Fringe 2019 - Top 10 - #10 - SplitScreen – Sterling Melcher, Meg Kirchhoff – Crane

Description - Separated by time and space, Meg and Sterling have to find their way back to the center of the wild wild web. Through dance, theater, and video, help us rediscover who we are in this new digital landscape.

Further description from the More Information tab on their Fringe show page:

The audience and performer in Minneapolis, MN will be joined by an audience and performer somewhere in Philadelphia, PA.

Meg and Sterling are working to link their respective cities together through live video feed and bringing the public Philadelphia space into the Crane Theater’s more traditional venue.

By blurring the lines between public and private art, they are looking to investigate the uses of the ‘new town square,’ aka ‘the internet.’

There will be some elements of audience participation that allow the audience to effect or control some aspects of the show.

This idea sounds kinda nuts, but that’s kind of why I want to see how it works.

One performer live, with their audience, connected to their dance partner via video link through the internet.  Connecting Minneapolis to Philadelphia and vice versa.  Since I come from the Philadelphia area originally, I’m doubly intrigued by the whole concept.

Will half of the show seem “less” somehow?  And would it be the video half, or the live half?  They’ve been developing this for a while, even though they call it their first cross-country collaboration.  They must have found a way for it to work equally well whether you’re watching the performer right in front of you, or one half way across the country.  They must have found a way to work together, even though they’re separated by thousands of miles.

I just have to see it for myself.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the internet connection holds up.

First show - Friday, August 2, 2019, 7pm - Crane Theater


For a quick list of links to my other postings, check out my Top 10 and Top 11-20 new Fringe artists to check out for Fringe 2019.  There's also Returning Favorites, and Fringe Shows I Just Can't Watch Right Now, but You Probably Should.  If you want to keep me company, during my first Fringe without Mom, I'll be posting my schedule here.  Also, here's some links if you want to hit all the Fringe 2019 blog posts, or see the full Fringe Archive from years past (just keep scrolling down, or hit the different years in the archive listing for the full blog on the right side of the screen and zero in on July and August)