Maybe I'm just exceptionally lucky.
If the first five shows I've seen from this year's Hollywood Fringe crop are any indication, the festival has hit it's stride.
From experimental pieces to full on rock musicals, the work that was already on display during preview weekend was proof that the members of the Fringe community have grown their skill set year over year.
Two big piece of news out of our friends the Hollywood Fringe Festival this week. The first is the arrival of the Hollywood Fringe Festival mobile app in the Apple and Google Play stores.
Part of the reason we cover the Hollywood Fringe Festival is for the way that the organization embodies the spirit of innovation in the arts. Not just in the form of the performances, but in the way that the organization itself thinks.
Not only was last night’s first Fringe Town Hall of the year live-tweeted by the festival’s social media manager but there was some serious back-channel talk going on in the flesh and blood audience on Twitter. As the night zoomed along and festival founder Ben Hill gave the newbie orientation as quickly as possible the #ShitBenHillSays hashtag turned up on Twitter thanks to TheatreUnleashed.
“That made sense in some dimension.” – @ben_hill #ShitBenHillSays #HFF13
— Noah J Nelson (@areyouthatguy) January 18, 2013
Real quotes from Hill, taken out of context, in real time.
By morning there was a MemeGenerator ready to go. [UPDATE: The memegenerator is the work of Fringe social media manager Rachel Stoll Armstrong (@rachelstoll).]
None of this is earth-shaking, but HFF makes a good case study of what a modern arts festival can look like in our uber-connected world. It felt more like I was back at a transmedia conference than a theatre meet-up. That’s a GOOD thing, mind you.
Let’s get into the swing of things, shall we? January is already running at full steam thanks to CES in Las Vegas. There’s only like 8 billion products and start-ups being launched over the next few days.
Vegas is also where the IAWTV– that’s the International Academy of Web Television– Awards are going to be handed out for last year’s achievements in the field of web series.
If only I was there to cover that– le sigh– but wait! I do have a solution! More after the jump.
The Hollywood Fringe Festival has announced that they will expand the 2013 edition of the festival by an entire week.
After two years of growing an audience and a vibrant and eclectic community of producers the festival is looking to expand it’s footprint on LA’s theatre scene. The fest will fun from June 13th-30th 2013.
Longer runs will be great for successful shows. It will also mean a greater risk for those productions that don’t quite manage to get their act together. Luckily the trend at the Fringe for the past two years has felt like the winners outnumber the “honorable mentions”. So much so that I’m still smarting from missing certain shows in 2011. (more…)
Does it have to be over?
The Hollywood Fringe Festival wrapped up last night with closing ceremonies (read: live band karaoke) and the annual Top of the Fringe awards affectionately known as the Freaks. It was a solid year for the Fringe, and a sign that the LA indie theatre community is really coming into its own.
But you want to know the winners, right? Here’s the list of winners, culled from the @HollywoodFringe twitter account (methinks some Fringers may be too hung over to crank out a press release yet this morning). The complete list of nominees follows.
THE WINNERS
Top of the Fringe: Lost Moon Radio Episode 12 (hear our interview with producer Monica Miklas)
Best of Theatre: Red Bastard
Best International Show: Richard Parker
World Premiere: Rise (read our review)
One Person Show: Texas Loves Lyla!
Musical and Opera: Doomsday Cabaret (hear our interview with writer Michael Fisher)
Comedy: Lost Moon Radio Episode 12
Cabaret and Variety: Carpe Noctem (read our review)
Dance and Physical Theatre: Four Clowns present That Beautiful Laugh (read our review)
COMPLETE NOMINEES LIST
Top of the Fringe
Button Wagon
DOOMSDAY CABARET! A Rock Musical of Apocalyptic Proportions
Lost Moon Radio Episode 12
Red Bastard
RISE
International Award
Anaconda
CARPE NOCTEM
Diary of a Sociopathic Freakazoid
Richard Parker
The SECRET of SHERLOCK HOLMES
Fringe First (World Premiere)
DOOMSDAY CABARET! A Rock Musical of Apocalyptic Proportions
Gentle Passage
Lost Moon Radio Episode 12
RISE
Round Rock
One Person Show
Confessions of a Cat Lady (with a side of crazy!)
Leprechauns & Lies
TEXAS LOVES LYLA!
This Vicious Minute
VOICES IN MY HEAD: A LIFE
Theatre
D is for Dog
Flesh Eating Tiger
Jennifer Aniston Stole My Life
Red Bastard
RISE
Tape
The Lights Are Off
Musicals & Operas
30 Minute Musicals: SHOWGIRLS & JURASSIC PARK
DOOMSDAY CABARET! A Rock Musical of Apocalyptic Proportions
LOLPERA
On the Rag to Riches
The Last Five Years
Comedy
eggshell
Four Clowns
Here’s the Thing
Lost Moon Radio Episode 12
TEXAS LOVES LYLA!
Cabaret & Variety
CARPE NOCTEM
Clowns, Goddesses & Tough Guys
Filthy Liars: A Funny Magic Show
I Do Card Tricks And I’m Funny
Texts from my Exes: A Musical Tribute
Dance & Physical Theatre
4 Clowns presents That Beautiful Laugh
Before The Red Trees Come
Button Wagon
Tearing the World Apart
The Love Potion
UPDATE: fixed the typo on Carpe Noctem.
