“Art answers the questions our hearts pose — and not always in ways our minds understand.”

It was solo performer Annie Houston who offered up that efficiently lyrical observation at the Warehouse Theater, sometime after 9:30 last night, in the waning hours of this year’s Capital Fringe Festival. Which made that deft little meditation on art and the heart one of the last thoughts I heard at this year’s Fringe.

And that line — from Thicker than Water, the moving autobiographical show Houston created with director Steven Scott Mazzola — made an apt shorthand summary, too, for a festival that served up everything from thrill killers, zombie rockers, and marauding space tortoises to chamber opera, classical dance, and old-school silent clowning.

Served it up to a bigger audience than ever, too. Fringe boss Julianne Brienza reports that this year’s festival moved 21,025 tickets — up a little more than 10 percent from last year, when circa 19,000 butts reportedly found their way into seats at Fringe venues across town.

(Also sold this year: precisely 10,000 units of the Fringe Button You Loved to Hate — about which more later.)

Prize Performances

As for the art? Well, Fringe audiences have spoken, voting for Ethan Now as best drama, the zombie-rock shocker Diamond Dead as best musical, and David Gaines’s sublime 7(x1) Samurai as best solo performance.

More Pick of the Fringe results, which got re-announced Sunday night at the Baldacchino following a sparsely attended Saturday-evening ceremony:

• Best Comedy - Dr. Serenity Hawkfire’s Beyond Being Workshop, a New Age/self-help parody
• Best Dance - The Fiddler Ghost, a folksy Celtic fairytale involving puppets and step dance
• Best Experimental Show - Crashing Home, the jazzy multidisciplinary show from the WEERD Sisters

For best overall show — much to my personal humiliation — Fringe-goers picked Molotov Theater’s messy I’ll-cut-you dramedy The Sticking Place. (So much for, y’know, critical authority.)

Much to the shock of experienced handicappers, Fringe Fanatic honors went not to spreadsheet-and-walking-shoes guru Alan King, but to one Mike Riley, who apparently saw 47 Fringe shows. To which I can say only: You, sir, are a better man than I.

The Director’s Award, bestowed by Fringe staff, went to Sue Jin Song’s rapturously reviewed Children of Medea. That prize — given, Brienza says, to an artist who’s taken artistic risks, found creative marketing strategies, and communicated honestly with the festival and with audience about self and show — comes with free registration for next year’s festival, a free ad in the Washington City Paper, and a year’s membership in the Actors Center.

Bite My Button

Now, about those buttons: If you’ve somehow forgotten, they were an innovation this year — a mandatory innovation, required (even for ticketholders and artists) to gain entry at any Fringe venue.

Not everyone likes change, apparently. Certainly not everyone likes to be charged $5 to experience change: Button-bitching, which got an early tongue-in-cheek start (not least on this blog), turned into a full-fledged phenomenon by the height of Fringe.

And not everyone was mollified by the dining-and-drinking discounts Brienza kept reminding the disgruntled masses about: One ticket-seller at last night’s closing party regaled her table with the tale of a patron who (perhaps under the influence of Weldon’s First Law of Fringegoing*) observed that “Our boys are fighting in Iraq to defend democracy, and you’re telling me I have to buy a button? This is not an option?”

On the other hand: 10,000 buttons sold, Brienza points out, translates to $249.00 — over and above ticket revenue — in the pockets of each and every act that performed in a Fringe-run venue this year. Whether that’ll translate into less bitching next year? Anybody’s guess.

Looking Ahead

Meantime, Brienza and her crew are laying plans — for ongoing monthly Fringe Factory workshops, for a possible Halloween shindig in the still-grubby bowels of Fort Fringe (where the recently signed lease runs through late 2009), and for at least one production in The Shop (the Fringe-built black-box space that will continue to operate behind the Fringe offices at 6th and New York).

Watch for new ideas, new initiatives, even new Fringe board members: a formal vote is pending, but word is that developer and Fringe landlord Doug Jemal has expressed interest in signing on.

We here at Fringe & Purge may be dropping in on those workshops from time to time, so keep an eye out for us. And for the next few days we’ll be adding more photos, courtesy of the indefatigable Paul Gillis and Bob Morrison. (Thanks for helping make us look pretty, guys.)

