Fringe stories: How they pick the shows, and more

It's been 15 years. The Minnesota Fringe Festival is bordering on becoming as mainstream to Twin Cities summers as the Aquatennial boat race and State Fair seed art. Starting Thursday, 156 shows will sprawl over 18 venues in Minneapolis and offer 800 performances.

You may be wryly amused. You may shout in glee from the rooftops. You may try to stab your eyes out. Or you may relax into the shank of a balmy afternoon and simply enjoy the camaraderie of strangers who are there for the same reason you are.

There are a million stories in the Fringe every year. Here are a few.

Who's this for?

When applying for the Fringe each year, creators are asked to identify their show by categories. This was being abused by some, who claimed their production was all these things: Solo, Dance, Comedy, Drama, Musical Theater, Improvisation, Queer Content, Hip Hop, Puppetry, Spoken Word, Audience participation, Religious, Political, Multimedia, Kids and Teens.

Enough already, said Robin Gillette, executive director of the festival. This year, each show is limited to three descriptors. "Remarkably, I've gotten no complaints," said Gillette.

Jumping the line

The Fringe is a nonjuried festival. That means anyone can apply, and names are thrown into a lottery, held each February. Many shows left outside then ask to be included as "site-specific" shows -- in Fringe lingo, "Bring Your Own Venue." For example, one year a show was held in a pool.

However, Gillette worried that some shows were simply side-stepping the rules. She argues for the blind justice of the lottery. This is an issue that cuts several ways. Producers of critically lauded or hit shows have no guarantee of returning to the festival. An absolute dog might get in, but someone such as Kevin Kling might be on the outside. However, if you're nonjuried, then you're nonjuried, and that's the deal.

"It's weird, I'll give you that," Gillette said. "Does that mean that sometimes great artists wither on the wait-list? You bet, and they wither along with a bunch of folks you've never heard of, but who have equal potential to be genius."

Expanding the festival might solve part of the demand, but Gillette says the organization can't supply the administrative, technical and volunteer support with current staff levels.

"I've been asked if I would ever have a 'veterans' lottery, but I don't know how I'd define those terms in any fair way," she said.

Family anxiety

As if putting on a Fringe show weren't stressful enough, some producers choose to take it up a notch and do this as a family. This year, the festival will serve as the de facto honeymoon for newlyweds. Lauren Spear and Joshua Iley will spend these heady early days of marital bliss in "Meet the MacBeths."

"We were kind of locked into our wedding date," Spear said.

The couple co-wrote the show, which explores marriage in the 1950s and the lengths to which a married couple will go for the American Dream.

"It kind of coincided with our premarital counseling ... just talking about who pushes more, who leads and follows more," Spear said. "It's interesting to marry someone and talk about all these elements of marriage while we talk about the elements of marriage in the show, too."

They are not alone. Seven married couples are producing shows this year. One unmarried couple consists of former Star Tribune writers Al Sicherman and Catherine Watson. They will read clips from their newspaper days and as the show description reads, "perhaps illustrate why they aren't still married."

Sicherman said he has no idea how the show, "Writers of the Purple Sage," will shape up.

"Catherine thinks it ought to be off-the-cuff, and I think off-the-cuff can be pretty deadly if we don't have any backup," he said. "We argue beautifully, [but] I don't know if that's where we want to go."

It all started here

The Fringe has launched a number of theater companies in the Twin Cities, and other, established troupes have tossed in their lot this year. Ever heard of Buckets and Tap Shoes, 3 Sticks, Walking Shadow Theater, Mechanical Division or Ministry of Cultural Warfare? Well maybe not. But they jumped off from the Fringe into outside lives.

This year, Bedlam, Live Action Set, Theatre Mu, 20 Percent Theatre, Urban Samurai, Youth Performance Company and Teatro del Pueblo are in the festival.

Virtual Fringe

The festival is 15 years old but the online presence is much younger, having been born in 2001. Since then, the Virtual Fringe has grown into a key element of the Fringe experience, with festivalgoers chattering online as late as 3 or 4 a.m.

"The Minnesota Fringe anyway has always been a high-tech shop," said Matthew Foster, the fest's communications director. "For a long time, we didn't really have a hang-out during the festival, so ... people just really got in the habit of writing the reviews on the website."

Blogs carrying reviews of Fringe shows soon followed the launch of the website, at a time when any newspaper referring to a blog did so in quotes and had to explain the concept. Last year, 197,000 people visited the Fringe website, an increase of 70,000 from 2006, and the 10 bloggers logged in 30,737 hits.

The perceived power and influence of blogs has increased so rapidly that Fringe organizers decided not to host any this year. Instead, they have been off-loaded to the Twin Cities Daily Planet (tcdailyplanet.net), a separate and unaffiliated site.

Who are these people?

Despite the hip reputation of the festival, the majority of paying Fringegoers -- over 50 percent -- were ages 33-65 last year. Only one third were between 18 and 32. The numbers for 2006 and 2005 are similar.

"There's kind of an assumption that everything in Fringe is cutting-edge and wacky and has naked people," said Gillette. "We certainly do have some of that, but we also have some mainstream stuff."

For the first time, the Fringe is actively courting patrons from outlying suburbs through preview showcases at metro-area libraries. Gillette expects that increased visibility in the suburbs has the most potential to change audience makeup -- but not necessarily younger.

"Whenever you cross some magical barrier of 30 or 40 or 50, you don't necessarily lose your taste for the experimental," Gillette said.

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299 Patrick Lee • 612-673-7452