Fringe

Last night festival organizers Eric Vosmeier and Jeff Syroney announced the winners of the 2010 Cincinnati Fringe Festival's Pick of the Fringe Awards and the winners were:

Audience Pick: Sophie's Dream from Serenity Fisher

Critic's Pick: Harold from Four Humors Theater

Producer's Pick: The Finkles' Theater Show from Ryan Lear and Rachel Petrie

 The Conveyor is again proud to announce our Awards of Excellence for the 2010 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. This year's festival continues to possess a consistent high level of quality. After seeing about as much Fringe as is humanly possible (but not every show!), we wanted to give our opinion on the best.  Using a set of categories and groupings we created to best compare all of the varied types and genre of performance, we have come up with what we believe represents the best of the festival.  First we considered the 1 production that stood about all of the rest:

Terror is Funny.  Sitting by a campfire with a flashlight to your face telling a story while your friend hides in the bushes with a hook in his pants waiting for the right moment to jump out and scare the cute girls is funny for everyone.  It just isn't funny until after you calm down and release there isn't a man about to stab you to death.  Four Humor Theater's Harold brings the Funny to Terror and hits the Scarecrow out of the park.

Theatre is an art form.  Karim Muasher's A Short Lecture a Different Time shows how to craft that art into a touching performance.  The production merges sound, acting, storytelling, and graphics into a powerful digital parable that has a modern moral lesson. If we can learn from the past and change, we can avoid repeating what may have happened long ago.

Classic literature is a rich source for theatre and Madea, from paperStrangers Performance Group, is a beautiful adaptation of the ancient play that uses stunning costumes to bring forth the intense story.  

Jimmy Hogg's one man show A Brief History of Petty Crime is a fast paced tale of a troubled youth and his best friend trying to fit into society, but shop lifting along the way.  Hogg's Karma is fucked.  He is going to Hell.  Well, not really, but he made mistakes as a kid, more than most people did, and is sharing the struggles he had in finding a way to start and make it in life.

There is a surprise in this production that I want to share with you.  I can't.  I just can't ruin the surprise.  I can tell you to run and see Finite Number of Monkeys production of Tantric Acting at the Holiday Inn.  I can tell you about the Bindis, which you may have seen running around the festival.  They are hilarious, but are but one of the gut busting laughs that will greet you while attending TantraCon2010.

Fun.  I can't find a better word to describe A Night of Well Adjusted Ladies, from Venzin-Althaus Explosion!. The premise rests on both writers', Megan Venzin and Emily Althaus, Mother.  Real life experiences are often the most terrifying subject for a writer to bring forth, but both do so without any sign of trepidation.  That courage likely stems from the troubles each had with their mother.  One mother suffers from alcoholism and the other suffers from narcolepsy.

Character is key to most theatre.  The characters in a blue collar neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota are as plentiful as bodies of water in the Land of Lakes.  Blue Collar Diaries, presented by Bridge Productions, is a one woman show exploring the depth of those characters.  Playwright Michelle Myers Berg performs each of the characters with sharp detail.  Using nothing more than a slight clothing change or few props, Berg transforms into each person with ease.

Nevermore, a play by Amy Pttinella and presented by Twilight Productions, tackles the formidable topic of the mental state behind great writers and does so with the life of Edgar Allen Poe.  Poe's sad lifestory is summarized during his haunting of a modern day writer's attempted suicide.

T-shirts alone are not funny.  T-Shirts on and off the bodies of three talented actors are hilariously sharp.  Artemis Exchange's production of Aberrant Reflections on the Barbarism of You & I premiered on Wednesday and quickly has become one of my must see recommendations of the Festival.

Is Dance Movement?  Is Movement Dance?

If you are looking for a way to see all of the shows and track them on your Google Calendar, then check out the three attachments.  Each file can be imported into Google's calendar application and will show the 30 shows for the corresponding schedule listed on the CincyFringe website.

Allison Vodnoy (CincyFringe veteran and Model for the Fringe posters) has an interesting article in Soapbox this week about a couple of Cincinnati Fringe performing groups that both use movement/dance in their productions: Cincinnati's Pones, Inc. and Chicago's The Space/Movement Project.

Title: Harold

Opening: Saturday, June 5, 2010 at 09:30 PM
Location: Duveneck 2
Address: 1214 Vine Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Producer: Four Humors Theater from Champlin, MN

CincyFringe Status: Returning Participant

Genre: Theatre

Title: Queer in the U.S.A.

Opening: Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at 09:00 PM
Location: Below Zero Lounge
Address: 1122 Walnut Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Producer: The Faux-Real Theatre Company from New York, NY

CincyFringe Status: New Participant

Genre: Solo

Title: Cyrano

Opening: Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 08:30 PM
Location: Mixx Ultra Lounge
Address: 1203 Main Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Producer: Cincinnati Playhouse from Cincinnati, OH

CincyFringe Status: New Participant

Genre: Theatre

Title: Ain't That Good News

Opening: Sunday, June 6, 2010 at 08:30 PM
Location: Coffee Emporium
Address: 110 East Central Parkway, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Producer: The Bengsons from Bloomington, IN

CincyFringe Status: New Participant

Genre: Musical

Title: Aftershock! An Event!

Opening: Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 07:30 PM
Location: Know Theatre
Address: 1120 Jackson Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Producer: Fake Bacon Productions from Columbus, OH

CincyFringe Status: New Participant

Genre: Theatre

Title: Salem! The Musical

Opening: Saturday, June 5, 2010 at 08:00 PM
Location: Below Zero Lounge
Address: 1122 Walnut Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Producer: Annoyance Theater from Chicago, IL

CincyFringe Status: New Participant

Genre: Musical