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Fringe Comments- By Joel Markowitz Musical Podcaster/Theatre Schmoozer

My hats off to all the volunteers and the administration who pulled the Fringe Festival off. Alot of people worked very hard to make this a success. It will be interesting to see what the final ticket sales were, but most of the shows I attended were near capacity. A special thanks to the box office workers who had enormous patience.

Another special thanks to all the playwrights, actors, directors, techies, etc. who invited me to see their shows and gave me those wonderful comps. I was treated very well by all of you, and I thank you for your generosity. It was a personal pleasure to schmooze with many of the artists during the happy hours and parties before and during the festival, and at DCTR’s podcast recording sessions at The Warehouse. Your spirit and dedication was and still is infectious.

And a special thank you to the muffin maker at Warehouse. Your muffins are the best, especially the vegan ones. I’ve worked very hard on the treadmill this weekend trying to burn off those muffins I devoured.

The only two suggestions I have for the next Fringe Festival, is to hold it in the fall when it’s cooler, and to allow people who are waiting in line to get into a “sold out show.”

Sell standing room ticket(s), at a reduced rate, for all the shows, and if there are empty seats because of no-shows, the standees can then fill up the empty seats. I’ve been running a social group for 16 years, and my first obligation is to fill up the empty seats and to ensure that the cast is performing to a full house. I hated seeing people standing out in the sweltering heat, and not being allowed to fill up those empty seats.

Again, congrats to a job well done. My life is richer because of my Fringe experiences.

Joel Markowitz

Lorraine Treanor our Director of Marketing had these thoughts about our first Fringe

Hats off to the organizers of Capital Fringe for proving that Washington has a huge hunger for Fringe. As a producer (of Mamas, DOn’t Let Your Cowboys Grow Up to Be Actors) I attended the first Fringe meeting last summer where we heard the hopes and dreams of organizers Julianne Brienza and Damian Sinclair. One hundred productions. Inside and outside new and customary venues all around Penn Quarter. In July.

But - Washington is a conservative town! Would audiences stay aware in droves? Would artists putting not only their creative spirits on the line but some hard earned cash as well, see it all crash and burn? Everyone took their chances and with one collective roll of the dice, by January we had a festival lineup of 97 productions.

As we all know by now, the Capital Fringe Festival was a huge success. Show after show sold out. Fringe frenzy set in - people lined up at the Festival box office, saw their favorite shows had sold out and laid their money down for other shows - seeing 2 or 3 shows in one day, even those late night shows.

As a member of DCTR, I recorded the pre-show podcasts. I saw performers, many working on their own without the net of a theatre company, develop original and, by all accounts, audience-pleasing material. Because the festival was self-produced, every performer got a taste of what marketing means; creating websites and audio promos, sending out press releases, and squeezing in time to create, print and hand out postcards in between rehearsals.

Every actor hopes to make a living in theater. Most do not. But once festival receipts are tallied and checks remitted, many actors and producers just might be receiving one of their best paychecks of the year.

I loved how a fringe community formed over those 11 days; in the easy atmosphere of the Warehouse Bar, strangers became friends whether they had walked in as performers, audience members reviewers or crew.

Looking ahead, I hope that with Fringe II will make a bigger visual impact around town - street banners, bus ads, and maybe even pull off the opening day parade that had to be set aside this year. Daytime street and lunch time events are being talked about. It will be bigger. It will be better. It’s in the works even as you read this.

Lorraine Treanor

Senior Reviewer Tim Treanor had these thoughts about our first Fringe

The Fringe itself was an unalloyed success. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen Washington area theater do. What it shows is that there is immense talent waiting to get out and express itself. Most of the Fringe stars were folks I had never seen on stage or writers I had never seen produced. The Fringe gave them an opportunity to explode out of whatever limitations were keeping them off stage and into public consciousness, to the benefit of public consciousness.

The most important lesson is one in theater economics. I saw thirteen shows, and ten of them were sold out or nearly sold out. This is immensely informative to small companies with revenue problems. If I was running one, I would immediately grab some of the hot shows (particularly the one-actor shows, which obviously have minimal operations costs) and put them in my theater on dark weekends, splitting the take 50-50. The $15 admission price worked for the Fringe, too, and may be informative for theaters throughout Washington. It may be time for theaters to rethink the supply-demand curve; in Washington, supply of fine professional theater seems to exceed demand, and that may have to impact prices.

