…and a long trip it’s been, too – not least having to once again traverse the purgatorial wasteland that is Ohio.
Pulling out of Virginia, I found myself reflecting on my Fringe experience. Frustrating, yes, but not just because I lost a few hundred dollars – I’m confident that I’ll be able to earn it back in Minnesota – but because I’m really not sure what else I could have done. I was never able to find the mechanism to let me into the crowd. And though I didn’t have to cancel a show – to date Maximum Verbosity has only ever cancelled once – it was a close thing.
I am, perversely, relieved to see the other touring artists struggling. The question of whether or not this particular show is a failure will have to wait until further down the line. (Although I note, with a grimace, that my brilliant marketing strategy consisted of taking one genre that everybody hates – Arthurian legend – and stapling it to another genre that everybody hates – military drama.)
--
There is, apparently, a Green Lantern Road located somewhere in Virginia. This knowledge makes me happy, and I choose to share it with you.
--
Stopped for gas part way through Ohio, and stopped into the station to see if they had any CDs for sale (seeing as I’ve burned through The Hobbit, A Wizard of Earthsea, two separate recordings of Le Morte D’Arthur, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Jarhead, and a solid chunk of Dante’s Divine Comedy). They did – two shelves full of country music and Hannah Montana CDs. (I wonder how many of the latter are being picked up by truckers on their way through?) Audiobooks consisted of memoirs by Ollie North and John McCain.
This was in a gas station attached to a Country Pride restaurant. Driving away, I passed two more restaurants with “country” in the title. Then I drove past three dudes on horseback. Man, I assumed I’d have to be at least two states south to start encountering this stuff.
Rifled through my pile of CDs, and contented myself with some bardic tales from the Mabinogion. Listening to them, I found myself reflecting on the tradition of bard and skald – on the fact that there were once storytellers who traveled from place to place, being offered food and lodging in exchange for both their performances – tales of wonder – and their gossip about the bizarre fashions and customs of the various lands that they’d traveled through. Which really isn’t all that different from what the artists on the Fringe circuit do now, I suppose, or the vaudeville entertainers who preceded us. The model’s slightly different, due to the fact that we rely more on a money economy than a barter economy, but the principle is basically the same.
In one respect, that kind of continuity is comforting, with all of the doomsayers who are constantly clamoring that “theatre is dying” – no, it’s not; even if the economy completely tanks, there’ll still be plenty of people struggling to do this for no kind of reward at all. It’s one of the peculiarities of our species: that we have this compulsion to write poems or sing songs or tell jokes.
(Of course, theatre as a viable economic specialization may well be dying, so that’s cold comfort for those of us trying to make this our profession.)
Also found myself listening to the Rockstar CDs (fifteen bucks for a two-CD set! How are people not buying these?) and, aside from experiencing my usual amazement at the fact that I get to work with these people, was particularly impressed, this time around, with Allegra’s piece, and particularly the craftsmanship of it – I see her perform frequently enough that I’ve come to take that for granted. It’s one of her usual meandering road-trip stories, beginning with her cousin’s eulogy and drifting through seemingly unrelated episodes before elegantly tying them back together. Her theme this time? About how the journey is of at least equal importance to the destination.
When I first started planning this trip, I had a number of people express concern, and not without reason – I don’t have a great driving record (God, I fit every awful Asian stereotype on that account), I get panic attacks in traffic, I’m notoriously absent-minded – but even now I find myself regretting the fact that I’ll be flying the second half of this trip. The talk of the romance of the open road isn’t all bullshit, and while many of the trade-offs are painful – the complete lack of economic stability, my poor earning power, the complete accountability for my actions, the dependence on so many factors beyond my control – still. I’m not punching in somewhere at nine o’clock. I don’t have a foreman standing over me. And while it produces a lot of misery, it’s worth remembering that sometimes – liberty can be sweet.
