LIVING ON THE FRINGE
There are three days left of the 2009 San Francisco Fringe Festival, an annual bacchanal of uncensored, unjuried short-form theater presented in an affordable, rotating environment. The San Francisco Fringe is just one outpost of a theater movement born in Edinburgh, Scotland with tendrils in many American and Canadian cities. The purpose is to provide professional stage space and an audience for individuals and theater companies that regularly lack either.
The first edition of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe ran in 1947, when companies left out of the Edinburgh International Festival staged their own celebration. The idea has both evolved and spread in the decades since, though the Edinburgh Festival Fringe remains not only the world’s largest Fringe Festival, it has in fact become one of the world’s largest annual performing arts festivals of any kind. The San Francisco Fringe is a more humble affair, but 18 years in, it provides one of the city’s most endearing and enduring theatrical spectacles (in the interest of full disclosure, I have been on the SF Fringe staff for seven years now).
The concept sounds simple, but the execution requires a hard working staff and a very large volunteer base: 40-50 hour-long productions are mounted, all with 4-6 performances in the space of 11 days across a half-dozen stages around the City. Eddy Street’s Exit Theater produces the festival, provides the central meeting place (the Exit Cafe, 156 Eddy), and three of the stages. The shows are short, staggered, and inexpensive, allowing audience members to “fringe” their way through multiple offerings in a night.
Companies enter a lottery (with separate drawings for local and traveling acts) and the winners are offered a shot in the festival, which comes with a stage, technical assistance, and performance slots. Each company has complete, uncensored freedom to produce any stage spectacle they want. Many of the performers are traveling solo acts, but some more ambitious companies take part — the then little-known Banana, Bag & Bodice gained notice with the shows Gulag Ha Ha and Sandwich at the San Francisco Fringe, and have since gone on to high-profile runs of their songplay Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage at Berkeley’s Ashby Stage and in Manhattan (which brought about a feature in the New York Times).
My personal history with the Fringe goes back into my drama-class youth. When I was in high school I helped a family friend with his one-man show as his sole run crew; the following year I went “fringing” with a buddy and saw three shows. Two of them I liked, but the third I remember as the worst piece of theater I’ve ever seen: it was called “Water Closet” and tried to combine incest, neo-Nazism and bad plumbing into a family dramedy. It was dreck. But that is the risk of the Fringe: since any company can win a show slot, you never know what you will get unless you carefully peruse the reviews and chat up the volunteers. It can be easy to steer clear of the duds if you talk to a few people, but I didn’t know that yet in high school. I started working for the Festival a couple years out of college, hoping to keep involved in theater. In the years since, it has been the source of some of my closest friends and favorite memories. I have also seen some incredible theater in the process (taking in as many as 30+ shows in some seasons).
While this year’s festival is drawing towards a close, the final weekend is always the best — the biggest crowds, the most polished performances, and plenty of talk in the Exit Cafe about which are the best and most worthwhile shows. From what I’ve heard so far, Poste Restante, A (Bearded) Lady, and The Surprise are all top picks. The two shows I’m working on — Break-Upocalypse and Inside Private Lives — are both entertaining, funny romps. Come out to the Exit Theater this weekend, fringe your way through 2-3 performances, and have a memorable experience.
