Fringe Festival – Day 7
Day seven of the Fringe Festival ended after I was thwarted in my attempts to watch To Mars with Tesla or The Interplanetary Machinations of Evil Thomas Edison. I found myself at Ping’s eating chicken skewers with Chris Bowlsby, Sharon Stiteler, Levi Weinhagen and Courtney McClean. Later, Levi and I arm wrestled. So it was a weird day.
The transient nature of the Fringe can be frustrating at times. With 30 minutes between shows. You are rushing from one side of Minneapolis to the other in a mad attempt to reach the next theatre. At times your concern is not a sellout but simply missing opening curtain. Either way, you may find yourself taking an unexpected dinner break because you were too late.
I dislike that stressful process of getting from here to there. The best laid plans can be thrown by bad luck with traffic lights or pedestrians.
It is all part of the Fringe experience, though. It is a mad rush of theatre and it isn’t for the weak of heart.
Josh Carson’s weakness is he is too good at writing jokes.
I know, it isn’t a weakness. It just means that his shows are just packed with punchlines and you are going to miss a few. I would argue that it ensures rewatchability.
My frustration with the show came not from Josh’s dense writing but rather from actors who weren’t enunciating ther lines well. I know they had to speak them in a hurry to squeeze the entire show into an hour but a little bit of diction would have gone a long way.
That’s not a big thing. I certainly understood enough of the jokes to enjoy the hell out of the show. I just wanted to understand more of them.
I am really in love with the staging of this show.
The story, which was about a politician who loses his Nose, was absurd from the start and the staging complemented the absurdity perfectly.
The actors moved in a way that wasn’t dancing but the inspiration was clear. They were choreographed meticulously. Every move had purpose.
Well yeah. Every move in theatre is supposed to have purpose. However, the moves were sychronized and the three actors worked together to create a piece that was as much about movement as it was about story.
I thought it was terrific.
Burning Brothels: Sex and Death in Nevada
I didn’t want the show to end.
A fascinating series of stories about the sex trade in Nevada, I felt like I was taking a masters class in prostitution.
Katherine Glover shared stories of why brothels are legal in Nevada and tells us about a few women who work there as a way to, I think, demystify the institution.
Is prostitution OK? That isn’t really the point here. The point is that she wants us to understand the industry and the people who are involved in it because those people are interesting. Their stories are interesting too.
It isn’t that there aren’t judgements to make. It is that we don’t really know what we’re judging. This show gives us a glimpse into an industry few of us really understand.
And I walked away wishing I could glimpse a little more.
Well done.
Grail Diary 