Along the way, I eventually stopped at a station with a slightly wider range of options. Rifling through their bargain bin, I walked out with a collection of old bluegrass hits and – wince – Andrew Lloyd Weber. (I know, I know, I just lost any Fringe cred I might have had, but I need to stay awake, and that means something I can sing along to, and thanks to my sisters I know the lyrics to damn near every Weber song ever written.)
--
Stopped at a Long John Silver’s in Missouri. I haven’t eaten there since I was a kid. I’m not a huge fan of fish normally, but I can’t get enough of the stuff if it’s batter-fried. (Does anyone know if there’s one in Minnesota?)
While I was dining, I noticed two sets of teenage couples enter separately, order their food, sit down, and start holding hands. Oh, I thought, isn’t that just precious. Then I realized that they weren’t sharing a gesture of affection: they were saying grace. I’m back in the Bible Belt.
The omnipresence of Greco-Roman architecture, not to mention the anthropomorphosis of various political ideals (the Ladies Justice and Liberty are only two of among several), can’t help but put me in mind of classical temples. So if the Supreme Court building is our temple to Themis; the efficient angles of the Pentagon, our temple to Ares; Fort Fringe, with its grungy warehouses promising cheap beer, naked flesh, and spiritual revelation, our temple to Dionysos (my patron); and the White House, our seat of executive authority, the seat of almighty Jupiter; then the National Archives and Library of Congress can represent only our temple to Athena, goddess of wisdom, civilization, and accumulated knowledge.
I spent most of the afternoon at the Archives – I knew if I was going to do at least one tourist-y thing while I was in town, this was it, because I’m super-geeky for this kind of thing. And it’s all here, from General Washington’s wartime correspondence (scribbled onto sheets of parchment) to the audio recordings of the Nixon administration’s backroom dealings. The documents here not only store history, but have, at various points, made history as well. And for me – as someone who’s spent several years traveling the world, tracking down decaying documents that have been carefully concealed from a government actively seeking out and destroying them – the existence of a place that not only accumulates information, but makes it available for public dissemination – well. The significance is not lost on me. Somewhere among those piles of sheets are my parents’ immigration papers, and the patents for my father’s inventions. The history of my family – in this country, at least – is documented.
Saved the main event for last, the Rotunda, which houses the Charters of Freedom – the three founding documents of the United States. Forget the White House tours, man – this is what I came to see. Since it is the main event – most tourists just come to see those and skip the rest of the exhibits – it was a large line, with about a forty-five minute wait. It was all restless and antsy and sweaty and lots of people complaining – judging by what I overheard, the vast majority of people didn’t know what it was they were seeing. (No, I don’t mean they didn’t appreciate it, I mean they didn’t know what they were in line for. Or where they were. Which leads me to wonder what they were doing there – do tourists just naturally gravitate towards crowds?)
(I also overheard one child behind me, exasperated with her enthusiastic father’s explanations, exclaim “I hate history!” Heh. Wait until you’ve lived long enough to see some of it happen, kid. It gets real interesting real fast.)
So I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but still got choked up when I saw the documents and the signatures and everything. Because I’m a big dork like that.
(Also – since the line is so large, they display a number of other related documents, from an early copy of the Magna Carta onwards. The exhibit then concludes with – a copy of the Charter of the United Nations? Which seemed like an incredibly weird choice to me. The implication seems to be that the existence of the UN represents the natural evolution of what the other documents began. A hypothetical person very similar to me might be inclined to argue that it represents a completely opposing impulse from the one that produced the Declaration of Independence. But he’s not here, so.)
--
Les asked me if I’d be comfortable hitting up a gay bar he found, to promote our respective shows. Comfortable? I work in theatre. If I’m not comfortable, this is a piss-poor time to realize it.
