't offended? Seek therapy.) 12:15 PM, August 2,2009

Asking a Better Question

I just caught up on Alan's blog and I agree, whole-heartedly. I even have an answer for his rhetorical question. Well, two. He asked: (and I'm paraphrasing) "Why do we focus on what's bad in the Fringe instead of on the brilliance the bad can produce?" Alan explains why the important part to him is the laboratory aspect; the necessity of "failure" to produce "successs." But being honest with each other about both halves of that equation is necessary; both are equally valid, and valuable, to those with a limited amount of financial and chronological(?) resources to devote to the Fringe. If you're seeing 50 shows, it's a brilliance incubator. If you have a five card pass and one day to Fringe, you may know there's a Gold Rush goin' on, but you want to make damn sure you personally see some nuggets in the pan at the end of it. My other answer is this, and I think it can be a game-changer if we let it. If you want to hear about the moments of brilliance, don't ask, "How was the show?" or "Was it any good?" Or don't just ask that, anyway. Rather, let's challenge each other to also ask, "What was the best part of the show?" Even theater critics write well when they like something, because being forced to admit and describe a positive experience negates dismissal as a response. Every show, even the most excruciating, has a "best part." Maybe if we give those a little lovin', they'll even grow. 8:30 AM, August 2,2009

Sunday Morning After The Summer of Bard Love

Like anything worth really pondering, my still-percolating TheatriFringical Theory of Everything (or at least everything that sells tickets) evaporated in an Oatmeal Stout vapor as soon as I stopped talking about it Friday night. (Sorry, Marya.) But I remain determined to piece it together. It's at that awkward age, either fertile or just porous, where everything I see and hear seems fated to have been witnessed at that precise moment, simply in order to snap into its allotted place in the Grand Design. Which actually, means that it's probably not so much a Theory as a kind of intellectual remnants bin. But. As near as I can recall, I was attempting, for the sake of argument, to divine What People Want from a theatrical experience, whether Fringey or Otherwise, somehow boiling down the Secrets of Success (as opposed to just Ticket Sales) into Ownership and Authenticity. (And I can't overstress how much this is ONLY A WORKING THEORY. I'm not claiming any special knowledge here; I'm honestly only attempting to figure this stuff out so I can make an actual career out of this, someday.) PART ONE: Ownership The Ownership pillar seems fairly straightforward, if difficult to achieve: people, especially those elusive younger folk, want to have a personal, individualized stake in what they're watching. In the 19+ years I've now lived in Minneapolis, I've seen several successful schemes for accomplishing this. Some seem completely organic to me, while some are desperately, leg-humpingly cynical. But when it works... It can provide a Safety Net or Gateway Drug to Bait and Hook that mythical Great White Whale--the non-theatrically inclined Mass Audience that lurks somewhere out there in the depths, just waiting to fund the rest of your season. We'll call this play How to Talk Hot Dish While Fishing for Lutherans, Dontcha Know. The Musical. Even the Guthrie set large chunks of A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Canterbury Tales(!?) in Minnesota, presumably either to please those Wobegonisotans who just love seeing their quirks and folksy ways onstage, or to reassure timid theater-goers in the most literate state in the Union who otherwise might not understand their mother tongue if the "o" sound isn't pronounced right. But let that go.) This Gateway Drug, the theory goes, is the cost of doing business to prime the potential addict for the "Good Stuff." Your Ibsens, your Shaws, presubably set in their native countries. (Just as an aside, the Commonweal Theater in Lanesboro has somehow succeeded in using Ibsen as their Scandinavian-themed Gateway Drug, which I think is pretty freaking awesome.) It's an Inside Joke that can make an audience feel intelligent when they "get it," earning their patience for other parts they might not. When we understand either side of the cross references in a high-concept play like one of last year's b.o. champs, the Elizabethan Zombie hybrid Shakespeare's Land of the Dead and this year's cleverly constructed Bard Fiction, something clicks in the recesses of our DNA and says, "This is my tribe. They know me. I belong here." An audience not already conversant in the arcana of either (and preferably both!) Tarantino and Shakespeare is probably going to feel left out, but I'd wager most people at all conversant with Pop Culture or High School English "get" most of the big laughs, and get to dip their toes in the water with the Cool Kids, who get them all. Having not seen Pulp Fiction since it was in movie theaters, myself, I missed a good bit of the plot and wasn't sure why I should care, but still recognized the genius of mashing Hamlet's