#mnfringe

[adaradin]

Pre-show #selfie #bellydancejoy #makeup #jewelry #shiny #Haggala #mnfringe #mnfringefestival #albahiramiddleeasterndancetheater #dance #music #mylifeinbraids #folkloric #dancingwiththeenemy (at The Jungle Theater)

[tomsteafor2]

Took Baphomet to see his first #mnfringe shows! They both happen to feature Reverend Matt's Monster Science

[rndyounghowze]

Amplify: 3 Way Lovve Produced by Marcus Ma’at Atkins Paints a Masterpiece on Our Hearts

A powerful production that begs to be watched hits #mnfringe Live Digital Hub

By: Ricky and Dana Young-Howze

Minnesota Fringe Festival

When we heard about this play we felt excited because Dana and I bonded over our love of Basquiat when we first started dating. Basquiat’s work was one of the first that seemed to jump out of the page of the art textbook because it didn’t seem to even belong there. You just knew that his work lived on the walls of a subway in NYC. Little did we know that when we followed the zoom link to the see Ma’at Atkin’s show that we would be just as entranced by this show as we were his art. This show was brought to life by the production team of Ma’at Atkins, Andrea Jacobs, Tondra Mosley, Leanne-Joshua White, and Jaron Hicks and found a permanent home in our hearts and minds.

William Stratford is a free spirit painter that refuses to be caged. As a complicated artist he decides to complicate his life further by joining three relationships that themselves are all equally as complicated.

This is the first time I saw a production use sets and camera angles in a way that totally brought the production to the next level. We absolutely loved their novel idea of using still pictures of outside locations to serve as “bumps” that grounded us in space and time. It was a very interesting and effective choice that we had never seen. It provided a uniformity and aesthetic to the play that seated us in the world of the play.

The director certainly deserves high praise for blocking things in such a way that the camera worked for them. The love scene between William and Shareen could easily have fallen flat. But using creative blocking and camera angles we felt a sexual tension that you could cut with a knife.

Chenzo Samuels as Guy Foreman Kenwood gave us a genuine creepy vibe in any scene he stepped into. I think we all know some creepy business types like that. Micah Bijon as William seemed to have the most difficult time between the accent and being in love with/in need of everyone else. I saw this in his eyes that always seemed to be knowing more than he let on. (Since we’ve started reviewing Zoom plays we’ve noticed that eye “acting” is especially crucial right about now). Leanne-Joshua White as Shareen had the energy and her anger felt so real and palpable it felt like it was coming from real fear and emotional exhaustion. Katt Balsan’s naivete as Robyn in the beginning and emotional arc in the end sold the part to us.

Where everyone’s acting had their high spots we felt that some time doing more character work and getting chemistry down would have been useful. Sometimes it seemed that any dips in actor chemistry seemed to outweigh the extreme highs and connections. Doing character work now to get every moment into the stratosphere would be a great investment.

It took all three writers to come together and create dialogue you could feel like sleet pelting on your face. There are some lines that have a primalness that goes beyond the screen and straight out into the atmosphere. It feels rooted in something deep down in the writers’ souls. However there were some things that felt lacking such as backstory. Dana had big questions like “what is William’s backstory?” and “how did he meet Shareen?” Also what cements William’s job as protagonist except for the fact that he is having a relationship with three of the other characters? What does William want? Some more time developing these kinds of things can be spent to turn this already good play into amasterpiece that stands the test of time.

Dana thought the story was well paced with complicated layers and realistic problems done in a dynamic way. It could have been confusing but the out of order timeline was still easy to follow. We applaud the writers for having the courage of letting the complicated relationships drive the plot forward.

I would beg them to keep the juicy dialogue and the poetic sense of diction and rhythm. I found myself not wanting to watch any more because of this richness of sound that washed over me. However I knew if I shut my eyes I would miss out on the scenes where every frame was a painting.

This is a very professional production with the use of graphics, set design, and music bringing a very high level of polish to the production. It’s very well written and has enough details in the writing that gives clues to the character’s inner monologue. This is the first review we’re given too much stuff to talk about. That’s high praise coming from us.

To learn more about this production and how you can see future showings then you need to hit up Atkin’s Website here. To save the Fringe and buy a button go here.

[21stcenturymen]

MN Fringe - Part III

Our third panel was intended to center around gender, sexuality, and intersectionality, and to a degree, it did. But due to the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, and an officer-involved shooting of a black man in North Minneapolis all happening within 36 hours of the discussion, we changed course.

The discussion included 5 luminaries of local activism: Andrea Jenkins, Marcela Michelle, Taiyon J. Coleman, Erica Fields, and Lisa Stratton. I have never in my life experienced such powerful thoughtfulness as I did during this discussion, and it’s re-framed everything I think about how I interact with people since.