Monday nights, as part of a desperate effort to play to stereotype, constitute their “show-tunes evenings,” where patrons may request numbers from various movie musicals to be broadcast on a variety of screens set up around the bar. (Which leaves me wondering, why the close association between theatre and gay culture? I mean, I get that it’s self-perpetuating now, but where did it originate?) (And also sheepishly acknowledging that I actually know the lyrics to most of these songs. I grew up as a little brother to three unrelenting musical-theatre machines in the eighties, so.)
Flyering was moderately successful, in that the people expressed tremendous enthusiasm and interest, as well as a lot of “Oh, that Fringe Festival thing – is that going on now?” I guess I just always assumed that the gay community knew whenever a major theatre event was taking place – like, there’s a pink telephone that goes off in a wealthy socialite’s mansion, a la the 1960’s Batman.
(Also successful in that I was kissed on the throat by either a woman or a reasonably convincing tranny. Lights were low, so it’s anybody’s game at this point, I suppose.)
But this is the first trace of nightlife I’ve discovered in DC – a community of people who are relaxed and playful and welcoming. (As opposed to the occasional stiffness of the Fringe after-parties.) If only there was some way to throw the two groups into a large hadron collider – then you’d have a Festival. (Or possibly the destruction of the Earth. From my perspective, either could arguably be an improvement.)
--
Les and I then proceeded to discover exactly why the nightlife dries up so quickly in the District. We decided that we’d be responsible and take off early, so we left at around 11:30pm to hop on the metro. We then spent a frantic period of time attempting to decipher the various garbled, automated voices telling us what transfers to take, and ended up stranded in a metro station as the last train pulled away.
OPERATOR: We’re closing up now. You guys have to leave.
ME: But we aren’t staying anywhere near here.
OPERATOR: Wow. Sounds like you’ve got yourself a real problem there.
(pause)
OPERATOR: Whelp, gotta go!
We emerged from the station to find ourselves in the middle of nowhere – no cars, no cabs, nothing. I called my billeters, who agreed to come out and pick us up, because they are BBE (again, Best Billeters Ever. Or quite possibly Before the Battle of Endor.)
Another one of the weird aspects of this city – since significantly more people work here than live here, everything tends to shut down at, like, ten o’clock. This is a really weird place.
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
Walking around the National Mall, wandering through various gardens and displays and munching on food obtained from the street vendors, I’m struck by the observation – particularly in light of the fact that all of the tourist attractions are in such a compressed space, and that nearly everything is free and easily accessible to the public (with the notable exception of security checkpoints in damn near every building) – that this whole area resembles one gigantic museum. I imagine it would be possible to wander through here for days without seeing everything.
Spent much of the afternoon at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. I’m actually enjoying being able to sightsee under my own power – I can skip over the exhibits which hold little interest for me and pore over others, without worrying about someone impatiently tugging on my sleeve.
One floor was divided by quotations from the Preamble to the Constitution: for example, the section “Provide For the Common Defense” was devoted to military history. That was an interesting section, detailing surviving pieces from the American Revolution through the current occupation of Iraq. And one thing that struck me was how our perception of these wars has changed over time, in direct proportion with media access to them. Images from the Civil War included uniforms and swords – for Vietnam, you could walk through a simulated POW camp. Yikes. And it’s an exponential leap over the past fifty years or so: after all, Vietnam was our first televised war; the Persian Gulf, our first which broadcast live from a war zone; and the current invasion/occupation, the first to rely heavily on journalists embedded directly into fighting units.
But one weird side effect of this is the fact that we have a bizarrely sanitized view of wars preceding those, as though there were something far more noble and civilized about someone being hacked into pieces with a saber. We still have this perception of WWII as a clean, efficient engagement, when it was no different from any other conflict: rife with poor decisions and bureaucratic stupidity. The only difference is that now, we see those taking place in real time.
