The Fringe returned to the tried and true old formula, one story, chopped in five pieces, given to five different groups of theater artists, and put all back together again for a one-night-only fundraiser for the Fringe. This year, it was...
4/29/10 Shameless Plug of the Day - Five Fifths of Sherlock Holmes
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
Showing posts with label Fringe - Five Fifths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fringe - Five Fifths. Show all posts
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Five Fifths of the Brothers Grimm
“Actually, it’s my Marxist-feminist dialectic that brings all the boys to the yard.”
And with that, I fell in love with Mad King Thomas.
Their re-telling, or rather vivisecting, of the tale of Rapunzel, was the best part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival fundraiser “Five Fifths of the Brothers Grimm” last month.
A communist/socialist fairy tale in the middle of the evening, this Rapunzel was born because her parents felt it only right to produce another wage slave for the good of the collective. She becomes MacPunzel, because of course she worked for the Golden Arches, making shakes in particular. Naturally, this led to a dance number to the tune of that song with the refrain “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.” Because, well, it’s required. In one of those moments that’s extremely awkward, because there’s no way to rehearse it and you can only do it once, MacPunzel cut off her long dark ponytail as a bit of liberation. But hair is not always cooperative enough to come off with just a couple of snips with a pair of scissors. So the performer stood there and kept sawing away with the scissors until the ponytail was at last set free. Then a big production number of interpretive dance to Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. How can you not love something that relentlessly weird and cheeky?
Host of the festivities and Executive Director of the Fringe Robin Gillette hit the nail on the head when she noted partway through the evening, “You might in fact not have even known what Grimm fairy tales [the five groups] were interpreting.”
You ain’t kiddin’. There is such a thing as too much artistic license. The reason previous years of Five Fifths worked and this one, well, kinda didn’t, is the presence or absence of a spine to the evening. That spine in the past was always the story. There was one story - A Streetcar Named Desire, Romeo and Juliet, The Godfather, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz. Each of the five groups involved got a chunk of the story they needed to cover. They could cover it however they liked, but in the end, all five parts together should (ideally) take the audience from the beginning to the end of a recognizable story.
This time out, every group got to pick a fairy tale to reinterpret, or pretend to reinterpret. What we ended up with were a couple of extended commercials (for Fringe shows, a website, etc.), a couple of presentations that actually interpreted a fairy tale you could guess at, and one that straddled the space between those two extremes.
The other tale that got something like a Five Fifths treatment was Rumpelstiltskin - courtesy of the always wry Ari Hoptman and friends (Leslie Ball as his frigid wife, Carolyn Pool as “the finest of their surviving children,” Joshua Scrimshaw as the lecherous young king, Peter Moore as his long-suffering servant, and Zach Curtis as the world’s tallest dwarf).
The prize for the most tenuous connection to the Brothers Grimm is a toss-up between the mysterious snarkmeisters of FringeFamous.com and the improv comedy machine that is Ferrari McSpeedy. FringeFamous.com revisited some of its more amusing and infamous commentaries of the past year, and scrolled some images from various fairy tales through their projections as they did so. Then, rather than reveal their “secret identities,” they decided to treat us to a viewing of Rick Astley’s music video for “Never Gonna Give You Up.” All of it. We sat there - for the entire, uninterrupted, unedited, music video. And... scene.
Joe Bozic and Mike Fotis (Ferrari McSpeedy) pretended to begin the process of improvising a fairy tale from an audience suggestion, but quickly descended into a litany of in-jokes about the Fringe community and improv, many of which were very amusing. For example...
“Improv is magic, and one out of every ten times, people enjoy it.”
“Matthew Foster sh*ts ideas that are smarter than us.”
“Hey, did you notice how last year about 80 percent of Matthew Everett’s blog was all about Nick Ryan? That was kind of creepy.”
“Not kind of creepy. REALLY creepy.”
“They’re not paying attention. They’re still trying to figure out that 3 Sticks thing.”