dad's big Ghost Scene with Christopher Walken's watch story, as well as the more obvious (but flawlessly executed) Royale with Cheese parody. Calling the messenger Sprint is a funny touch, too. I enjoyed both shows and admired the craftsmanship and hard work that wasn't neglected, when it easily could have been. They deserve their success for successfully finding clever (if emotionally a bit calculated and sterile for my taste) ways to tap into our generation's seemingly paradoxical hunger for both the comfort of nostaglia and the edginess of the new. So. Kudos. That's one way to entertain yourself and your friends while bringing in audiences who are neither. And it works! It can give the audience an emotional stake in these particular artists as their Extended Family, their Home Team,(choose your own metaphor) inspiring enough loyalty and missionary fervor to draw them back (with their friends and biological family in tow) to sample whatever it is the Family is serving for dinner that night. Even if they don't normally enjoy Sushi. Or Beckett. Commonweal does this year round, as does Workhouse Theater in North Minneapolis, Torch, Park Square, the Guthrie... And the Fringe itself does this. You may not think you know the Gagles, but if you watch any small theater in Minnesota you've certainly seen them at plays. They like to remain in the shadows with the rest of the audience, so I won't embarrass them by making them easier to spot, but they are the lifeblood of this community. During the rest of the year they will see, they tell me, at least a play (or a movie) a day, but generally three plays a week! But the Fringe is sacrosanct to them. They will plan their summer around it, letting their family know not to get sick, born or married in late July/early August so they can gorge on theater. While it was the Guthrie that drew them to Minnesota, the first Fringe Festival introduced them to an entire sub-culture they didn't even know existed, and to artists whose careers they wanted to follow. In the last 15 years, they've loyally attended almost every play I've been involved with, meeting 6 degrees of artists associated with that first batch and branching out to follow them, and picking up new family members along the way. Michal-jon Pease, Park Square Theatre's Director of External Relations, organizes champagne meetups with the artists, as well as sending flowers to sick patrons. If this seems to have nothing to do with dramaturgy, that's absolutely right. Just as service, presentation and atmosphere are at least as important to a dining experience as how your dinner tastes, audiences are won and lost long before the lights rise on the opening scene. And oh, when it works! To paraphrase John Lennon, "People say I'm a cynic. But I'm not the real one." I don't walk into a play looking to be negative, or to feel superior, or resentful, although believe me there are plenty who do. (And no, not just critics.) Believe it or not, I don't even want to learn from or criticize what I'm watching. (Nope. I would hate being a theater critic as much as most of them seem to.) Like any other civilian in the audience, I want desperately to be a part of the story. I'm not just talking about what other people want, here. That's the cynics game. I'm talking about what WE want. And I assume, idealistically I think, that I'm not alone. I've never immediately felt this sense of inclusion as strongly as I did in Scream Blue Murmur's new show, The Morning After the Summer of Love. Many felt it last time they were in town, back when they were the Belfast Poets, singing and slinging about their home town, with that long, lonely, lovelorn "ow" sound only the Irish can do. I felt their energy and passion, even then, but I stayed behind in my seat; I wasn't drawn onstage with them. Why? What was different this time? The show felt safer, less exotic, because it was more about my country than theirs, so it was a bit more of a Gateway; I'm also more conversant with the Civil Rights Movement than I am with the History of the Troubles, so maybe I "got" more of the Inside Joke this time. But it wasn't just that, either. And although I had seen them before, they weren't my artistic Home Team going in. They are now. Because even though in retrospect I question the need a second sing-a-long in a row about African American boxing icons, even though there were places where energy and inspiration seemed to sag, even though the file footage projections of 1969 didn't really link the whole experience together very well by the end, the time in the show I could even begin to think about those things they had demolished all of my defenses. I wanted them to succeed. We all did. Like family. We reveled in the rhythm, went wobbly with wordplay. I can still hear Phat Bob's Menage a Trois with Terror and Fear. I fell in love with Ellen and Chelley and Aisling was smiling just at me. With Aidan we made a new rhythm. Gordon's was more than a song. We felt our breath catch together And our hearts all sang along... Well it sounds stupid, now. But damn, you should have been there. 10:24 PM, August 1,2009

Why did casebolt and smith: Speaking Out make me cry?