Okay, so, one thing that irritates me about all this: I’ve opposed this particular engagement since its inception – regarded it as a tactical error of nightmarish proportions. (This is, in fact, one of the very few political points that has remained consistent through my near-total ideological transformation.) So while I’m gratified to see that resistance to the occupation has grown, I find myself growing increasingly irritated with the manner in which the American public flipped its original position: that we sent an armed force overseas in a surge of emotion, but promptly lost the will to fight once we realized that it was going to be messy. The fundamental question, surely, is whether or not the war is just, no? If it is, then we persevere regardless of the cost; if it’s not, then we get the hell out. But the revelation that war can in fact be long, and difficult, and painful, and expensive, seemed to come as a total shock to that not-insignificant portion of population that was cheering as tanks rolled into Baghdad. We were perfectly okay with initiating a conflict until we realized – gasp! – that some of our people might actually get hurt.
I still oppose the occupation, and support withdrawal. But as usual, I find it a lot easier to support a cause when I don’t have to be around other people who do, too.
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Hit up a storytelling open-mic with Les that evening, partly to publicize and partly to see how they do things in my particular medium out here. (Actually, it was more like a storytelling cabaret – they rely so heavily on such a wide variety of content restrictions that I’m actively uncomfortable with referring to it as an open-mic.) They had a decent house of extraordinarily well-dressed individuals (I mean, seriously. They make the Rockstar audience look practically blue-collar). I ordered a double-shot of Jameson and promptly choked on it when I was charged as much as I would normally pay for a bottle of the stuff.
The tellers were all more-or-less solid, with a supremely warm and appreciative audience. Afterwards, while the audience presumably waited for their limos to come and pick them up, I went out with some of the core group.
There’s obviously an art to the aggression of east-coast conversation that utterly escapes me – I made several attempts to enter the conversation, failed, and gave up after about ten minutes, resolving to just absorb as much information as I could. It’s fascinating to observe the mechanisms of another group of this nature, although the dogmatism that many such groups share continues to rub me the wrong way. (There were the usual screeds against tellers who utilize music stands; against tellers who work in genres other than autobiography; against tellers to swear too much. Urgh. Surely effectiveness is the key question? No?)
We left at around eleven, since it’s DC, and it’s apparently the law. (“You look so gloomy!” expressed the host with some concern as I got up. Ah. I see we haven’t met.)
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
Last day in DC, so I decided to round it off with a trip to the Library of Congress, since there’s few things I love more than poring over documents.
Was particularly impressed with Thomas Jefferson’s personal library, which forms the initial core of the existing collection. It’s only a third of its original size – the rest were destroyed in fire – and it’s still more than worthy of note – his vast supply of medical textbooks, Islamic theology, political science, Ovid, Homer, Virgil – I found myself standing there and thinking, whoa. There were pieces of all of these books floating around inside this guy’s head. He really was a classic polymath. And in that respect, the perfect dude to have around when trying to figure out how to build a new system of government from the ground up. We were lucky to have him.
There’s a certain trend among bibliophiles to be extremely resistant to new forms of technology. This isn’t something that I share – I love the internet, love the blogosphere (obviously), love electronic books like the Amazon Kindle (though I can’t afford them, myself). I don’t fetishize paper, but the words they contain, and those can be transmitted through a variety of different mediums. (Another reason I found myself in the theatrical profession.)
But – and this thought struck me as I was looking at a set of notes for a speech, scribbled down by Benjamin Franklin – the problem posed by electronic media is its impermanence. (Okay, yes, technically all media are impermanent – paper will sooner or later crumble away into nothing, as well, and most of it has.) We still have much of the correspondence between the founding fathers as they were composing the foundational documents of our nation, and that’s incredibly valuable information to be preserved. But e-mails and Twittering and text messages vanish away into the ether and are gone forever. (In most cases, thankfully. Lord knows, I have plenty of drunken messages I’m glad will never again see the light of day.)
Maybe it’s just another unfortunate side effect of prosperity – that whatever we have in abundance, we cease to value. And this is the Information Age. We’re so bombarded by stimuli that we cease to trust or value any of it.
