Shameless Plug of the Day - Five Fifths of the Brothers Grimm

This is the sort of thing that puts the Fringe Geek in my Single White Fringe Geek title...

The Minnesota Fringe Festival season inches ever closer, as heralded by one of the major milestones of recent Fringe years - the Five Fifths fundraiser.

A well-known story (The Godfather, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, and A Streetcar Named Desire have all been past victims) is chopped up in five sections. The sections are handed off to five theater companies/artists. Each of them puts their own stylistic spin on the material. And then the five sections are all thrown back together for one night only, proceeds of the event going to the Fringe to keep the festival humming along into yet another summer.

This year, there wasn't hacking apart involved, as the subject is The Brothers Grimm. Each of the participants took a Grimm tale, twisted it to their liking, and are bringing the results back to the table Monday night, May 4.

The artists this year are:

3 Sticks (a physical theater company that collaborates on company created work, and who took a whack at the Wizard of Oz a couple of years back for Five Fifths)

Ari Hoptman (a Fringe favorite for his wry sense of humor and way with words, plus he has a posse of great theater friends always ready to pitch in - which they also did on Oz two years ago)

Ferrari McSpeedy (together, or solo, as Mike Fotis and Joe Bozic, or as part of the Brave New Workshop ensemble, these guys are wickedly funny improv comedy artists. With BNW last year at Five Fifths, they took on Romeo & Juliet)

Mad King Thomas (an irreverent and inventive comedic dance trio who are no strangers to the Fringe)

and the snarky bloggers of FringeFamous.com (finally putting that open secret of who the hell they are to rest once and for all - and after Monday they'll maybe even start putting their real names on their blog entries. We know they're theater people. We know they're funny, and occasionally vicious. The Brothers Grimm seems like a good fit.)

One night only, at the Ritz Theatre - 345 NE 13th Avenue in Minneapolis - Monday, May 4, 2009, doors at 7pm, curtain at 7:30pm. $35 in advance, $40 at the door. All for a very good cause. Hopefully I'll see you there.