The Capital Fringe Festival takes Mondays off, but the lack of scheduled performances doesn’t leave us wanting for work.

Senior members of the Fringe & Purge Action News and Commentary Squad yesterday convened before a huge fireplace at Fort Fringe to have a red-tinted, measured, nuanced, insightful discussion about theater criticism as it relates to both this year’s festival and the practice at large. Gawk as our very own grapple with such heady concepts as quality copy vs. informative content, the limits of audience participation, and Twitter Etiquette for Critics.  Oh, and how actors sometimes sit on our notebooks.

Fringe artists in the fray included Live Broadcast playwright John William Schiffbauer, Open Hearts writer/performer Miriam Kulick, Good Girls Don’t but Indian Girls Do writer/performer Vijai Nathan, and Cry of the Gods actor/manager Hilary Kascer. We’re grateful for their attendance and for their contributions to a lively, free-flowing discussion.

Behold The Shop, the newest of three stages located inside the Fort Fringe complex. Though fatigued after two sleepless days of prep, producing artistic director Scot McKenzie agreed to talk to us about the theater-in-the-round once used as a storeroom for salsicce.

Shot and edited by Matt Bevilacqua.

Welcome to On the Fringe, Fringe & Purge’s video series in which we visit some of the venues—new and old, air-conditioned and un—-at the  Capital Fringe Festival.

For our inaugural post, we looked at Fort Fringe, the former A.V. Ristorante Italiano at 607 New York Ave. NW, now serving as the festival’s headquarters. While cutting up a red onion, prep cook/bartender/actor Ashley Ivey told us about rehabbing the old, dilapidated kitchen.

In Which Three WCP Theater Critics Set Out To Discuss Matters of Pressing Import, But Get Stuck Bitching About Draconian Late-Seating Policies, Tapped Kegs and The Fact That The Apothecary is HOT AS BALLS.

Glen Weldon: All right, Graham. Klimek.  It’s about time we blew the lid off a subject that THE MAN doesn’t want us to talk about.  A topic TOO HOT for polite discussion.  An issue that cuts to the very heart of the meat of the bone of the gist of Fringe.

Late seating. Comma why Fringe does not permit.

Look: The rest of the year, I loathe latecomers as much as any thinking person. They stumble over you in the brief darkness between scenes 2 and 3, reeking of entitlement and Chardonnay. They are to be mocked, abjured, pelted with fruit.

But something happened this year. Is happening. And it’s particular to Fringe: For the first time in my four years as a theater critic, I’ve been late to two shows in one week.

Neither time was my fault, except in the sense that both were totally my fault. (Graham, you’re a stickler for this; care to share your prim, nanny-like stance with the class?) Nevertheless, I submit that DC’s random! 20! minute! Green Line delays and rush hour gridlock on Mass Ave. played supporting roles.

Last Wednesday, when I sprang out of the unmoving cab four blocks away from the Goethe Institut, ran/hobbled through the broth-like air to arrive at PRECISELY 6:00 ON THE DOT, I was turned aside by the Fringe volunteer at the door.

“We’re closed,” she said.

Perched on my forearm, my falcon Cholmondeley let forth a querulous squawk from beneath his hood; he sensed my surprise.

“I’m …. sorry?” I asked.

“Closed,” she said. “The show’s started. You can go to the box office to get a later ticket, or try to get a refund, if you …”

“My good lady,” I said, tossing my vermilion opera cape over one shoulder with a flourish. “Do you know …. who… I …. am?”

She blinked at me, saying nothing. Clearly my erudition and breeding had dazzled the poor, dull thing.

I rapped the silver handle of my walking stick (an exquisite piece, shaped into the head of a doberman, with eyes of polished onyx) against the table peremptorily.

“Come come,” I said, “I am Glen Weldon. Of the Washington. City. Paper. …’s blog. I am a CRITIC.”

She stared.

“Your petty laws do not apply to one such as I,” I said. Cholmondeley’s feathers ruffled in sympathy. “Now let me in, that’s a good girl, and I shan’t report this affront to various and sundry Fringe board members, with whom I play whist and peasant-chess every fortnight. They will surely dock your pay, insolent wretch.”

“I’m a volunteer, fuckface,” she spat.

The rest of the tale is less interesting, and I refuse to say more on the advice of counsel, but the point is:

Why does Fringe, with its loosey-goosey, unjuried, gleefully slapdash, “Hey Gang, Let’s Put On A Show With Dildoes” vibe, carve out this one area to impose absolute, inviolate, no-fuckin-around rules? Why does Fringe feel it can get away with such a policy, while even DC’s largest houses adopt a sheepish, laissez-faire attitude toward latecomers?

And – really the point – why have so many of us missed shows this year, including (especially) Fischer? Is it the heat? The tourists? The creeping decrepitude of Metro? Fin-de-siecle ennui?

Thoughts?

Trey Graham: Well, first of all, we’re a decade into the siecle, dude. So I’m not sure what you’re still bored about. Also, Julianne is THE WOMAN, which I’d think you’d have noticed, being a perceptive critic and all. Also, I believe that Goethe-Institut takes a hyphen. [EDITOR's NOTE: . . . fuck.]

But I digress.  To be honest — and despite the (purely performative) little Mary Poppins lecture I gave you the other day about how “Early is on time, on time is late, late is unthinkable” — patron lateness isn’t something I’ve been especially prim about since the day Other Half and I arrived at the Kennedy Center several minutes after the start of that Irish-import production of Godot.

