At the Fringe

One of the many reasons this blog is off to a slow start is that I'm gearing up for a show at the 2007 San Francisco Fringe Festival.

My show, You Go First, is not a storytelling show. Instead, I'm diving back into my roots in improvisation for this one.

One of the challenges of performing at a Fringe Festival is that you are your own producer (unless you've convinced someone else to take that role). The Festival gives you a stage, a person to help with the box office, a person to help out during the 60 minutes you are actually in the physical theater, and includes a description of your show in a program. But everything else (like filling the seats, promoting the show, making the costumes, securing rights, hiring musicians) is your own responsibility.

Having an improvised show (no set, no costumes, no props) simplifies things a bit. Cuts down on rehearsal time, too. (I'm relying on the performers decades-long experience in the craft, natural talent, and trust to pull this off onstage).

But there's a lot of details to attend to (in addition to a full time job, a family, the start of a new school year, etc.)... so I've been neglecting the blog. Been doing a "soft open." Once I'm up and running I'll announce the blog and let people know it's here.

As for Storytelling and Fringe Festivals... I have presented both a workshop and a poster session at the National Storytelling Conference on "Storytelling at the Fringe," as a way of explaining what a Fringe is, why storytellers would want to be there, and even help organize the National Storytelling Conference Fringe. I'll post more about that later.

If you're not familiar with Fringe Festivals, Slash Coleman has a new blog, "Fringe or Die," that is a nuts-and-bolts introduction of how to do it. He explains what Fringe Festivals are here.