Why yes: That is a monument in my pocket, and I am happy to see you.

My Fabulous Sex Life
The Shop at Fort Fringe

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 12 at 8:00 p.m.
Thursday, July 16 at 5:15 p.m.
Sunday, July 19 at 9:30 p.m.
Thursday, July 23 at 7:45 p.m.

They say: “Funny. Obscene. Dangerous. Welcome to My Fabulous Sex Life, the story of one gay man’s sexual adventures in DC. Think you know how far you’d go? Think again.”

Trey’s take: “This,” drawls Brent Stansell midway through his jaw-droppingly frank bedroom confessional, “isn’t the first time I’ve tried to get attention.” And you think: Well, duh. (The man’s an actor, after all, and if there’s a closer synonym for “exhibitionist,” I’ve yet to encounter it.)

Like many solo shows, this one’s a a coming-of-age story, and despite its saucy title and its explicit language — no, really, it’s explicit, so don’t say you weren’t warned — it’s also the story of a boy looking for love. That he’s looking for it in what some would call the wrong places (bedrooms, bathrooms, hotel rooms, balconies, the grounds of the Washington Monument) only adds to the tang of an evening that rings truest when it’s most blunt: After a mildly stunned recap of one especially outré encounter, Stansell cops to the shame and the self-loathing that can accompany the memory of such moments, even for a man who’s since come to terms with an exuberant sense of his sexuality. Then he takes his tales one level deeper, daring the audience to measure its own memories and mores against his own — and that’s when what might have been a naughty bit of fluff becomes something more serious, and rather brave.

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“Gee, Martha, these fringe folks sure are friendly.” …

“Why yes, George. They are. They certainly are.”

See that? That word “Free?” That’s the sweetest word in the language, that is. And free is what everything in The Free Store is, all day, all week, all 18 days of the festival.

The Free Store is new this year, part of Capital Fringe’s green commitment — more on which later, time permitting — and it’s all about re-using, recycling, reducing your footprint.

In other words, it’s basically a swap shop. Bring something, take something: books, CDs, even clothes (if they’re not too stanky). Rumor has it there’s a TV in there somewhere.

Oh, where is it? At the corner of 7th Street and Florida New York Ave., NW, which makes it hard to miss. Check it out, and come back to the comments to let us know whether the shopping is any good.

Ran into Julianne on the sidewalk late yesterday — hey, I work in the neighborhood, so it happens — and between distracted comments about six other things, she told me that the Fringe box office has moved $60K worth of advance tickets as of COB Wednesday. That’s twice what they’d sold by the same time last year.

Wednesday, 7 p.m.: The Dizzy Miss Lizzie crew runs tech on The Saints — one of two shows the troupe’s bringing to CapFringe 2009.

Big guns: Robert Cole’s ‘The Thought’ arrives at Fort Fringe.

Ah, ’tis truly the Fringe season: The performances haven’t started yet, but the newest round of Button-bitching has!

Also the griping, especially among the city’s more established actors, about CapFringe’s tight schedules and sometimes improvised technical setups.

(We’re not naming names, and we can’t link it ’cause it’s on a non-public Facebook page. But trust us when we tell you that one performer’s recent status update went like this: “[Name] is still hoping the folks at Fringe will pony up answers to the technical questions they were asked BEFORE Thursday’s 2 hour (yes TWO whole hours, folks) tech [rehearsal].”)

I’m tempted to respond with a big, sarcastic “Waaaaah,” and to point out that as recently as Monday, festival exec-direc Julianne was posting Facebook photos of her crew working sweatily and swiftly to finish half-built venues. I mean, like we (sorta) said last year, it’s Fringe, folks: How they gonna answer a tech question if there’s no tech installed yet?

On the other hand: If I were that actor, with that reputation, doing that punishingly tough show? I might be a little jumpy, too.

So yeah, welcome back, celebrants and critics and carping perfectionists alike, to the mild insanity that is Capital Fringe. The public crazy starts tomorrow, with first-show honors split between repeat-offender Titus X (first produced in D.C. way back in 2002, I think) and Cover Me In Humanness, a brand-new show inspired by a Degas ballerina and a Kevin Bacon movie. (They’re both in tomorrow’s 5 p.m. slot.)

While Julianne & Co have been hoisting the giant sculptures into place — word is that installing some public art might help grease the skids for that keep-the-tent-open-’til 1-a.m. request that’s still pending with the city — we’ve been mucking about behind the scenes here on the blog.

We’ve welcomed some returning guest bloggers and indoctrinated a few new ones into the cult of Fringe & Purge. (Item One in the catechism: Try not to arrive smelling of beer, leave the theater early, and then trash the show — it will annoy the Fringers.)

In a minute: The first of many introductions from the voices you’ll be hearing here at Fringe & Purge this year.  For now: A hat-tip to one of those voices — returning blogger Brett Abelman, who’s done me a solid by putting together a ridiculously comprehensive quick-take on this year’s shows.  In four (!) parts. Starting with a handy seven-part (!!) taxonomy of Fringe Show Types.

(Brett, seriously: You have too much free time.)

Happy Fringing, everybody. See you at the opening-night bash — Thursday night, from 8 until whenever. I’m told there will be banjos.

“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.