That 3 Sticks thing was the fairy tale which landed somewhere between reinterpretation and commercial. The Rooster, The Donkey, The Cat and The Dog set off on a musical adventure together, escaping their murderous master who was done putting up with them because they didn’t do their jobs. The rooster was too shy to crow. The donkey was often too busy daydreaming about philosophy to get the plowing done (oops, unfortunate word choice, read on...) The cat had some kind of social anxiety disorder. And the dog was way too friendly to serve as a guard dog against anyone. So of course, they did what any gang of misfits does, they started a band. But Rooster Donkey Cat Dog is a lousy name for a band. So some random guy who decides to be their agent, gives them a makeover. They then belted out the naughty theme song to their new name - Cock Ass Pussy Bitch (a catchy little ditty, I have to admit.) Hey, any artistic endeavor that gets Sasha Andreev to sing an ode to anal sex is OK by me (“you know my grip is tight when I receive” - seriously? not your everyday fairy tale, but I'd imagine a very happy ending). The rock quartet will be playing nightly at the Nomad World Pub during the Fringe - billed in the Bring Your Own Venue category as The Traveling Musicians. Because, I guess, Cock Ass Pussy Bitch seems like a little too much truth in advertising.
If I can make a plea for next year, could we go back to one story, chopped up? It’s more fun, at least for this audience member, and it gives the artists something to fall back on if they’re just fresh out of ideas - which it seemed like a couple of them were this time around. There’s plenty of cultural touchstones out there. Off the top of my head, if I were grabbing a movie title at random, how about Five Fifths Gone With The Wind? Five Fifths of The Fast & The Furious?Five Fifths of All About Eve? Five Fifths of Rocky (hell, Rocky V)? Five Fifths of Bonnie & Clyde? Five Fifths of Citizen Kane (why do I feel like we've done that already?) Five Fifths of Network? As for theater, perhaps Five Fifths of Our Town, Five Fifths of Henry V, Five Fifths of The Wild Duck, Five Fifths of Oedipus, or, heck, just look at the Guthrie’s library of classic titles from past seasons - I’d even settle for Five Fifths of Coriolanus or Titus Andronicus. There’s something about the degree of difficulty involved in five very different sets of theater artists all congealing somehow around the same storyline that makes for a more electric and interesting evening. Even if they don't pull it off, there's a notion that they're still somehow all in it together that makes it more fun to watch them try.
And with that, I fell in love with Mad King Thomas.
Their re-telling, or rather vivisecting, of the tale of Rapunzel, was the best part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival fundraiser “Five Fifths of the Brothers Grimm” last month.
A communist/socialist fairy tale in the middle of the evening, this Rapunzel was born because her parents felt it only right to produce another wage slave for the good of the collective. She becomes MacPunzel, because of course she worked for the Golden Arches, making shakes in particular. Naturally, this led to a dance number to the tune of that song with the refrain “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.” Because, well, it’s required. In one of those moments that’s extremely awkward, because there’s no way to rehearse it and you can only do it once, MacPunzel cut off her long dark ponytail as a bit of liberation. But hair is not always cooperative enough to come off with just a couple of snips with a pair of scissors. So the performer stood there and kept sawing away with the scissors until the ponytail was at last set free. Then a big production number of interpretive dance to Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. How can you not love something that relentlessly weird and cheeky?
Host of the festivities and Executive Director of the Fringe Robin Gillette hit the nail on the head when she noted partway through the evening, “You might in fact not have even known what Grimm fairy tales [the five groups] were interpreting.”
You ain’t kiddin’. There is such a thing as too much artistic license. The reason previous years of Five Fifths worked and this one, well, kinda didn’t, is the presence or absence of a spine to the evening. That spine in the past was always the story. There was one story - A Streetcar Named Desire, Romeo and Juliet, The Godfather, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz. Each of the five groups involved got a chunk of the story they needed to cover. They could cover it however they liked, but in the end, all five parts together should (ideally) take the audience from the beginning to the end of a recognizable story.
This time out, every group got to pick a fairy tale to reinterpret, or pretend to reinterpret. What we ended up with were a couple of extended commercials (for Fringe shows, a website, etc.), a couple of presentations that actually interpreted a fairy tale you could guess at, and one that straddled the space between those two extremes.
The other tale that got something like a Five Fifths treatment was Rumpelstiltskin - courtesy of the always wry Ari Hoptman and friends (Leslie Ball as his frigid wife, Carolyn Pool as “the finest of their surviving children,” Joshua Scrimshaw as the lecherous young king, Peter Moore as his long-suffering servant, and Zach Curtis as the world’s tallest dwarf).
The prize for the most tenuous connection to the Brothers Grimm is a toss-up between the mysterious snarkmeisters of FringeFamous.com and the improv comedy machine that is Ferrari McSpeedy. FringeFamous.com revisited some of its more amusing and infamous commentaries of the past year, and scrolled some images from various fairy tales through their projections as they did so. Then, rather than reveal their “secret identities,” they decided to treat us to a viewing of Rick Astley’s music video for “Never Gonna Give You Up.” All of it. We sat there - for the entire, uninterrupted, unedited, music video. And... scene.