No, stop. This is a bigger thought than a blog entry. I have to think about it more.
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Climbed up top to look down at the view of the central library, with the various researchers at work. It’s an impressive sight – a large, circular hall, with books and books and shelves and books radiating outwards from the center; out into the various hallways and side rooms beyond it; out into the other buildings surrounding this one. Somewhere, among all of those texts, are neatly filed (I wince at the thought) several of my earliest scripts, since part of the copywriting process is sending texts to be filed away here. I wonder how many of the other fumbling, broken attempts of other struggling writers are housed in those corridors. This is the single largest library in the world; the single largest collection of books. This is our Library of Alexandria, our record of the achievements of our people. And like the Library of Alexandria, war and flame could do away with it all forever.
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Swung by the beer tent before my final show – not so much for a marketing push (since I’ve basically given up on that at this point) as to take one last look around. I was surprised to discover that the place was hopping, more so in the middle of the week than it had been over the weekend. Moreover, I received several friendly greetings and even sat down and managed to have a few amiable palavers with people I’d met. So it seems that there is some success, as far as community-building goes; it’s just a much longer, slower process, for whatever reason.
Not that that translates into audience numbers – I got to close out my show with a grand total of four in the audience, which is as large as an audience as I’ve achieved out here. Nobody from the gay bar; nobody from the storytelling evening; none of the dozens of dozens of patrons I’ve handed out cards to and fired lame jokes at.
But it was all right – well, not all right, but it was for that night, at least – because the show was fun. There may have only been four people, but hey – at least half of the audience with me, chuckling at the various jokes and attentive throughout. If I’ve gotten nothing else out of this, it’s a hell of a tighter show. And a resolve to bring my A-game to each and every Festival down the line from here.
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My trip in Washington, DC, ended exactly the way that every good party does; with everyone else asleep in their beds, and two guys polishing off a bottle of good Irish whiskey into the wee hours of the night, talking shit about nothing important, nothing in particular. Because I have BBE.
Which can, well and truly, stand for only one thing: the Best. Billeters. Ever.
Woke up to discover that I have once again sunburned all of my exposed flesh. And, once again, this has taken place during a show where I am exposing much of said flesh.
Headed on down early to check out a series of previews going on at the beer tent – I’m doing one myself tomorrow, and I wanted to get a sense of the crowd/venue. It was initially discouraging, going from one staff member to another, none of whom had heard of it. I finally went to Fort Fringe and asked someone there, who looked at me in confusion and promptly disappeared for five minutes before returning with the information.
Watched a few previews. These could all be fine shows – but I’ll most likely never know, since I barely heard a word of what was said. Took several notes. I’m pretty sure I can handle this performance-wise – I have a lot of experience with this kind of venue – but I’m not sure what piece to do. As I’ve discovered working my material at various open-mic events in the Twin Cities, this show doesn’t excerpt well. Something strongly visual would be nice, but the densely-composed prose of the various pieces and prophecies are difficult enough to follow while in context, let alone outside of it. Must think on it.
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Four people in the audience tonight – this was likely due to the fact that I was scheduled against one of the Fringe’s after-parties. The band was playing in the venue immediately adjacent to mine, and started playing about halfway through the show. I spent a good chunk of it trying to shout my dialogue over their musical stylings. I’ve had better times.
I was approached afterwards by some dude from Mississippi, who asked me if I was from Louisiana. I’ll take this as a compliment – one of the great tests of an accent is whether or not you can fool the locals.
(I’ve also been asked, more than once, if I’m a Gulf War veteran. Er, no – particularly in light of the fact that I would have been, what, eight during Operation Desert Storm? I saw it on TV, though. That’s almost as good.)
