- OTHER MEDIA
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- Theater goes way beyond 'edgy' at Fringe Festival
- SF Chronicle September 8, 2007 (Reyhan Harmanci)
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- According to Exit Theatre Artistic Director Christina Augello, spotted
lounging in the Exit Theatre cafe Wednesday night, this year's San Francisco
Fringe Festival is completely different and exactly the same as previous
incarnations.
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- "It gets too stale to keep choosing the same old same old,"
she said, speaking of her normal job of selecting plays to put on at the
Exit, the central venue for the Fringe. "This way, I get to explore
exciting, new stuff. It's like that every year - you can count on being
surprised."
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- Surprise is a sure bet. In only the first two days, the range of shows
is quite astonishing. From a one-man show like Kurt Bodden's dissection
of his Harvard alumni magazine ("Class Notes") to an obtuse play
on human and technological connections ("Tesla's White Pigeon"),
the scale and style of productions are all over the map. Well-known local
theater companies, like FoolsFURY's "Turn of the Screw, were given
equal billing with upstarts like Laurent Martini's "Heavy Metal Playground."
- The non-juried selection process of the 16-year-old San Francisco Fringe
means that any production that produces an adequate proposal has a shot
of making it into the mix; a lottery drawing produced the final list of
38 plays. Augello said the number of submissions put the odds of being
selected at about 3-to-1. Over 12 nights, the plays will be performed on
at least eight stages, in conventional theater spaces as well as the more
offbeat (when's the last time you saw a play in Original Joe's restaurant?).
All the proceeds go to the performers, another reason they queue up to
throw their chits in the lottery.
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- Thank goodness all the venues are within walking distance of one another,
as this reporter had to scurry into opening night's offerings after writing
down a wrong address. The Exit Theatre is a nice size, with a cafe to the
left of the narrow main hallway and two stages set farther back in the
building. Friendly volunteers greeted patrons around every turn.
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- As the curtain (metaphorical curtain, not actual curtain) rose on "Border
Crossings," a one-man show by Portland's Rick Huddle, the only props
onstage were a stool and a guitar. For the next 40 minutes or so, he regaled
the audience with tales from a trip to Mexico. He sang, he danced, he made
the most of the possibilities of one body onstage. The final bit, a postmortem
of a relationship that ended just before his journey to Mexico City and
Oaxaca, brought together the narrative strands impressively. Three staffers
on hand to see the show - Beth Cockrell, Michelle Talgarow and Amanda Ortmayer,
who have 13 years of S.F. Fringe experience among them - gave Huddle the
thumbs-up. "He had some opening night Fringe nerves, but I think he'll
calm down," said Ortmayer. "He was very open, and it was well
written."
- The annual San Francisco Fringe sensory overload is part of a global
Fringe phenomenon - there are 107 Fringe festivals all over the world.
Many, if not most, of the out-of-town Fringers are veterans of the circuit.
The Manchester-born Matt Panesh was on hand between performances to hawk
playbills for his show, "Monkey Poet Stand-Up!" He said his production
(billed as "rude, crude, and terribly offensive") has been to
the Calgary, London and Indianapolis Fringes. "But Indianapolis was
the only city where people actually walked out," he said, stuffing
the little yellow flyers into people's hands. "Ten people walked out
and demanded refunds."
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- Robert Hawke, a thyroid cancer survivor whose one-man show, "F-
You Cancer," has been to the Prague and Toronto festivals, says that
some Fringes are attended by talent scouts, and Fringe-to-Broadway success
stories can be found. "I don't know about the San Francisco Fringe,
but Toronto has had plays go mainstream theater, on Broadway," he
said, handing me a flyer. That isn't the point, though. "I just love
the groundswell of theater," he said, "Even the mainstream stuff
that is supposed to be 'edgy' has been shellacked or sanitized for our
safety."
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- In a sharp contrast to the clarity and verbosity of "Border Crossing,"
the play "Tesla's White Pigeon" was a head-scratcher. Three people
onstage wearing pants with suspenders and quite fashionable Vans pull-ons
interacted with one another and a pile of suitcases and worked out ideas
having to do with communication, technology and the fight to forge human
connections. It was enjoyably disorienting, although the theater itself,
because of a surprisingly warm night, was distractingly hot. The audience
seemed to love it, though. People were hooting and hollering as the principals
held hands and bowed at the end.
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- Just when the night began to feel too long for a third show, "Heavy
Metal Playground" brought the mood back up. The program description
was confusing - a musical about a man's fictional heavy metal band? - but
made sense as soon as Laurent Martini, along with his younger alter ego,
played by Max Hartman, took the stage. Apparently, Martini, a raging nerd
in his high school years at a San Francisco French school, penned 97 songs
about sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, etc. in his vast amounts of spare time.
Like a one-man Spinal Tap, Martini conjured up the band Live Evil, who
were onstage to play some of his more fleshed-out songs.
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- The polished production of FoolsFURY's "The Turn of the Screw,"
adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher but still set in Victorian England, was well
served by the small but nicely trimmed stage at the Garage. The performers
writhed and banged and enunciated a terrific amount of Jamesian dialogue;
it was a genuinely chilling ghost story (although, sadly, again, the room
itself was too hot). The relaxed tempo of the next show, Bodden's "Class
Notes," was a nice contrast. Bodden plumbed some choice bits from
the god-awful Harvard alumni notes. Anyone with an alma mater that sends
those wretched updates knows the pain of which he speaks - how could you
possibly compare to all those golden doctors and lawyers and investment
bankers who are getting happily married and popping out beautiful babies
at every turn? Bodden puts the right amount of pathos and scorn into his
performance, although some of his best lines were muttered, or bitten off
at the end.
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- No matter. The Fringe isn't about delivering a flawless show, it's
about throwing it all up in the air and seeing what sticks. As every show's
warm response from the audience indicated, they're pleased by the effort.
And if they didn't like it, well, there's a totally different performance
to see in just a few minutes.
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