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IndyFringe lives on the edge

8/21/09

Indianapolis Star
by Jay Harvey

How "fringy" can you be if you have an actual place to hang your hat? With its own home for eight months now, the Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival is established all right -- but not "establishment," as the 50-second video on its Web site makes clear.

In its fifth year, IndyFringe shifted its operations last winter to a permanent place at 719 E. St. Clair St. The nomadic life had palled, said Pauline Moffat, the festival's executive director: "We'd moved seven times in four years."

Built as a Wesleyan church in 1922, the structure had been vacant for several years. As the building progressed through renovation, it played host to a variety of arts events.

The work-in-progress vibe is still part of its image, though -- along with its shows. IndyFringe will host 53 performance groups from Indiana, the U.S. and the world, who will put on 270 live shows today through Aug. 30.

Here are five not to miss:

The Cask of Amontillado
Production: St. Joseph's College, composed and directed by music professor Paul Geraci.
When: Theatre on the Square, 627 Massachusetts Ave.
When: 7:30 p.m. today, 3 p.m. Saturday, 9 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27 and Aug. 30, 6 p.m. Aug. 25.

Unaccustomed as he is to doing TV commercials or anything-goes theater, music professor Paul Geraci wondered how his opera could possibly be a good fit for Fringe.

But when he saw the colorful group assembled for the festival's commercial shoot, he recalls thinking: "Maybe now opera is the fringe."

Suddenly, he felt right at home anticipating the second run of "The Cask of Amontillado," his operatic adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe tale the composer first read in sixth grade. The story focuses on wine collector Montressor, who comes up with a cunning way to get revenge upon a connoisseur named Fortunato.

The work premiered in 2007 at St. Joseph's College, and Geraci was able to keep most of the cast and crew together for the show's Fringe run. For IndyFringe, Geraci will use a recording of the original orchestra, but otherwise the first production is largely intact.

The Tragical Ballad of Black Bonnet
Production: Black Forest Fancies, New Orleans.
Where: Theatre on the Square, 627 Massachusetts Ave.
When: 10:30 p.m. today, 1:30 p.m. Saturday, 9 p.m. Tuesday, 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Aug. 29, 4:30 p.m. Aug. 30.

Pandora Gastelum developed the idea for this puppet-show operetta several years ago from a true story she came across in a gender-studies class at New York University. In 16th-century Scotland, a kitchen maid impregnated a landlord's daughter and was buried alive for the indiscretion -- and probably from revulsion at her anatomical abnormality: The maid was a hermaphrodite; today the preferred term is "intersexed."

Sounds like a dismal story, but Nina Nichols, Gastelum's friend, said: "It's a musical -- we scored it in a topsy-turvy manner -- that people laugh at from beginning to end. Yet they often cry at the end. When you find a story like this, it doesn't take a lot to make it compelling."

The work got an audience-pick award at the last New Orleans Fringe Festival.

Gone, Gone, Gone
Production: Dance, performance art by Monica Rodero and Daniel Schuchart of Milwaukee.
Where: The Earth House, 237 N. East St.
When: 7:30 p.m. today, 6 p.m. Saturday and Aug. 25, 9 p.m. Sunday and Aug. 27, 3 p.m. Aug. 29.

This dancing duo from Milwaukee, working together for the past 31/2 years, develops original pieces that rely a lot on Schuchart's eye as a visual artist. The pair's working methods are simple but time-consuming: "We often improvise and then videotape it, and we mine it to see what's worthwhile," Rodero said.

"Because of Dan's visual-arts background, we can go with a striking look or a line. We don't go in thinking, 'I'm going to make a story about love.' We find things as we go and just utilize them -- otherwise it looks cheesy."

"Gone, Gone, Gone" premiered at the Minnesota Fringe Festival last summer. Rodero described it as a piece that "runs as a continuum" and "mirrors the evolution of a relationship." Humor is threaded throughout the work, despite implicitly serious themes.

Crossing the Bridge
Production: Leonix Movement Theatre Ensemble, Los Angeles.
Where: The Earth House, 237 N. East St.
When: 10:30 p.m. today, 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Wednesday, 4:30 p.m. Sunday, 1:30 p.m. Aug. 29, 9 p.m. Aug. 30.

Leonix Movement Theatre Ensemble was formed in Los Angeles last year to "devise original work on a theme or certain subject matter, a book or a piece of music that inspires us," said "Crossing the Bridge" director Erin Schlabach, who hails from Anderson. "We do a lot of improvs, then work together to create a story."

The show was inspired by oral historian Studs Terkel's final book, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?," about death and dying. Using real-life stories in the book, Leonix forged one tale of a brother and sister dealing with terminal illness and hospitals.

What impact does Schlabach hope "Crossing the Bridge" will make in a Fringe schedule usually loaded with lighter material?

"That was a concern," she said. "We worked to find that balance, that line between when you're laughing hysterically and crying. There's quite a lot of absurdity in the show, which oscillates between serious and absurd moments."

The Worst Show in the Fringe
Production: Merely Players, Inc., Owensboro, Ky.
Where: ComedySportz Arena, 721 Massachusetts Ave.
When: 10:30 p.m. Sunday, 9 p.m. Wednesday, 6 p.m. Thursday, 7:30 p.m. Aug. 28, 4:30 p.m. Aug. 29, 3 p.m. Aug. 30.

In its third appearance at IndyFringe, Merely Players builds on the success of its "Open 24 Hours" debut and last year's "Adventures in Mating," Joseph Scrimshaw's parody of "Create Your Own Adventure" novels.

This year's entry, also written by Scrimshaw, was the best-selling show of the Minnesota Fringe Festival in 2002 and 2003. The comedy is about a panned actor's kidnapping of a theater critic. Scrimshaw's sense of humor can be gleaned just from a sampling of his play titles: "Beer and Its Relation to Everything," "The Lutefisk Champ" and "Everyone Hates a Clown."

Alan Velotta, Merely Players' artistic director, said Scrimshaw's plays lend themselves to localization, so he cautions: "It in no way reflects upon any particular reviewer. We've updated the name of the newspaper to the Indianapolis Business Journal, (whose critic) was the only person we've gotten a scathing review from. It's all in good fun."