The discussion started with a recounting of the past days’ horrors, and a careful association to white supremacy. Because, even the man who shot his wife and was subsequently shot by Minneapolis police was acting in a way commensurate with white male patriarchy. We take, and when what we want is not given freely, we take by force. This is modeled in every version of white male patriarchy since before the Roman empire.

We talked about how white male supremacist behavior models of giving commands instead of asking politely are mirrored in websites like Google and YouTube. For example, watch a Toby Kieth video, let YouTube play on random, and see how long before you’re at some yahoo’s rando white supremacist video. My news feed is another example of Google’s inherent toxicity. Though I keep telling it never to show my sites like The Federalist, or other ultra-right wing content, it keeps popping back into my feed anyway. If the content were truly algorithm-based as they claim, my preferences would be logged and the pattern of avoiding conservative content would be recognized. But it never is. In the local news feed, follow-up on the above-referenced story of an officer-involved shooting is the 11th story in the feed, after such hard-hitting pieces as the City Pages’ hot take on a real estate agent’s bus advertising.

The panel talked about the fact that the South never truly surrendered or lost the Civil War, and are in fact still fighting it. Also, that Donald Trump’s language (while vile and inciting) is a symptom. For however horrific he may be when it comes to race, justice, gender, etc., he was elected by American citizens. The continued racism of America and the individuals who so staunchly defend it are what elected Donald Trump to office, and it’s important to remember that defeating him in 2020 will not resolve those issues, however important that goal may be.

We developed a metaphor for poor white folks who vote for people like Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell (and really anyone who insists on not helping their neighbors). Imagine you’re a white person who has been stepped on by the system - medical bills, job loss, displacement, etc. But you see the media that promised you success simply because you’re white, and you believe you’ve been lied to. At some level, there’s still the hope that you’ll be able to move up. The reality is: this is capitalism. The white men at the top are under no obligation to help you, but your physiological similarities make you kin. This is the nose and the raft. That physiological privilege puts your nose just above water, and while you struggle to survive, it’s easier to push down those drowning to hold yourself up than to reach up and insist on fair treatment from those lounging on the raft.

One of the most important things a white person (and particularly a white man) who cares about the world around them can do, is to recognize their nose is just above water, and that those drowning deserve life as well. What does another human being’s humanity mean to you? Why is it so easy for us to reduce those with whom we are unfamiliar to less-than-human? Never look to others who are suffering to compare your suffering. Look to those who profit from all suffering. They are the ones responsible for not just the harm to people of color, LGBTQIA+, and immigrants, but to you as well.

Speak to the other folks whose noses are just above water. Teach each other about how even that seemingly insignificant amount of privilege saves your children from profiling by police, gets your resume a second look, and avoids erasure in media. You don’t have to be proud of your privilege, or even necessarily grateful for it, but you CAN use it to reduce harm to others.

What does someone’s humanity mean to you? Until we all start treating everyone else’s humanity as on-par with our own, we cannot heal.

[wonderdave]

A bunch of hilarious nerds are coming to the Minnesota Fringe Festival Aug 9th 5:30pm and Aug 10th 2:30pm at the Crane Theater in Minneapolis!  Hope to see you there. Event page here. 

[21stcenturymen]

Bringing it to the REAL WORLD

Thank you all for your patience. A Man’s Guide has been on hiatus for some time as I get my ducks in a row. As I live in Minnesota, they’re technically grey ducks, and I have no idea how to handle that, so it’s been a bit of a quandary.

BUT! We’re jumping out into the real world. And by “we,” I mean me. In one of my other lives, I’m a theatre writer, performer, and producer, so live theatre is my most cultivated language.

As such, I’ve secured a slot in the Minnesota Fringe Festival that runs from August 1 - 11 of this year. Instead of writing a play, however, I’m going to host a discussion series. I know we talk about toxic masculinity a lot around here, and I want to give the men who read this blog a chance to hear how toxic masculinity manifests from experts in the gender zeitgeist.

There will be more to come (including new artwork!), but put these dates and topics on your calendars:

August 1 - 10:00: Street & workplace harassment August 3 - 5:30: Dating August 4 - 8:30: Gender, sexuality, & intersectionality August 10 - 7:00: Violence, incels, & managing expectations August 11 - 1:00: Producing theatre

I’ll ask the participants questions and have them speak from their expertise. At the end, there’ll be a brief period for questions, but the real focus here is on the guests, who will bring volumes of valuable knowledge right to your fingertips. I’ll then post reference materials and info based on those discussions.

Hope to see you there!

SIDE NOTE: I got married and took my wife’s name, so I’m now Scot Froelich if you’re a little confused. More info on my projects at scotfroelich.com.