Continuing our coverage of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
Zoë Chao and William Patrick Riley give bravura performances in Making Love Over There, a series of vignettes on the the theme of Love. Writer-Director Tom Dugdale takes his cast and the audience on a hyper-kinetic journey that– while lacking in any real narrative structure– reaches emotional heights with the skill of a well made mix-tape. The songs may not even all be in the same language, but they sure as hell feel right.
The inherent theatricality of the show is apparent from the moment the audience steps into the small Asylum Lab space, with Chao and Riley shivering on stage in layers of winter clothes that are better suited to a Russian Arctic outpost than a performance space in the heart of Hollywood. A super-title with the legend “PROLOUGE” projected on black scrim at the top of the back wall of the stage.
When the house lights are finally down the pair ramp up their shivering until they erupt with passion, clothes flying in a desperate comic quest for connection. It’s a perfect theatre moment, perfectly performed.
The tone of the performances trend toward the theatrical, even when a given scene might be better suited by a more naturalistic approach. However Dugdale calls upon his actors to play through a wide swath of styles and at every juncture the duo is up to the task. The only time when the hour drags is during a few extended costume changes, but those pauses act more as tension builders than as punctures in pacing. There is almost a palpable desire on the part of the audience to see what comes next.
No one in either the program of the press notes takes credit for the lighting design, which is a shame as this is the most sculpted and precise use of that particular theatrical technology I’ve seen at the Fringe this year outside of the shadow-play in Four Clowns: That Beautiful Laugh. The Lonesome No More! Theatre is bringing their A-game to this production. Thematically driven plays can drag if they become too monotone or flounder if they become too schizophrenic as they shift gears. Dugdale and company pilot through that particular Scylla and Charybdis with masterful skill, the siren song of mad love drawing players and audience on ever forward.
I do wish, slightly, that Dugdale had brought a bit more of a meta-narrative structure to the proceedings. Constructing a concept album instead of just a mix-tape. Yet as an investment pure theatrical experience the moment to moment joy I derived from Making Love Over There was time paid back with ample interest.
Making Love Over There will play again at the Asylum Lab 6320 Santa Monica Blvd tonight at 11:30PM and Saturday June 23rd at 8:30 as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
Continuing our coverage of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
You don’t have to be a huge fan of Anton Chekhov, the legendary Russian playwright to get a lot out of the Will Play For Food theatre group’s production of Steven Dietz’s The Nina Variations. Taking the final scene between the characters of Nina and Treplev from Chekhov’s The Seagull as it’s inspiration, the play flips through forty-odd quick explorations of the dynamic between the two, spinning out sprightly alternate realities and melancholic meditations on the themes of the classic. None of which, in director Scott Marden’s brisk and balanced production, requires being familiar with a single line of the original text.
Marden takes Dietz’s original and adds a twist of his own: three sets of Nina’s and Treplev’s. This modification allows the piece to break well past the limitations of a dramaturgical experiment and delve into the archetypal and psychological roots within the character’s relationships in a way that becomes as much a visual element as it is a factor of language. While those who are familiar with the play will experience this production as an effective exegesis of the source material, those who come in on shakier ground vis-a-vis Russian literature will find the whole of the action ememnetly followable thanks to Marden’s deft staging.
It is something of a feat to see a company’s inaugural production, Will Play For Food is a gathering of young actors, come together so well. Despite the headiness of the language and the complexity of some of the themes this show just moves in it’s brisk hour. The stage is set simply, with a writing desk and chair at center and two sets of chairs on either side of the stage. The alternate Nina’s and Treplev’s are often stationed in these chairs, watching intently as their other versions play out a variation, bearing witness to what might have been,
Yet what makes this play worth seeing, far beyond it’s value as an investigation of a classic, is the vigorous way it explores the liminal spaces of love that can exist between two souls. By casting multiple actors into the roles of these not-quite-lovers, Marden reveals the multiple-nature of our own personalities. A reminder that we are not fixed points in space, but relative phenomenon dependent on the moods and motion of others, even as we retain an essential core.
It’s a fine Fringe debut for Marden, his producing partner Shashona Brooks and Will Play For Food. Let’s hope there’s more from them both in the near future.
The Nina Variations plays again June 21st, 23rd, and 24th as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
We’re podcasting almost-live from the Hollywood Fringe Festival!
Lost Moon Radio, the sketch comedy and music juggernaut, is one of the annual favorites at the Hollywood Fringe and this year is no different. Producer Monica Miklas took time with us at Fringe Central Station to talk about the troupe’s best year yet, how they keep the comedy and music machine running, and what Fringe means for her and the Lost Moon Radio crew.
Catch all of our coverage of the HFF right here or subscribe to the Turnstyle News Podcast, on iTunes or RSS to get all the podcast episodes from this year’s fest.
Image: Lost Moon Radio
We’re podcasting almost-live from the Hollywood Fringe Festival!
Doomsday Cabaret writer and cast member Michael Shaw Fisher and podcast host Noah Nelson go way, way back to the prehistoric age. It’s a little know fact that they were both present when the Maya calendar that set December 21st, 2012 as the date for the end of the world was first unveiled. They also possesses the secret knowledge that it is, in fact, an elaborate math joke, but that’s neither here nor there. Mr. Fisher talks with Mr. Nelson about his new rock musical of apocalyptic proportions, the growth of the Hollywood Fringe and more from Fringe Central Station.
Catch all of our coverage of the HFF right here or subscribe to the Turnstyle News Podcast, on iTunes or RSS to get all the podcast episodes from this year’s fest.