Which, yes, we then had to wait for.

The seating break, I mean.

And then — I am not making this up — Other Half’s cellphone rang.

So me, not so much with the stone-throwing anymore. (The glowering in the general direction of the tardy party, yes. I’m only human.)

Aaaaaaanyway, I think I talked to  Julianne about the late-seating thing a few years back, because you know what? Among the unwashed Fringegoers, this is not a new topic for bitching. If I could be bothered to go dig up the post I think I may possibly have done about it in 2000-whatever — unless maybe I expired from hunger while waiting for my turkey burger at the Baldacchino and never wrote said post [EDITOR's NOTE: Verily, that must be what hath occurred.] — I believe we’d find that the answer is: It’s not as strict a policy as you may think.

Consider:

• Most Shows Don’t Really Start On Time. There’s usually a short hold built in. (This is a trade secret; we could tell people, but we’d have to kill them, because then they’d cut it even closer than they do now, the Type A shits who just need to get in that one more world-changing e-mail before they bolt from their Chinatown desks at 7:50 to hop in a cab to get to Studio, you know who I’m talking about.)

• Not All Venues Are Created Equal. You could sneak in at the Baldacchino and not disturb people unduly.  Not so much at the Bedroom or Redrum.  I believe this finds itself expressed in policy: Unless I’m making this up, Julianne told me that officially, the rule is no late seating, but unofficially, the venue manager is allowed a little wiggle room.  (So I’m just assuming that you pissed off the nice lady at the Goethe-Institut there, Cholmondeley.)

• I Don’t Really Have a Third Point Here. But two bullets looked kinda odd, so.

What I would really like to know is, what is the policy about early departure?  Because the other night? When we were at Superheroes Who Are Super, and the show was really really bad and the Apothecary was roughly the temperature of a Tandoori oven? I wanted to leave midway through Act 1, but I’d have had to walk across the stage. I think you should be able to pull a cord, like on a Metrobus, and they should have to stop and let you out at the corner of the next scene.

Klimek, what say you?

Chris Klimek: Um . . . forty-two? Sorry, what were you fellows talking about? Just got here.

Yeah, sorry G-Weld, but I kind of have to concur with Trey that the you-shall-not-pass may in fact have been more precipitated by your demeanor upon approach than by Brienzanian Doctrine. My other half’s show is, as you know, at the grrrrr-tah insta-whatever gallery, a venue that, like the Baldacchino, may be discreetly infiltrated after the performance has begun. But I don’t think that’s why the venue manager let me up there when I was late — twice! I think she was being nice in response to nice. Also, I didn’t bring my falcon, Ffolkes.

I suspect the no official no-late-seating-anywhere-ever policy is there at least in part for ease of wrangling the staff, comprised largely of volunteers like the one you subjected to so orotund, and yet so impotent, a rebuke. Late-seating is a thing. It needs must be managed. The conductors thereof must be trained, because the late-sat really must be trained — trained, nay complelled to move with more rapidity and prudence (my beloved former twin falcons, both now deceased) than would be required had they arrived on time.

And it is worse this year.  A lot. Promptness has always been an adversary of mine, but there are external factors. Metro’s decline in the last year has been palpable.

Glen Weldon: Stuff and nonsense. I was (despite what my Unsolved Mysteries-caliber reenactment above would have you believe) my usual affable self. Affable as fuck. And still I got shut down. With extreme prejudice.

Maybe she just didn’t like my face.  I have been told it’s less than likable.

Just two other points, both for Graham:  1. I, of course, go by the Mayan calendar, and by its reckoning our siecle is just a couple of years away from a big, explody fin, so shut it; and 2. Hyphen, schmyphen: I feel like we’re meeting the Goethe folks more than halfway already, by rolling over on their quaint, Olde Worlde, vowelist approach to spelling.  (“Institut”, really?  How cut.)

Oh, and: Your aphorism be damned: “On time” is and forever shall be ON TIME. Because that’s how language works.

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.

Cheers!

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version.

In any case, here are some photos.  The highly-hyped Baldacchino (a colorful reinterpretation of fixtures like this one at the Vatican): 

And the inside:

And the retro-red box office:

And the rat traps, all in a row: 

The answer, emphatically, is NO! No, no, no.

There is indeed a party, however–tonight, 9 PM, Fort Fringe, 607 New York Ave NW–and it’s free as the wind is windy.

But before the revelry begins, what show(s) are you going to see tonight? Any suggestions?

The phone is ringing again, here comes Julianne.  Someone else offers to get it, but she won’t have any of it.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it, I’m on a roll.”

When she isn’t on the phone–mostly answering inane questions about tickets from chaperones of very large groups of Christian children and the like–Julianne breaks various bits of exciting news to her staff as it comes in on her computer.

For example, lots of press for the Fringe today (Express, Playbill, and City Paper for starters).

And then there’s the DC Theatre Yahoo group, whose moderators have had to limit the number of posts per Fringe production because they were too inundated with the stuff.

“I think that’s great–they have to make a policy because of us!” Julianne laughs.  ”That’s so cool!”

She says that for every email she reads, she gets about 4 more in her inbox.  I’m going to email her a link to this blog post right now from across the room, just to be annoying.  And supportive. Annoying and supportive.

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version of this video.