I think that Fringe management was smart not to impose content restrictions in an effort to make the Fringe far out. The fact of the matter is that audience defines the sort of theater we’re going to have here. Washington is a culturally conservative community, and it is unlikely that the eccentric productions that make it big in New York or Chicago (Manson! the Musical! was one of my favorites there) are going to find a home here, even on the Fringe. Don’t push the issue, I say. Let the artists and the audience collaborate to find out how experimental they want to get.

Tim Treanor

By: Joel Markowitz

Footloose — Toby’s Baltimore

Today, eight friends, including myself, attended the matinée of the musical Footloose at the new Toby’s Baltimore. The show has been receiving raves from local critics, so we had to go there to see if the critics were right and, most important, we wanted to experience the new venue. The new Toby’s Baltimore is an easy drive-right up 95. You get off at Exit 57, make a turn and you are there -in the Best Western Hotel. You take the elevator up and when the door opens, the Toby’s homey feeling envelopes you. Today, when I was at the box office, Toby Orenstein herself appeared, and we began schmoozing. She told me she liked the interview/podcast I recorded with her last month. I felt a long sigh of relief. I don’t think I could handle that Toby’s face she gives you if she’s not happy. You can listen to my interview with Toby Orenstein

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 Joel interviews Footloose: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (141)

It’s been a wild ride producing seven different pieces in 5 different Fringe slots. Exciting and insane and amazing. It’s hitting me that I myself perform tomorrow and then again on Sunday with a completely different piece. Going over my Molly project has been incredible. It’s been seven years of research and debate and four plays written. I’ve been heckled, scoffed at, and called “clever” by an Irishmen. I’ve broken into abandoned buildings, become obsessed with cemeteries, and attempted bizarre late night exorcisms. I’ve stayed in many a hotel room, eaten perogies, and taken private dungeon tours. A woman possessed, perhaps obsessed. The only thing I haven’t toured is the Yeungling factory…driven by it a lot. Each coal town had it’s own brewery. Until prohibition. But Yeungling bottled water then. So, they are the only ones that still stand.

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I guess there was a nasty arguement that turned into a near brawl at my last show on Tuesday. I am happy to announce that we were the first show at the Fringe where security had to be called. What great publicity! If only it had happened at my first show, I could have used it. We were sold out and some guy who had already attended once wanted to bring his friends. The festival is strict about not letting people in after the seats have sold and this guy went off the deep end. I was filled in on all the great details after the show was over. I was wondering why my stage manager looked so ruffled at the two minute call. Now it all makes sense.

Two great shows I saw yesterday- NORMAL-C and MAY 39TH. My wife and I thought they were both great. CONFESSIONS OF AN INVISIBLE WOMAN was also outstanding but like mine, the show has finished

I got a lovely review from Tim Treanor at DCTheatreReviews.com

Thank you thank you thank you!
(And we now have fans! The kind that reduce the heat in the environmental theatre; I think we might actually have audience members who are fans, too!
Yay)

Have been enjoying shows and classes etc. at festival, especially Leigh Smiley’s Linklater workshop, and looking forward to seeing her show as well as attending monolog writing workshop tonight. Also can’t wait to see Prufrock tonight and my venue-mate Courtney “Normal-C” McLean’s rockin gig in the Screening Room whee!

Thanks for all the great support and to all who have seen and/or are coming to see “In Pursuit of the English Rose”!

xxx
~~Hilary

The National Theatre presented CIRCUS OF THE MIND: ALAIN NU on the opening weekend of the Festival. Alain is a young mentalist from nearby Maryland who has performed in Las Vegas, on the Learning Channel, in Atlantic City, and on our SATURDAY MORNING AT THE NATIONAL and MONDAY NIGHT AT THE NATIONAL programs. He reads minds and bends spoons, and does other mind-boggling demonstrations. I saw his show three times and I have no plausible explanation for how he does all this.

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Now That the (Saw)dust Has Settled

Wow, so, we’re done. The last five days were kind of a blur, exacerbated by the head cold I came down with on Sunday. Anything stupid I said or did in the past four days I’m blaming on the cold medicine. Or maybe it was the grand marnier shots. Or maybe it was the cold medicine mixed with the grand marnier shots. Anyway…

Let the world resound with a big old “I told you so”. That could come from any of the fringe festival folk to whom I said, “But do you really think DC can sustain such a big festival?” From the looks of it, it can and will. No one can explain the mechanics of “buzz” (actually I guess that guy who wrote the Tipping Point did, but I never read it) but to be on the positive end of this phenomenon was an incredible thing. I’ve worked on so many shows that failed to generate the audiences I’d hoped for - what a thrill to have every evening show over-sold out. I mean - someone posted an ad looking for tickets to LUNCH on Craigslist. Unbelievable.

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