Do You Have A Show In The Fringe This Year?

The short answer - Yes.

The slightly longer answer - Not a month ago.

Or, what I like to call the start of the Bronze Bitch/Dog Blog

My friend Marc Halsey got one of the lucky ping pong balls in the Minnesota Fringe Festival lottery this year. He was planning to finish a new script and have his company, the newly named Magicword Theater, produce it this year. Then he got a job out in LA on the writing staff of a TV show.

We'd been trading emails and text messages earlier in the week, with him floating the idea of producing a couple of my short scripts in the slot, since it had become clear to him he wasn't going to finish his own script in the timeframe he wanted. Settling into a new life out west was gobbling up a lot of time, and probably would for a while.

Friday May 16th - mid-afternoon - the phone rings. Marc says if I want to take over the producing reins under the Magicword banner to get a Fringe show up on the boards this year, he's happy to hand it to me. Beyond long-distance moral support, his involvement was going to be minimal. So I had to decide if I could take it on.

Time? Money? Both tight, but possible.

Since I'm trying to finish rewrites on another script right now, which goes into rehearsals literally the day after the Fringe closes, the key was to get a team together that I could provide the infrastructure for and then set loose. Tempting as sitting in on rehearsals would be, those scripts weren't changing, so I'd withdraw, let the director and actors go to work, and get myself to work on the script that *was* still changing. Before a directors and actors would be set loose on that one, too.

How's it going so far?

Right now I'm waiting for an actor to call me back so we can confer about his schedule conflicts and, if it works, actor one of three is decided. Then two more welcome phone calls to the director's other choices. Then the five phone calls to the actors who didn't make the cut. At the callback rate currently taking place, this is gonna take all weekend.

Rewrites? Yeah, those are still screaming in the back of my skull at the moment. Or maybe they've given up on me paying attention and decided to take a nap. We'll see when I try to jumpstart it all again this weekend.

So why is it called the Bronze Bitch/Dog Blog?

The titles of the two scripts being done in the Fringe slot by Magicword are

The Bronze Bitch Flies At Noon

and

Dog Tag

More on them in just a bit. Right now, it's time for me to saunter off to day job #2 for the day.

And then some grocery shopping. And dinner. And bills.

47 days and counting...

Ah, the glamor of show business, eh?

Rarig Center - U of M campus
Arena Stage
Minnesota Fringe Festival
Friday 8/1 at 7pm
Saturday 8/2 at 10pm
Wednesday 8/6 at 10pm
Thursday 8/7 at 5:30pm
Saturday 8/9 at 8:30pm

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