And of course we’ll be back with you for next year’s festival, which runs July 9 to July 26, 2009. That’s right, another three weekends at Fort Fringe, another 100-plus shows, another crop of guest bloggers.

Better start those spreadsheets now.

*Weldon’s First Law of Fringegoing: “Fringe audiences, on average, have a higher blood-alcohol content than most.” Back to story.

Actually, as I write this, it’s looking more like the Apocalypse.  Monster thunderstorm, lightning over the Baldacchino, etc.

So, we’re winding down, eh?  Which seems like a good time to start asking big-picture questions.
So tell us:

How did Fringe — not the shows, but the festival itself — work for you as an audience member this year? As an artist?

What are your thoughts on the venues? On the schedule?

On the artists who participated, and on those who didn’t?

On the Baldacchino, and the bar staff, and the dreaded Button?

[eureka]
H Street Playhouse

Remaining Performances:

Friday, July 25 @ 11:30 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 3 PM
Sunday, July 27 @ 7 PM

They say: “Albert is so damn frustrated he can’t even talk about it. But he can launch into hilarious feats of slapstick comedy in his bumbling search for peace of mind. Spirituality and old school clowning collide in this unique and explosive solo show.”

Trey’s take: Not sure what I expected, but I sure didn’t expect what I got: Patrick Bussink as a dorky (if impressively flexible) office drone with singularly passive-aggressive relationship with his briefcase. Also a deep yearning for a few minutes to think — the solution to which yearning he imagines he can buy.

It is, as that “can’t even talk” suggests, almost entirely wordless, but like the similarly giddy 7(x1) Samurai it’s chock-full of incident. Nearly unrecognizable in his high-waisted, greasy-haired nerd disguise, the actor — he was the intensely moving Jesus in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot not long ago — knocks himself around, throws his back out, pretzels himself into a sort of aggrieved yogic pose, and generally makes physical-comedy hay, all in the service of a story (and a clearly etched one, too, words or no) about a little guy who discovers too late that what he wants isn’t what he needs.

See it if: You think funny + existential angst = the perfect night out.

Skip it if: Like my seatmate, you’ve never met an actor who could make the silent-clown thing work for you.

One more recommendation. Not a review, because (a) I’m not really a dance critic, and (b) my other half used to perform with this company, so even if I were I’d probably recuse myself.

But if only as one last reminder that this year’s Fringe has been a bit more multidisciplinary than it was in years past, I thought I’d point out what the WashPost has to say about the Tehreema Mitha Dance Company’s contribution to the festival.

I’ve always been impressed by the technique and the focus Tehreema and her disciples exhibit in the more traditional Bharatanatyam repertoire — that’s some heavy-duty stuff — and by the expressive range she finds in both that material and in the classical-contemporary fusion pieces she choreographs.

So check ‘em out, if that’s the sort of thing that appeals to ya. Three shows left: Tonight at 8:30, Saturday at 5, Sunday at 5.

I’ve been planning on writing up an actual reviewlet, but the day has gotten away from me.

So, short version, because they’ve got a perf tonight at 8 (at the Source): It’s worth checking out, especially if you’re into the whole ancient-tales-retold thing.

Some strong movement, some interesting work with shadows and (human-generated) sound, a youngish cast of new faces, and so on.

Adaptation’s OK, too: Nice, incantatory feel to the storytelling. Some of the tellers could maybe use a little more experience with the classics — heightened speech ain’t as easy as it looks, and there’s some furry diction here, the odd bit of tentative delivery there — but on the whole it’s a worthy effort, and smart.

And they’ve got one last performance on Saturday, too.

Photo: Paul Gillis

Prototype 373-G
The Source

Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 26 @ 1:00 PM
Sunday, July 27 @ 4:30 PM

They say: “In Polynesian mythology, when people were first created, they were born hatching out of turtle’s eggs … maybe they were right. Prototype 373-G blends humor and magical realism to tell the story of a woman battling extraterrestrials, a series of odd dreams, and the unpredictability of her own heart.”

Trey’s take: How much nonsensical fun was that?

Be warned: Prototype is less a finished play than an excuse for playing around — if I’ve got the story right, it started when some Arena Stage folk, working on that house’s tepid Christmas Carol 1941, realized that they were having fun, and someone’s uncle had a barn called Fringe, and gee, why don’t we put on a show?

