After landing in Ohio from Rwanda and the Peace Corps, Nelson and I drove south to see our daughter, Jessica, in Dallas. We drove even further south after our visit and ended up with her in Austin. Arriving during Austin’s five week FronteraFest, Nelson, Jessica, Kyle, a former Peace Corps Volunteer and I pulled up in front of the theater – warehouse eager to see what a fringe festival was all about. We were also trying to make the best of a cold rainy day and were hoping this show would fill the time until dinner. I want to say that the first show left us breathless and gasping for more, but right now, I can’t even remember what the show was about. We did, however, thanks to Kyle, the former PCV, have a great dinner afterwards.
For me the seed was sown, Nelson and I, got really tired of looking at each other a few days later, and we went back and back again to other theaters and other shows. It didn’t take long to understand that fringe presentations are a real up and down affair and paying close attention to the advertising, to the fringe website and to the what the artist writes pays off in finding your way to the good parts.
One of the three theaters involved devoted itself to short pieces…anything up to 20 minutes. Maybe because an evening of short pieces promised a variety, but getting tickets to the theater designated for short fringe was hard. On Wednesday, however we slipped in and saw: a take on Mother Goose, two teenagers die in an abandoned railroad tunnel, a young man describe growing up with a sister who had Asperger’s syndrome, an improv group and something else featuring an older guy, which I forget. At the end of the evening everyone voted for their favorite performance because Saturday’s show would present each night’s winner. My vote went to the guy and his sister. Nelson liked the Mother Goose lady because she dressed up like a goose and made him laugh. I don’t know who won because our job was to travel south and we did just that before Saturday’s Best of the Week show.
Storytelling would have such a good place in a fringe festival. The people who were solo performers were close to what a storyteller would do…except for the Mother Goose costume and the props of the young man talking about his sister. I seriously wanted to counsel the young man in particular and tell him that the props he had were so unnecessary. I wanted to ask him why he needed them. I just wonder if he felt he had to do something theatrical because theater is expected. I’m so happy with the idea of fringe festivals. Things aren’t always polished, people talk to each other afterwards and before and it doesn’t cost much. Our tickets were $10 each. Best of all, when the was done in Austin, I had so much rolling around in my head about the content and the staging and the writing that, for a time, I forgot all we left behind in Rwanda.
Try this URL to the FronteraFest Website: www.hydeparktheatre.org. Scroll down to FronteraFest to read more about what they do.
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