Description: 3 blackboys sit on the front stoop of their apartment building, trying to navigate & understand what it means to love deeply. To question tradition. To be queer. To be unapologetically black in the world today.
This is the strange and circumstantial path that leads me to a Fringe show sometimes.
I work at the Guthrie Theater box office part time as one of my day jobs.
The Guthrie partners with the University of Minnesota on the training of their BFA acting program.
Every year, the graduating seniors mount a production in the Guthrie’s black box theater space, and their families come to see them in the show.
One day while manning the box office counter, a delightful woman came to pick up her tickets for the senior showcase production. She was excited.
Across the lobby, a young man waited patiently (and perhaps a little sheepishly) for her.
“Are you an actor?” she asked me, apropos of nothing.
“No, I’m a playwright,” I responded, because that always seems to interest people.
“Oh,” she responded, pointing to the young man, “that’s my nephew, he’s an actor, and also a playwright.”
That young man was Ian McCarthy.
I filed that name away in my memory bank of artists.
And here it is again, popping up on the Fringe website, in a show with two other BFA trainees, all from different places in the country, telling stories of queer people of color.
The Fringe is a great resource for allowing me to hear voices I might not otherwise get to here. So I’m in.
Side note: Same as for Carbon Man-Dating.
First show - Thursday, August 1, 2019, 7pm - Rarig Center Xperimental
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)
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