Also it’s an excuse for: an unhinged bit of costume design courtesy of The Crafts Action League, an outfit that apparently builds a lot of gaudy stuff for shops around town. One dream sequence alone (check the photo) features a seaweedy mermaid fantasia, a belly-dancer whose look is distinctly chelonian, and a leafy-greens cocktail number that might have been hallucinated by a crash-dieting drag queen midway through an enforced week of Chop’t Salad.

So, why the lettuce wrap? Well, the redhead there (Tara Giordano as struggling stand-up comic) has been brainwashed by the commanding general of a belligerent race of space turtles (Hugh Nees), who plans to use her as a host mother, and –

See, I don’t really need to tell you more, do I? Turtles like lettuce, and this show features marauding alien turtles strong-arming comely Titian-haired maidens into terrestrial sex slavery: ‘Nuff said, book your tickets, do not pass Go.

A rapacious talent agent (Helen Hedman), an impulsive and ultimately unfaithful fiancé (Tim Getman), a recently lobotomized next-door neighbor (Daniel Eichner), and a rapidly growing Trojan Tortoise all play their parts in a loopy, no-development-is-too-wacky script — which, again assuming I’ve got my post-show chatter right, playwright Benjamin Fainstein whipped up specifically for this here ensemble.

The style is episodic, disjointed, and largely surreal, but it’s not that much work to stay on top of things. And what’s surprising, given the show’s loose and lark-y nature, is how much texture — how many tender, spiky, coarse, sweet, and downright charming moments — that ensemble manages to create.

Director Dan Pruksarnukul (he’s casting wallah at Arena) doubtless shares much of the credit, but here’s the real trick: No matter how mad the material gets, he’s got his actors honestly invested in their characters, and they’re paying attention to — and connecting with — each other every moment they’re onstage together.

See it if: You’re attracted to frivolity for its own sake — or you’re an sucker for tight ensemble work.

Skip it if: Whimsy makes you queasy, and no quantity of stagecraft will settle your stomach.

Photos: Paul Gillis

So apparently there’s a big honkin’ protest going on down at the Studio Theatre, where Jerry Springer: The Opera is running as sorta-kinda part of the Fringe. Apparently some religious folk think it’s blasphemous.

(Got a fuzzy cellphone pic from Scot McKenzie, but can’t put it here for arcane technical reasons.)

Now, honestly, people: Of all the stuff at Fringe, you’re going to take exception to a bona fide box office hit that was old news in London three or four years ago? What is up with that?

I mean, not that I want you to go protest over at H Street, but last night I saw a show in which a guy has a poo in his briefcase.

OK, he mimes having a poo in his briefcase. But still.

More later.

UPDATE: Thursday a.m. - So I ambled by Studio to catch the ruckus before the 9 p.m. Fringe show I was planning to see last night. Protesters were still there. Very disciplined bunch. Odd outfits - blazers, with little red-fabric ceremonial wings attached.

Also banners — which you can see here, being rolled up and put away as God washes out the protest with a Noah-size thunderstorm.

And bagpipes. I was fascinated by the presence of the bagpipes. Apparently it’s not a good protest unless there are bagpipes.

Even before I got down there, theatregirl piped up in the comments, saying that the protest group was American Needs Fatima.

Sorta: Technically, it seems America Needs Fatima would seem to be the name of the protest campaign; the group behind it appears to be the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.

Which may or may not be a wack hard-right Catholic cult. But which certainly, according to its own Web site, runs summer Call to Chivalry camps where “teams of boys [are] pitted against each other in feats of prowess and heroism.”

Also, there seems to be an emphasis on something called “manly piety.” Which, you know, makes a boy like me go all squishy inside.

The American TFP, inevitably, is represented on YouTube, where you can watch an earlier Jerry Springer protest in Cincinnati.

And I must say, based on last night’s jaw-droppingly odd experience, that a good Hail Mary, chanted in a vigorous display of manly piety, makes a better protest refrain than “Hey, hey, ho, ho, [whatever it is] has got to go.”

