If this is your first visit to Fringe & Purge, welcome! If you’re an F&P vet, welcome back! If you stalked us last year, for the love of God, please stop!

“But prithee,” you might ask, “what the hell is Fringe & Purge?” An excerpt from last year’s propaganda:

Want to know what show is hot? Fringe & Purge blog. Want to know what show has the most nudity? Fringe & Purge blog. Want to tap into the opening-night buzz? Fringe & Purge blog. Want to know where the party is? Fringe & Purge blog. Want to know what the hell you did at that party? Fringe & Purge blog.

Go out and fringe. Come here to purge.

So what can you expect from this year’s iteration? Well, if history is any judge….

Last year’s blog featured raves, pans, audience participation, Gonzo criticism, spontaneous prose, porn stars, blood, Socratic dialogues, dramaturgical meditations, eavesdropping, liveblogging, WTF?s, and long comment threads on the subject of nudity. Also, Oxford commas—sorry, house style.

Our review format is the “hip-shot”: off the cuff; breezy; brief. Our audience “interactivity” constitutes populism verging on anarchy: we couldn’t do what we do without your tips, opinions, rumor-mongering, verbal abuse, &c. Blogging’s a contact sport—and after all, we’re still refining our technique.

Like the festival itself, Fringe & Purge has grown up a fair bit. In 2006, Cap Fringe’s inaugural year, this blog ran under the tagline: “Trey Graham Throws Up a Blog About the Capital Fringe Festival.” Trey’s stomach has since settled down, and these days we market our offerings as “daily digests from the Capital Fringe Festival”–a rather more gastronomically salubrious tagline, if you ask me. Also, like most addictive substances, Fringe & Purge can be consumed in any number of ways. These days, we’ve got a twitter account, a newsletter, an RSS feed, &c.

So, yes, as I said: refining our technique.

Stay tuned for the good stuff. We’ve got a stellar cadre of guest-bloggers this year, as well as Trey Graham and Glen Weldon, our resident Fringe codgers gurus. So come early, come often, and brace yourselves for 18 days of…let me see [riffles through dog-eared Fringe program] … ah, yes: “Unjuried, risk-taking, independent performing arts.”