All day I've been trying to describe why I loved casebook and smith: Speaking Out so much, and words fail me. It just ends up sounding pretentious or silly, which is okay, really, because that's what the whole show is all about. The words of these good friends and partners provide a running commentary on their movements, narrating, mocking, and supplementing their physical communication in a way that is the very opposite of pretentious. Playful, masterfully performed and choreographed, gorgeously quirky, delicate, bawdy, and strangely moving, this show is the real deal. And I'm not sure why I cried, either. It's one of the reasons I loved the show so much. Watching dance often surprises me, because I know enough of the rules to be dangerous, but I can't actually do it, myself. At all. And when it works, when I see dancers so in tune with each other that they seem to have formed one fluid organism, it makes my heart gasp. But in this case I think it almost had more to do with the fact that the second dance chronicles--in sections of movement punctuated by dialogue, dialogue punctuated by movement, and then just straight movement--the awkward beginnings, deepening, and artistic fruits of a beautiful, loving, working friendship. No wait. I've got it! It's like...if Will and Grace were a much better show, and Fred and Ginger danced it! (See what I mean? Just trust me, and see for yourselves! Go on. I'll be fine till you get back. Sitting here...typing away... trying to puzzle it all out.) 2:00 PM, August 1,2009

Words to live by...And Eating Them

8 Shows in 2 days and already I have to eat my words. The problem with recommending shows from a 5 minute showcase snippet is that the show won't be 5 minutes long. Boy won't it. The less than hour-long show may, in point of fact, feel like a month long Sex in the City marathon. If that sounds like a compliment, run, don't walk, to Cherry Cherry Lemon. If, like me, you prefer to listen to women bonding over other things besides the men they've had sex with, 2 Sugars, Room for Cream may be more your cuppa joe. Featuring witty, touching, genuinely human comedy about jobs, literature, friendship, vampires, and yes, coffee, 2 Sugars is not just a show by and for smart funny, sexy women, but for any man who happens to enjoy hanging out with them. Shanan and Carolyn are comedy pros with terrific, infectious chemistry, and I've decided the fact that one of them happens to be my wife shouldn't disqualify me from saying so. The similarly structured but completely improvised show, Ferrari McSpeedy's Comedy Now has some of the same charm from the gou's p.o.v., and its performers share similar skills and chemistry. Since every performance will be completely different, the specifics of what I saw don't really matter. These are funny guys who are good at what they do, but you don't need me to tell you that. However, apropos of my barely remembered excuse for writing this thing--the quest for a TheatriFringical Theory of Everything--comparing improv to scripted theater is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. My personal preference is for the latter. Not because I don't enjoy improv's freewheeling energy and spontaneity, but because I enjoy them more as the resulting sparks of a performance, rather than the entire point. In performances of the best scripted theater, these same sparks are produced by the creative tension between the characters, who don't know where the story is headed, and the actors, who actually do. (Assuming they've also read the parts of the script that aren't highlighted.) More on this later. I'm not sure where this train of thought is going, but it feels like it at least has wheels. I'll try to pick it up in between shows at the Southern. 9:00 AM. July 30,2009

