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Do I get annoyed too easily? A pet peeve of mine is when people are surprised it’s cold in the winter or grossly hot in the summer here in New York. Another one is the ole “Is it (insert month/day/year here) already?” Yes, you nimrod, time moves forward, see? Yet here I am, on June 20, 2007, thinking, “Holy crap! It’s only a month away from the 2nd Annual Capital Fringe Festival?” It seemed like only yesterday I was driving back to NYC after closing my show in The District to pick up a friend for the second leg of my “Fringe Fest Mini-Tour 2006.” But, truly, who am I kidding? I barely took a month off after returning from tour last year to commence the process again: deciding which Fringes, filling out applications, rewrites, gathering funds, mailings, designing postcards, more rewrites, finding a production team, sending funding letters, finding housing, renting a car, more rewrites, taking photos, photoshopping photos, building the set, sewing the costumes, more rewrites, and, oh yeah… rehearsal. It’s exhausting. I know what I need (aside from about a full week of sleep beginning and ending with a 90 minute massage): an assistant. But as a solo performance actress who is still earning her living shlepping food to the masses and paying for such a tour out of her own pocket (with the much-appreciated exception of the Puffin Foundation Grant I received and all the individual donations this year), having an assistant seems like a costly luxury. Maybe NYU has a department from which I can extract an intern?

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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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What an experience to dance on the fringe of the Fringe! Although the Washington Post Weekend classified us in the “Lunatic Fringe” group (Friday, July 21, 2006), we felt quite normal and at home performing on the street. Crowds were friendly, appreciative and generous (yes, we pass the hat).

Some things we learned:

1) It works to open with the same dance all the time: Theme and Variations on Respect. It is a deconstruction of a hip hop piece set to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto. (?!) It is unique, a crowd pleaser and we love to dance it.

2) Some sites are better than others. Our site locaitons have changed as we have figured out what works, where the street traffic is (affected by Fringe activities) and is not. Check out our web site or the updated schedule on http:\\www.capfringe.org or www.theatermania.org.

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I can’t even begin to express all of the thoughts which are going through my mind right now. So I will keep this brief and to the point. I learned of Fringe last April when I returned to DC from a tour. With a solid year to work with, I began to plan the risky task of writing and producing a one-man show.

As fate would have it, I finally hashed out ideas and wrote the first scene of my piece three months before opening night. Without a staged reading, financial support, or even a finished script mid-rehearsals, this expected one-man cabaret soon transformed into a 12-person musical-play!

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By: Ronnie Ruff 

Bartleby — Journeymen Theater

Bartleby, Bartleby what’s up with that word prefer? How about: “I choose not to” or “I don’t wanna?” “Ain’t going to do it” or “I think not?” Actually this is one funny play, this Bartleby.  Journeymen Theater has two more shows I believe for their Fringe Festival selection. Written by Melanie Dale and adapted from the Herman Melville short story Bartleby the Scrivener from 1853 — this production is quite a piece of work, a credit to the direction of Deborah Kirby and Ken Elston. Chairs everywhere make up both the set and the workload for the wonderful workers of Bartleby’s new office. An office of unique personalities some more developed than others reacts to and attacks their new officemate fresh from his previous stint at the Dead Letter Office (of R.E.M fame?), only Bartleby ain’t down with it. So what does he do? You will have to see it and quick.

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