Joe Bozic and Mike Fotis (Ferrari McSpeedy) pretended to begin the process of improvising a fairy tale from an audience suggestion, but quickly descended into a litany of in-jokes about the Fringe community and improv, many of which were very amusing. For example...
“Improv is magic, and one out of every ten times, people enjoy it.”
“Matthew Foster sh*ts ideas that are smarter than us.”
“Hey, did you notice how last year about 80 percent of Matthew Everett’s blog was all about Nick Ryan? That was kind of creepy.”
“Not kind of creepy. REALLY creepy.”
“They’re not paying attention. They’re still trying to figure out that 3 Sticks thing.”
That 3 Sticks thing was the fairy tale which landed somewhere between reinterpretation and commercial. The Rooster, The Donkey, The Cat and The Dog set off on a musical adventure together, escaping their murderous master who was done putting up with them because they didn’t do their jobs. The rooster was too shy to crow. The donkey was often too busy daydreaming about philosophy to get the plowing done (oops, unfortunate word choice, read on...) The cat had some kind of social anxiety disorder. And the dog was way too friendly to serve as a guard dog against anyone. So of course, they did what any gang of misfits does, they started a band. But Rooster Donkey Cat Dog is a lousy name for a band. So some random guy who decides to be their agent, gives them a makeover. They then belted out the naughty theme song to their new name - Cock Ass Pussy Bitch (a catchy little ditty, I have to admit.) Hey, any artistic endeavor that gets Sasha Andreev to sing an ode to anal sex is OK by me (“you know my grip is tight when I receive” - seriously? not your everyday fairy tale, but I'd imagine a very happy ending). The rock quartet will be playing nightly at the Nomad World Pub during the Fringe - billed in the Bring Your Own Venue category as The Traveling Musicians. Because, I guess, Cock Ass Pussy Bitch seems like a little too much truth in advertising.
If I can make a plea for next year, could we go back to one story, chopped up? It’s more fun, at least for this audience member, and it gives the artists something to fall back on if they’re just fresh out of ideas - which it seemed like a couple of them were this time around. There’s plenty of cultural touchstones out there. Off the top of my head, if I were grabbing a movie title at random, how about Five Fifths Gone With The Wind? Five Fifths of The Fast & The Furious?Five Fifths of All About Eve? Five Fifths of Rocky (hell, Rocky V)? Five Fifths of Bonnie & Clyde? Five Fifths of Citizen Kane (why do I feel like we've done that already?) Five Fifths of Network? As for theater, perhaps Five Fifths of Our Town, Five Fifths of Henry V, Five Fifths of The Wild Duck, Five Fifths of Oedipus, or, heck, just look at the Guthrie’s library of classic titles from past seasons - I’d even settle for Five Fifths of Coriolanus or Titus Andronicus. There’s something about the degree of difficulty involved in five very different sets of theater artists all congealing somehow around the same storyline that makes for a more electric and interesting evening. Even if they don't pull it off, there's a notion that they're still somehow all in it together that makes it more fun to watch them try.
Labels:
Fringe - Five Fifths,
Fringe Archives 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Fringe 2009 - Five Fifths of the Brothers Grimm
Things were a little different in Five Fifths land this year...
7/1/09 - Five Fifths of the Brothers Grimm - a recap
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
matthewaeverett.com version
5/3/09 - Shameless Plug of the Day - Five Fifths of the Brothers Grimm
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
matthewaeverett.com version
7/1/09 - Five Fifths of the Brothers Grimm - a recap
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
matthewaeverett.com version
5/3/09 - Shameless Plug of the Day - Five Fifths of the Brothers Grimm
Twin Cities Daily Planet version
matthewaeverett.com version
Sunday, May 03, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Fringe Archive - 2006 - Five Fifths of Casablanca
Here's looking at you, kid - as well as five very different theater companies splitting up a classic and reinterpreting it for a very good cause - the 2006 Minnesota Fringe Festival...
Monday, March 24, 2008
Fringe Archive - 2007 - Five Fifths of The Wizard of Oz
Revisit the madness that was the 2007 Minnesota Fringe Fundraiser - Five Fifths of The Wizard of Oz...
Coming Up
Looking Back - "Did they just say they'd defile the corpse of Tyrone Guthrie? For beer?"
Coming Up
Looking Back - "Did they just say they'd defile the corpse of Tyrone Guthrie? For beer?"
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