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Hung out late flyering the crowd, then spent about a half hour trying to find a cab to take me back to my billeters’ place. There were plenty to choose from, but none that would take me where I was trying to go – mainly because, while I had the address, I’m not a local, don’t know the neighborhood, and couldn’t direct them. (Er, if a cab won’t take out-of-towners to places they don’t know, doesn’t that kind of defeat much of the purpose of a cab service?)
In any case, finally hit up a bunch of locals who gave me a few numbers to call. No answer at the first one, but the second was more successful. When the cab showed up, the guy still didn’t know what the place was, but this time I refused to get out until he pulled a map out of his trunk and found it. (Spent about five dollars doing so, but at that point? Well worth it.)
Saturday, July 11th, 2009
Had two people in my audience today. Sucktitude.
I guess at this point I’m trying to regard my work here as a series of (ludicrously expensive) dress rehearsals. And the material is tightening up. I looked up during the Merlin scene to see half of my audience – well, one woman – sitting with a big goofy smile plastered across her face. And suddenly it hit me that, yeah. This scene is fun. That’s why I like this character. Most of Merlin’s lines are plucked directly out of Geoffrey and Malory, and they have a playfulness to them that’s still kind of irresistible.
And the scene between him and Pellinore is really charming – one of those classic, bizarre relationships that form between two people who have absolutely nothing in common. It’s a light comedy scene, and it can be played as such. Lord knows, the show badly needs it.
--
Dear Minnesota Fringe Festival:
Thank you for teaching me how to work an outdoor venue.
Sincerely, Me.
I have a lot of experience doing street theatre. I have a lot of experience working bars. Both paid off at my preview. I ran up, snapped off a few quick jokes, and dived into the middle of a scene.
I chose the battle between Pellinore and Arthur. It has some physicality to it, is one of the sequences that I perform off-script, and is one that, given the nature of the preview, can possibly be played as a pulse-pounding action scene.
And I discovered that, hey. It’s not that it can be played that way – it should be played that way. It’s two guys beating the hell out of each other in the middle of the desert for no good god damn reason – it brutal and senseless and awesome. I’ve been trying to play it with the same ponderous, affected delivery of the prophecies, and that’s a mistake.
In any case, it’s not like this was an amazing or life-changing event or anything – but it was fun. I was up there, rocketing through the scene, working the crowd, and they were with me. And it reinforced for me that this piece can be really, really fun with a crowd to bounce it off of.
It’s a shame that none of them will be coming to see the show. I wish I understood why.
--
ME: I saw a show yesterday, and the woman doing it seemed shocked that I was there. What’s up with that? Don’t the artists see each other’s shows here?
LES: I have my usual rule about seeing other artist’s shows: if they don’t see mine, I don’t see theirs.
ME: Huh. I usually do the passive-aggressive Midwestern thing, where I go to their shows and then they feel guilty and have to see mine.
LES: (rolling his eyes) Honey, I’m from L.A. We don’t do guilt.
So the after-parties have been consistently thinning out at eleven. In many respects, this feels like the Bizarro Fringe – audiences don’t hang out late; locals don’t go to see the out-of-towners; patrons are unusually resistant to postcards; participants don’t talk to each other.
The last point is particularly weird. I do what I usually do at Fringes – walk up to either individuals or groups, jump into their conversations, start joking around with them – and they either just stare at me or ignore me. This may be tied to the fact that nobody seems to really be drinking, either. (At three dollars a pop for a PBR at the beer tent! They’re practically giving this stuff away!) I don’t know if this just an aspect of Midwestern beer culture that doesn't extend out this far, but I feel like I’m having an extraordinarily difficult time connecting with people. At any other Festival, after the first two days I’d have a crew of people I was looking forward to every night. Out here, I work the crowd for about fifteen minutes then end up sitting by myself until I go home. Bizarro.
Which isn’t a knock on the administration – far from it. The staff seems to be aware of this stuff and working hard to build an accessible Fringe culture – they’ve set up the beer tent (which very few people use), space for audience reviews online (which nobody writes on) – I don’t know what it takes to connect with this crowd.