Things I thought about, thought better of, then posted anyway

I actually wrote most of this last night after the Out of Towners' Showcase. Then I decided it was too negative. Then I thought, "I know this is Minnesota, but fuck it. I'll write something nice after I see shows that are good." And lo, I saw and will write about them tomorrow. Okay. Call me a snob, call me naive, but there's a certain set of assumptions that I make when I walk into a theater to give someone my money. Even at the Fringe.Contrary to popular belief, I don't ask much. I really don't. And maybe the most basic is this. Respect yourself and the thing--story, theme, idea, play--you're devoting so much time and energy to share with me, that you do your best. Show up. Be present. TRY. Because I and everyone else there desperately want to enjoy your show. We really, really do. Here are some things that will help us do that. I ask that you know your lines. There are huge exceptions to this rule. Kevin Kling and Mike Fotis can hold a script in their hands and still make me laugh my ass off. And if I laugh my ass off, I'll forgive pretty much anything. If you have a mental impairment that doesn't allow you to learn lines; a new script with fresh changes so important to the process that there wasn't time to memorize it; if you are doing a benefit/fundraiser and this is the only hour these famous people all had to get together; in these cases the actors will almost certainly be able to give the material and the audience more of themselves if they hold the script as a crutch. Finally, if you are not an actor, but the story you are telling is so urgent that it demands to be told before you can afford to hire someone to do it for you, tel us who you are and be honest about it, and I'll cut you a lot of slack. But as a general rule, saying, and this is pretty much a direct quote, "We're holding scripts so that you'll know these are real words spoken by real people," is a deal breaker. There are ways to let me know that. (One easy one involves writing it in the program.) Holding a script is not one of them. It tells me many things, and none of them are good, but the crucial thing it absolutely doesn't do is make the words more real. Another assumption I make is someone involved in your show has achieved some level of competence at theatrical presentation. When one of my many 4-6 year old buddies tugs my sleeve excitedly and says, "Um, do you (giggle) wanna hear a joke?" (snort) Or see a play they've "written" or a "dance," I know that I will enjoy whatever they show me, just as I can safely assume it will not be remotely joke/play or dance-like. Because seeing them enjoy it is enough. I have a relationship with them that renders this interaction charming instead of presumptuous and annoying. And it is free. By contrast, if someone gives me a postcard for their Fringe show, which costs 12 dollars and/or 50 minutes of my life, this seems at least to indicate some degree of forethought on their part and that they or someone they know can presumably read and/or write. Unless the word "improv" is featured prominently, I assume that tonight is not the first night they've thought about the order these particular thoughts should be in to tell the story they're advertising. I might even assume they've done this before. The number of times that assumption has proved incorrect continues to astonish me. Fringe shows require more preparation, not less, because of the sheer number of variables you already cede control of in exchange for the privilege of performing them. All of this goes double for a Showcase performance. Especially when the acts drove or flew here, some from other countries. Which brings us to last night, which prompted this tirade. Marya has already done a great job of describing the audience, Bedlam, and the forgiving, nurturing vibe, so I'll cut to the chase. There was an audience of, I'd guess, well over 150 people. That's a lot of potential tickets sold, not to mention word of mouth. The Fringe gives this exposure to the performers as a free gift. They were told to keep it under 7 minutes. Which, to me, would mean, give us the best 7 minutes of your show that you can show in this setting. Simple, right? And still, of the 21 acts represented, there were at least 5 that looked like George Bush at a press conference. Ill-prepared, ill-at-ease, even snarkily resentful at being dragged onstage to SELL THEIR SHOW TO PEOPLE LOOKING FOR SHOWS TO SEE! I'm not even talking about shows that didn't look like I would enjoy them, I'm talking about performers who looked like they were told today to come up with an idea for a show. Exceptions that prove the rule. Of the 21, there were 3 shows I will now attend that I probably wouldn't have, if the performers hadn't won me over. Marya already mentioned Casebolt and Smith: Speaking Out!, which seems to be a couple of modern dancers narrating their thoughts about the movements they're perorming as they "rehearse" and create a dance. It's so much funnier than it sounds. Cherry Cherry Lemon somehow managed to be fearlessly and gleefully raunchy, very clever and oddly vulnerable,all in about 5 minutes. And a very honorable mention goes to Scream Blue Murmur. Slam poetry is just not my thing, even when slammed with a delightful Irish brogue, but they are proof that with enough enthusiasm for your story, a sense of humor about yourself, and the grace and skill to embrace an audience, my prejudices will fold like little origami hearts. Now, these were not the only acts I thought were good, but they were the ones that gave me the specific thrill of surprise that makes the Fringe the Fringe. They invited me out of my comfort zone to share the gift they had brought for me. And somehow it fit like a tailored suit. Before I shut up, I just want to say one more thing. Just because the Fringe is unjuried, just because Minnesotan audiences are for the most part tolerant and forgiving to a fault, doesn't mean your participation comes without strings. You are an ambassador for the Fringe Festival, at least, and whether you like it or not, for theater in the Twin Cities. People who never attend theater other than the Guthrie, Chanhassan and Broadway tours come to the Fringe. They might see your show and think that's what small, Twin Cities theater is, and the rest of us have to clean up your mess the rest of the year. (This of course applies to local groups, too, but they weren't there last night.) It's actually pretty simple: Show the fuck up, and play like you mean it. Trust me, the audience will gladly do the rest. 9:00 AM. July 29,2009

WTF?