Before I knew all this, however, I told Studio Theatre boss lady Joy Zinoman — who came over to my spot on the 14th Street sidewalk to share samples of the protesters’ charmingly homophobic leaflets, and to ponder the encoded antifeminism in the “Tradition/Family/Property” slogan on those big red banners — that I suspected she’d arranged the whole business for the sake of publicity.

She was not, it appeared from the expression on her face, particularly amused by this attempt at levity.

So it’s been a while since I did anything other than write up a show, eh? And surely you all, no matter how high-minded your approach to Fringe, expect a certain amount of trash-talking here at Fringe & Purge. 

(I’ve got an excuse, involving my sister, my nephews, and a beach house on the Isle of Palms. Hope y’all had a similarly good week.)

But I’m back in the Fringe groove now, so let’s address that dish deficit. 

Speaking of which, we’ll get all up in Julianne’s business in a minute. But before we throw stones, a note about our own glass house: 

Performance-Us Interruptus - One of Fringe & Purge’s guest bloggers ducked out partway through a show earlier this week, then panned it royally here on the blog. A certain number of the commentariat was outraged — as was one of the show’s cast, who sent me a tart e-mail.

Among the bullet-point complaints (certain paraphrasal liberties have been taken) in that note:

• Ditching mid-show is disrespectful to the cast, the crew, the Fringe Ideal, and anyone who sat dutifully through Hot Feet.
• Other festivals insist that reviewers/judges ”stay until the bitter end of any assigned show — no matter how bad.” 
• Dude complained in his review that the show had no story — but he had left before the story “really had a chance to begin.”
• Y’all should really send somebody else to re-review. And maybe fire the putz.

Now, while we’re sometimes flippant here at Fringe & Purge, we do take this stuff seriously. The City Paper once dismissed a contributing writer who filed a review without telling either her readers or her editor that she’d left the show at intermission. I don’t see why a similar standard ought not to obtain here.

But our contributor did disclose that he’d bailed — disclosed in the review itself, in fact. 

And while I’m open to argument about whether it’s kosher to complain about the weakness of a show’s bones when you haven’t stuck around to assess every last metatarsal, our blogger reports that he stayed for 40 minutes of a show that runs an hour and ten. Which doesn’t strike me as outrageous.

Also: I’m of the belief that respect for the artists or no, it’s within the pale for a critic to leave a show that’s not going well. It’s hard to say when it’s justified, and it’s not something I’d do every week. But bottom line, if you’re convinced that no amount of basting is gonna save a turkey, it’s OK to hit the Eject button. (Not to mix a metaphor, or anything.)

Should our guest blogger not have filed a review at all? Not entirely my call. Blog editor Brian Reed has this to say: 

“I thought it was a very funny and particularly honest review (that he discloses his early departure both earns him all this flack but also espouses a certain integrity), and therefore didn’t worry too much about posting it.  Since then, as you know, several people have responded either with outrage or their own appraisals of the show.”

Indeed: By my estimation, Power House has now gotten more attention on this blog than 9/10ths of the other Fringe shows. And you know what they say about publicity, no-such-thing-as-bad department.

As for the re-reviewing: Without wishing to suggest that the show was owed a second look, I draw your attention to the comments section of the original post. Brett Abelman, who’s one of our other guest bloggers, also took in a performance, and he’s offered up his thoughts in a longish comment.  Which we hope the show’s other partisans will also feel free to do.

One last pair of observations: Dan Owen, the offending guest blogger, strikes me as a smart, funny guy. Works for a big honkin’ international-development organization, has traveled the world, seems like a no-bullshit sort.

But I also know that Shawn Northrip and Shirley Serotsky, the writer and director of Power House, aren’t just f–cking about. They’ve been Fringe heavies since Year One, and between Titus! The Musical, Lunch, The Musical and The Many Adventures of Trixie Tickles, they’ve done their share of entertaining, button-pushing, balls-to-the-wall work.

So I’m inclined to chalk this one up to chacun à son goût – and to point out that taking a chance on shows that may not appeal to your taste is, after all, what Fringe is all about. 

Rehearsalus Interruptus - Heard a hilarious story one night under the Baldacchino: Apparently the Fine Wine Players were rehearsing in a vacant Capitol Hill townhouse, and something about their enthusiasm alarmed the neighbors. Who called the cops. Who — according to the version I heard — arrived with guns drawn, thinking they were responding to a domestic-violence incident.