[matildazq]

Minnesota Fringe Festival 2018

This always falls around the time of my BFF’s birthday, and we’ve been attending for at least 9 years. We think this might be the 10th anniversary of ever attending? We are old and have bad memories. Also we are old and blindsided by Beyoncé/Jay-Z concerts. Plus there is a lot of day drinking, but I am pretty sure it’s the “old” part that is playing with our timeline.  In many ways, the festival itself has gotten better and better each year we’ve been going. The move from button and punchcard to day passes and tokens has made queueing up a lot more efficient, and it COULD promote taking more chances on more things, except that the website has gotten steadily more terrible since the halcyon days of the Kitty rating system.  

In years past, we could look up our old reviews to refresh our memories about companies, writers, and performers we’d enjoyed. That went by the wayside a couple of years ago. This year, in addition to the site being INCREDIBLY slow and having a bad interface (the slider rating system, which defaults to “5,” which translates into 2.5 stars out of 5 is just . . . Inner Stage Manager will never be over how terrible that is), the ability to click on an actor/writer/performer’s name to see what else they were in disappeared and we had to recreate accounts from scratch. As a result, we stuck almost entirely to our known quantities and didn’t do a lot of exploring, which is a bit of a bummer. The slider rating system

We’re also mourning the loss of the encore performances in favor of the confusing new “Golden Lanyard “ awards. I assume there’s some kind of reasoning behind the elimination of the last-night encores (maybe all shows get an extra scheduled performance?), but on the surface, it seems like a loss. 

Anyway, here are the 10 plays we ere able to hit this year. 

We were shut out of one we really wanted to see, Not Fair, My Lady, which was not only sad because it meant we didn’t see something Shanan Custer was involved with (and we ALWAYS see ALL the things Shanan Custer is involved with), but they were also selling buttons to benefit the League of Professional Theatre Women, so I just tossed a donation their way. 

Our first play was one of my choices. I have unholy love for Winnie the Pooh: 

Company: Fearless Comedy Productions

Show: Deep in The 100 Acre Woods: A "Pooh"-dunnit?

Venue: Minnsky Theatre

Reviewed Aug 05, 2018

I gave this three stars

Side note: This was a new (to us, anyway) venue. Beautiful lobby. The space is a brick-walled, very deep black box theater. Quite flexible for performance, probably, but the acoustics are a challenge. 

Loving, twisted homage There’s a lot of obvious love here from the creators, and much of the cast is quite good. The play itself has a lot of lag in places, and not everyone has a feel for the rapid-fire noir dialogue. But the But the costumes are great, and the genre mash-up works surprisingly well.

Second up was this year’s iteration of something we always see, and it’s always a highlight. This year, I think, was the best we’ve seen. 

Company: Weggel-Reed Productions

Show: Couple Fight: The Musical!

Venue: Rarig Center Thrust

Reviewed Aug 05, 2018

This was, no brainer, 5 stars, though I had my first panic attack that I’d accidentally given it 2.5 stars. 

Although one should love all one’s theater bebes equally, we first saw Allison Witham in this, and OMG, Michael Rogers and Alex Van Loh.  I SO wish we’d had a chance to catch their other show https://www.minnesotafringe.org/2018-show-information/now-we-see-it

The Battle Over The Bulge. Couple fight is always a Fringe Highlight, but they’ve outdone themselves this year. The diversity of styles, fights, and couples keeps the show fresh and interesting from start to finish. ‘Rinth 4-Evah.

Third (I think) was a Shanan Custer show that was supposed to be a two-woman show. 

Company: Custer & Schmidt 

Show: Our Best Life

Venue: Rarig Center Thrust

Reviewed Aug 05, 2018

Four and a half stars for this one. 

Shanan’s partner in crime had to bow out very shortly before Fringe. Although I’m sure she had no desire to test the theory, this demonstrates that an hour of Shanan flies by. I also wonder if she even remembers her turn on @josephscrimshaw‘s Obsessed Podcast as Special Agent Nancy Anderson, or if our occasional references to it make her worry about stalkers. (Don’t NextDoor us, Shanan.) 

Special Agent Nancy Anderson’s one-woman show. I am always carrying a watermelon to any Shanan Custer show, so although a surprise solo show was surely a nightmare for her, it was a decided delight for me. Thanks for not making it weird when the four of us in the back row gasped with fannish glee at the big finish. I’d only heard about it from friends and never dreamed I’d live it!

Fourth (or maybe third), was a Special Request from the Menfolk. 

Company: Grand Island Theatre Show: Hamlet, but Hamlet's a Chicken Venue: Minnsky Theatre

Reviewed Aug 05, 2018

Four and a half stars for this. 

