Fringe 2005 - TV Guest #1 - The Scrimshaw Brothers

Sunday, June 19, 2005 - 10:30am

There is something both fun and a bit daunting about starting off a long day of shooting with a couple of guys as lively as the Scrimshaw Brothers (not that anyone's lively first thing on a Sunday morning, but...)

I was prepared to be amused, but I also knew I needed to be on my toes if I was going to get through the interview. Smart and funny multiplied by two is a hard act to keep up with. Plus, they were better dressed than I was (again, not that this is exactly hard to do, my wardrobe is rather limited, still...)

Script in hand and a few doodles later, we were ready to shoot the performance part of the segment. Sort of a "Love Letters/Hate Mail" opening bit where the brothers argue in hilariously escalating fashion through correspondence both strained and abusive about what the nature of the opening segment of their new Fringe show is going to be. Talk of rebirth leads to, among other things, talk of a wisecracking placenta puppet (at which point I come very close to laughing out loud off camera and screwing up the taping, but I restrain myself).

Later guests were concerned about the language in their own performances - "Is it OK to say 'ass'?" I could reassure them by saying, "Please, the Scrimshaws read a series of letters one of which began 'Dear Fuckface.' I think you're fine."

Look Ma, No Pants has been retired and replaced by the new comedy/variety outing The Scrimshaw Show, which Joshua and Joseph have been performing on a monthly basis over at the Bryant Lake Bowl through out the year since the last Fringe. (They have one more non-Fringe set of performances coming up, which includes the swan song of Marc Doty before he moves to Washington, D.C., so catch them next Friday and Saturday, July 8th and 9th at 10pm at the Bryant Lake Bowl) And then of course, see the Fringe edition, which, if the excerpt they performed in studio is any indication, should be a different but no less potent kind of funny than we've come to expect from these guys. No big production numbers, a more intimate sort of show, which I'm very much looking forward to seeing for myself.

And no Fringe is complete without at least several different Scrimshaw entries. In addition to the late night Scrimshaw show, Joseph made the lottery pick with his own show as well, which has morphed from a solo show to a three person show called Adventures In Mating, based on the "choose your own adventure" style of books. The audience makes a series of simple decisions - white wine over red, for instance - and that determines which version of the story the actors perform next. Getting a couple throw a successful first date is just as difficult with audience participation as it is when you're doing it all by yourself. But in this instance, you have others suffering the potential indignities for you. And who knows, depending on your chooses in the audience, you might just get them through it without any major mishaps. Good luck. After what I can only describe as Joseph's one-man ensemble piece last year Jack and Ben's 10th Annual Bar Crawl and Moveable Feast - that pulled off the trick of being both outrageously funny and heartbreaking at the same time, I'm up for whatever comes out of this guy's word processor next. Scrimshaws, alone or in pairs, are always enormously entertaining. Wouldn't be a Fringe without them.

The Scrimshaw Show is playing late nights at the Loring Playhouse and well worth staying up for:

The Scrimshaw Brothers
The Scrimshaw Show
Loring Playhouse
1633 Hennepin Avenue
Thu 8/4, 11:30 pm
Fri 8/5, 11:30 pm
Sat 8/6, 11:30 pm
Sun 8/7, 11:30 pm
Wed 8/10, 11:30 pm
Thu 8/11, 11:30 pm
Fri 8/12, 11:30 pm
Sat 8/13, 11:30 pm

Joseph's intrepid Adventures In Mating is over toward uptown at the Brave New Workshop:

Joseph Scrimshaw
Adventures in Mating
Brave New Workshop
Fri 8/5, 5:30 pm
Sun 8/7, 10:00 pm
Wed 8/10, 10:00 pm
Sat 8/13, 10:00 pm
Sun 8/14, 1:00 pm

For more on the Brothers Scrimshaw, check out www.scrimshawbrothers.com

For remembrance of Fringe's past, click on the titles below

Look Ma, No Pants - 2003 Minnesota Fringe Festival
Look Ma, No Pants - The Last One (2004 Fringe)
Jack and Ben's 10th Annual Bar Crawl and Moveable Feast

(For more of my writing - plays, past blog entries and more - visit www.matthewaeverett.com)