Fringe 2010 - Fringe-For-All 1 - Sometimes The Unscripted Moments Are The Best

Favorite unintentional theater review from last night...

During intermission of Fringe-For-All last night, a friend couldn't believe that between the History Theater and the School of Music that housed it, they didn't have a single piano which could be used for the previews.

I was about to make excuses (after all, 29 groups of artists you don't know, playing with something as delicate as a piano?), when another friend blurted out under their breath,

"It wouldn't have helped."

Oops. I think that was your "out loud" voice, my dear.

They were immediately chagrined, but grinned.

And they were right. Some of those 29 previews last night were a bit... rough, to be kind about it. Still very much works in progress. But we're still 23 days out. Over three weeks. God love 'em all for having the nerve to put something out there. Hard core Fringers can be forgiving, but also a potentially tough crowd. And it made the groups that had their act together really stand out.

A fellow blogger during the same intermission shared a bit of their inner monologue with me, jokingly grumbling, "I just wanna post something before Everett!"

Well, my friend, you have over a 12 hour head start. (And that's not counting all the people twittering and otherwise connecting with the internet over their new-fangled phones during the previews. My phone is still just a phone. It doesn't even take pictures. Seriously, people, unplug for a couple of hours. There are all kinds of people you can connect with, you know, right next to you. There's a room full of them. And it's live theater. Whatever.)

Day job's been crazy, as it's the reporting period after the turn of our fiscal year end, and we're still understaffed. It's job security of a sort, but it doesn't leave a lot of downtime for blogging duties.

Then I absentmindedly spaced the fact that I needed to recharge my laptop battery, since there's nowhere to plug in on the lunch break. So lunch was actually just lunch, and not lunch and computer time, for a change. I contented myself with reading over one of my own scripts in rewrite mode instead. I listened to a guy singing and playing his guitar in the sandwich shop next to the food court outside my workplace. Wow, music exists beyond my earbuds. Imagine that.

Rather than go through them all chronologically (as it was sometimes a bit of "long hard slog" as Rumsfield used to say), I think I'll gather them in some general groupings...

Shows that unexpectedly charmed me
Shows that I'm sure have to be better than their previews last night
Shows that it will surprise no one that I liked
Shows that I am just not the audience for

Well, on with it then...