I can’t stress how good this was. It obviously could have been a one-joke Fringe nightmare that never advanced its original, absurd concept, but far from it, this is one of the smartest versions of Hamlet itself that I’ve ever seen. 

No fowl puns here. This is wonderfully done on a number of levels. The handful of experimental misses are more than made up for by excellent “straight” performances that let the absurdity speak for itself.

Fifth was another from our “must-see” stable, coming as it does from Ghoulish Delights. 

Company: Ghoulish Delights, LLC

Show: The Screaming Skull

Venue: Rarig Center Thrust

Reviewed Aug 06, 2018

Four stars for this. 

Very interesting to see Eric Webster crush it in a spooky dramatic role! 

Good spookening. The staging (sound effects and lighting) are great (though a downstage cover on the “fireplace” would have minimized its tendency to distract). Webster’s performance is excellent, though as others have commented, it might’ve needed a bit of trimming.

Sixth, another must-see for us. (I have these out of order now, but I’m too lazy to change—this one came AFTER Blood Nocturne and A Justice League of Their Own)

Company: Comedy Suitcase

Show: Slapdash Panic: Comedy Suitcase ended up in the Fringe Festival with 3 weeks notice and no show!

Venue: Strike Theater

Reviewed Aug 07, 2018

Four stars for this. 

What would Fringe be without Joshua English Scrimshaw giving Inner Stage Manager a heart attack? NOTHING, that’s what. 

Why do they hate inner stage manager? Patchwork, as promised, but they, of course, do a lot with a little. Enjoyed the creative recycling (that sounds Minnesota nice, but I mean it), and the peek behind the curtain of their process. The radio play was especially good (sorry/not sorry, Levi). Inner Stage Manager remains deeply skeptical of these two and their dangerous antics. 

Seventh—This was, I think, a rare “cold pick,” but boy howdy are we lucky we did pick it! 

Company: The Winding Sheet Outfit

Show: Blood Nocturne

Venue: Southern Theater

Reviewed Aug 07, 2018

Five stars. I needed more stars for this one. So. many. more. stars. 

The staging of this was just incredible, on top of the content being superb. I would see anything else from this company in a heartbeat. 

Masterfully done. This is a show that’s fantastic in the short format, yet still makes one wish to see it in long form. The performers were amazing, the writing was excellent (and beautifully paced), the mix of narrative, playing with narrative devices, and music was just perfect. A definite must see.

Eighth—again from the stable! Gotta see the Josh Carson stuff. 

Company: Mainly Me Productions

Show: A Justice League of Their Own

Venue: Theatre in the Round

Reviewed Aug 07, 2018

Four and a half stars. 

This show needed many Amens in addition to stars. AMEN. A treat to see Allison Witham here, too! 

Persist! The expected laugh riot from Josh Carson, though this one is a standout, with a concept that holds up well all the way through the end. The cast is great here, too. The only issue is the vocal challenges of Theater in the Round, especially with a joke-packed script and an enthusiastic audience.

Ninth—Old Timey Radio Drama with our favorites? Yes, please. 

Company: Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society

Show: The Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society Versus the Nazis

Venue: Rarig Center Thrust

Reviewed Aug 08, 2018

Four and a half stars. 

Nazi punching: Necessary and cathartic. 

My Bad Guy Has a First Name . . .Two deep-dive gems, executed deftly by an accomplished cast. I love these shows, as a rule, and I particularly liked these two Nazi-smashing pieces for our times. I especially appreciate the inclusion of contextualizing material, even in the short Fringe format.

Tenth—A content-based gamble. 

Company: FredPictures

Show: The Breakfast Club: The Musical!

Venue: Southern Theater

Reviewed Aug 08, 2018

Three stars here. 

This was an endeavor that just kind of flopped for us. I think I probably liked it best out of our group, but that was mostly based on its ambition, rather than its execution. 

Homage bleeding into imitation. There’s obviously a lot of love poured into this, and the cast does a great job of encapsulating their characters. However, this is rather stylistically off-putting. The piped in music just barely supports the singing (and again, the cast deserves a lot of credit for executing as well as they did); the highly repetitive lyrics get into almost baroque opera territory, making for a very odd combination. Although this advertises itself in the program and pre-show as “parody,” it’s more of an abridged version of the screenplay set to some questionable music. What’s enjoyable about it stems from the affection from both the adaptor and the cast.

[adaradin]

Last Fringe show of the year. Thanks, everyone, who supported us! #albahiramiddleeasterndancetheater #dancingwiththeenemy #dance #mnfringe #fringefestival #bellydancejoy #makeup #jewelry #shiny #folkloric #bellydance #ethnicdance