Fine Wine’s Charlene James-Duguid didn’t mention unholstered weaponry (of any sort) when she called me back to confirm the incident. But she did commend the MPD on their diligence.

And she said that when she explained to the boys in blue that her troops were prepping a show for Fringe, the centurions didn’t miss a beat: “Well, we’ll have to see that,” the officer reportedly said. 

Naked-ness Interruptus - As you may have heard, one early performance of The Naked Party ran a touch long. So long that Fringe staff turned up the house lights and shooed everyone out.

As one Fringe-goer tells us:

“So now you have these actors, on stage, nude. And they immediately break character. The women covered themselves with their hands and then ran for their clothes …. The men stood a little like a “deer in the headlights” …. 

Ironic, that, in a show that uses nudity as a metaphor for vulnerability — and that seems to be at least partly about overcoming shyness.

I got a call that night from an outraged audience member — a DC lawyer friend, whose response was along the lines of: “Dammit, we were just getting to the denouement, and I want to know what happened.” That Fringe-goer, who titled her e-mail “Best Fringe Incident Yet,” alerted CP arts editor Mark Athitakis a couple of days later.

I’d have blogged about all this earlier, but y’know, beach house and all.  

Still, I checked in with Julianne, who pointed out that based on the show’s tech-rehearsal timings, they were on target to run over by about 20 minutes — and that other shows were lined up to load in at that venue.

“Think of the poor venue manager,” Julianne pleaded. “The show after this we would have had to hold, and the one after that. That would have made more people pretty pissed.”

Then she noted that all Fringe fests have similar don’t-blow-your-time-slot rules, chiefly to keep the trains from running completely off the tracks.  And she noted in LARGE letters that that night’s audiences were offered refunds. 

For his part, Naked Party writer-director Jason Schlafstein did a double-back mea culpa with a half twist. 

He and his cast had rehearsed with an invited audience, he said, but never with a real one — and crowd reaction added time. And there was apparently a miscommunication with Fringe: the festival staff had booked x minutes of time, and the Naked partiers were under the impression that they had x-plus-five.

(Forgive the algebra, he was talking fast.)

Schlafstein stresses that he takes full responsibility, that he was mortified, and that he and his gang aren’t sticking any pins in their Julianne doll. 

(Anymore. No, no — I said that, not him.) 

That very night, he says, “I went home and sent out a bunch of cuts to the actors.” Took 10 minutes out of the show. And since then, they’ve been playing to ”pretty much universally positive reviews.” 

And near-sold-out houses, Schlafstein says — so if you’d like to see it, you might want to book your seats now. 

Happy Fringing,

Trey

Overheard at Fort Fringe:

“Not that I’m above picking someone else’s pubes off a urinal, but …”

Wow. So this is still going on, and I’d just like to say: I want some of what he’s smoking.

That is all.

UPDATE, 11:45 p.m. – So just to revisit: I’m not going to write a full review, because I’m not sure quite where to start.  

This was one of the most out-there things I’ve seen yet at Fringe; can’t say it was good, not sure I want to say it was bad, exactly. (It had the distinct whiff of the Radical Faerie about it, and everybody needs a little Faerie dust once in a while.) So let’s leave it at mad — and perhaps spectacularly ill-advised, in a town as buttoned-up as this one. 

Of the 18 audience members who came, 12 of us survived until the end. Which was convenient, because it meant no one was left out when lead performer Huilo Marvavilla produced a dozen yellow roses and went about bestowing them upon the patrons.

The projections were intriguingly psychedelic, the soundscape much the same; the puppets, whether smallish or enormous, were wonderfully well-crafted.

But the puppetry itself was amateurish and unfocused, the dancing likewise, and the whole thing thoroughly incoherent. Act 2, an improvised and largely undecipherable puppet conversation titled “Tea With Duality,” was possibly the single most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever seen on a stage.

Finally, if I were called upon to offer one technical suggestion, it would be this: If you know that, during the course of your trippy hourlong multimedia paean to peace, you will be donning a giant papier-mache puppet-head and dancing about the darkened performance space, you might think twice about building a spider-web of purple yarn throughout said space before the puppet-head dance.

That way, there will be less stumbling.