Capital Fringe: Tickets to an Event

Tickets to an Event –the Fringe is on the Streets of DC
– by Graham Pilato –

Chinatown, H and 7th Streets, NW DC, late afternoon on a weekend.

Man walks in the city. Man crosses the street. He sees a woman carrying flower petals in a basket like she’s bearing them to a wedding. This is just out of the corner of his eye.

Man’s got a hankering for a movie with explosions — maybe a drink, too. He’s maybe a dad. He’s maybe married. Maybe divorced. Maybe he’s gay. Maybe he really wants to see a wedding.

Maybe he’s really a woman.

All right.

Woman sees a woman carrying flowers like she’s bearing them to a wedding.

And a musician — playing a wedding march — there, on the corner.

And there — look! That’s a couple — is that a man and a woman? A man and another man? A man and another woman?One’s wearing a veil. They’re walking together now — in a hurry! Right out into the middle of the intersection they go…

Man/Woman reaches the end of the crosswalk. There’s another man — very excited, this one — here, holding a sign that says “Borealis Theatre”.  And then, there… there’s another sign being held by a very excited young person out there in the intersection — with an — ordained, surely — person holding the sudden ceremony:  “…in this, the holiest intersection in the city…”

And then… Man/Woman considers walking on to the movie/drink/explosions, but there seems to have been a wedding just performed here.

The entire intersection erupts in cheers. Cars honk in the wedding march. Arms wave joyously. People scream various things. Traffic crosses when the lights change. Nothing was ordinary was halted, but life just changed.

Our witness continues on after a moment. Maybe less explosions are needed.

This happened on April 29th, 2012 from 4 pm to 6 pm.

Anyone can get married. Anyone. But it’s only in the time it takes to cross the crosswalk.

Our weddings are spiritually binding, not legally binding. And we’re free. Crosswalk Weddings was our first street performance event, but this summer at the Capital Fringe Theatre Festival, we are bringing five new happenings over the course of twelve major street events.

Borealis Theatre provides atmospheres and environments for happenings on the street — and on stages. We allow and encourage interaction, looking for a group catharsis of visionary shared play and wonder to occur.

We’re bringing Crosswalk Weddings back this summer to the Fringe Festival on July 13th and 14th.

And that’s just the first weekend of Fringe. We will be performing Life Size Rock Paper Scissors: We Play, You Play in and around Mount Vernon Square on the second weekend of Fringe, July 20th and 21st.

The third weekend’s events are entirely to be announced via our flashnotices online.

Presented as part of the 2013 Capital Fringe Festival, a program of the Washington, D.C. non-profit Capital Fringe

 

 

— Graham Pilato is a Baltimore/Washington D.C. area actor now pursuing his MFA in Acting at Catholic University of America, and he is Artistic Director of Borealis Theatre. —
Part of Fringe Peeks, our “in their own words” series