So I’m having this mid-life crisis. I’ve been doing this Theater Thing for 25 years now and I’m wondering, well, why? People used to perform and attend plays because it was the only game in town. The only way to express ourselves to ourselves, and through that shared conversation, to the Gods. It was the salad days, before our options for expiation by blood devolved to include the Coliseum, Bear Baiting and Fox News. So why, in the age of Dancing with Has-Beens: SVU and LOL Cats do we still do it? Why theater, especially indoors during the Minnesota summer, and for Thespis’ sake, why the Fringe? (This will henceforth be abbreviated “WTF?” That’s not taken, is it?) Full disclosure: I will take the singular thrill of live theatrical performance wherever I can find it, skulking twice a week from Fairy Tale Palaces of High Culture to endearingly grungy deathtraps where the A/C cuts out if the number of working lighting instruments reaches double digits, and everywhere in between, all in search of the ever elusive ephemeral shoobidy doo between actor and hoohah that only exists in this holy blah blah between whatever… But that’s just me. I know why people who DO theater go to theater, like a heroin addict searching between his toes for an untapped vein, desperately trying to replicate that first love, that high school drama high… What about the real people who seem, in the rest of their lives, to know better, you know, saving lives and stuff. Why do they choose theater? How do they decide what to see? What sort of experience do they expect to have and what do they take away with them? And why—and I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to say it—why are they getting so old? Nothin’ against old people, (I’m gettin’ up there, myself) but since the average Twin Cities theater-goer seems to be about 830—and thank Jeebus they’re still out there, BTW—I wonder who’s going to take their place. So. For the next week and a half, the only time of year a tiny theater company can be almost as cool as a rock band, I’ll ask the burning question: WTF? Theater at its most ideal—with weeks of rehearsal, a budget of some sort, experienced actors and crew, a set (in other words, the anti-Fringe) is still all but impossible to pull off. The Fringe is an unjuried, seat-of your pants, no setup, no set immaculate conception with a four hour tech rehearsal. And still, once a year in Minnesota, more than 15 THOUSAND ticket buyers from all over the country roll the dice on acts they wouldn’t think twice about for the rest of the year, many of them 40 or 50 times in 9 days. But enough about you… I caught the bug in 1990 when I saw 40 plays in a week at the Edinburgh Fringe, where, in addition to some 1100 smaller acts over 2 months, there was the larger Theater Festival (which spawned the Fringe, for DIYers who couldn’t get in), as well as Festivals of Jazz, Blues, Books, Comedy and Film. All running simultaneously. So when I heard that my new home, Minneapolis, would get its own version in 1993 I was beside myself. I wrote a play, Universal Remote , which was one of the best attended local shows, with just over 300 people in attendance. We were in a vacant office over the Red Sea Restaurant, sharing the space with a group who travelled all the way from Russia to perform for audiences of four people. Even then, there was something about the Fringe. Now, I’m asking you what that “something” is. I want to hear and report what you’re seeing. Find out why you think some inarguably terrible shows are so popular while the next Beckett or Kushner or Ruhl shares the audience with her mom, her boss, and that creepy guy who wandered in because he thought there might be nudity? Why do so many Minnesotans, for whom the words ‘Hot Dish’ or ‘Doncha know’ spoken aloud onstage can produce spasms of hysteria for the other 50 and a half weeks, suddenly crave the theatrical equivalent of live chicken sacrifices and sex with donkeys? What’s wrong with us? We could read, or go the cabin, or go to any of the 12 restaurants that opened while I was typing. But why, instead, have you and I both chosen to be here? Whatever the reason, tomorrow an actual, physical community of theater-goers will materialize again, like Brigadoon, to prove to ourselves that we still exist, and I'm excited to get to meet some of you, probably more than once, because you’re junkies too. Because I don’t understand why either. And because maybe, together, we can help each other figure it all out. Happy Fringing, y’all!