I’m frustrated about my lack of audience numbers, but somewhat relieved to see that it seems to be across-the-board for out-of-towners (i.e. it’s not just me). I keep wracking my brain to think of what I could have done differently. I sent out press releases (snail- and e-mail) several weeks in advance; contacted countless special interest groups (everyone from the SCA to the local Republican Party); and spent every night flyering crowds. At any other Festival, I’d be selling respectably at this point. But I just feel so exhausted; I’ve been pouring out an incredible amount of energy and getting nothing in return.
Sunday, July 12th, 2009
Went to explore the National Mall with Les – he was pretty excited about approaching the White House, but I could never quite lose track of the fact that we were approaching one of the most secure buildings on the planet. Nobody approaches that structure without being closely watched, and I wonder if somewhere our identifications are being matched up to a set of profiles:
WEAKNESSES TO BE EXPLOITED IN HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT: cheap whiskey and self-loathing
ETHNICITY: possible Chinese sympathies
PERIL: yellow
LES: Look! There’s people just hanging out on the front lawn! Michelle said this was going to be “The People’s White House.”
ME: (snorting) Right. And just how far do you think I’d get if I jumped the barricade and bolted for the front doors?
(pause)
ME: I’m the reason they have security measures, aren’t I?
I am super-skeptical of the “People’s White House” thing, though. To the best of my knowledge, the last time anybody really took a populist approach to that building was during the impromptu kegger following Andrew Jackson’s inauguration. Which arguably did more damage to it than the War of 1812.
(Okay, so I’m an American history geek.)
Walking around, I’m struck by the odd fact that while in terms of population this is a huge city, in terms of geography it’s not much more than a small town: most everything seems to be within walking distance of each other, and I’m learning my way around fairly quickly.
--
Spent a chunk of the day handing out postcards. Over the years, I’ve come to regard this as an interesting improvisational exercise: I see people walking towards me, and have to assimilate as much information as quickly as possible (what are they wearing? What are they saying? What are they looking at?) and incorporate it into a one-line marketing segue. (If I don’t come up with something in time, I have my usual repertory of lame jokes to fall back on.)
I may have delivered my worst marketing line yet, though:
HER: Oh, I wanted to see this one.
HIM: Yeah, but look – it’s sold out.
ME: Hey! You know what’s not going to be sold out? (whipping out my postcard) This show!
I’ve been encountering a lot of resistance to my usual flyering schtick here – people really seem to be working to avoid me. I get a few laughs and friendly conversations out of it, but a much greater proportion than usual of people wrinkling up their noses and giving me the vibe of “Oh…is this going to be good?”
I don’t know. It’s Fringe! Why do you care if it’s going to be good or not?
--
Hit my fourth performance tonight, with a grand total of one – yes, one – person in the audience. This entailed the usual weirdness of a sparsely-attended storytelling show – do I just stare at him the whole time? Do I avoid looking at him?
So, any hope of turning this around has pretty much evaporated. That makes this Festival – with the sole exception of my mime shows – the worst-attended experience of my career. Yes, that includes when I was just starting out. Yes, that includes the Spirit in the House Festival. Yes, that includes my other out-of-town performances. So, am I coming back to this one? Oy! Expensive lesson learned.
phillip andrew bennett low is a Chinese-American playwright and poet, storyteller and mime, theatre critic and libertarian activist. His solo performances have won acclaim from Minneapolis to Chicago, DC to LA - even as far as Melbourne, Australia. He was the co-founder of the Rockstar Storytellers (a supergroup of bestselling Twin Cities spoken-word artists), founder and producer of the touring theatre troupe Maximum Verbosity, and currently hosts what he believes to be the country's only open-mic dedicated to speculative fiction, "The Not-So-Silent Planet," as well as its associated podcast. He has published a book of political humor, "Indecision Now! A Libertarian Rage."
