Happy New Year, theatre peeps!

To celebrate your upcoming drunkenness, we’ve got a special guest post for you.  The following post was written by Ryan.  Ryan has worked as a professional director in the Twin Cities for eight years.  Prior to that, he could’ve been found working in San Diego, Kansas City, Chicago, and Louisville.  He loooooves theatre and sees almost all of it.  Enjoy!

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Hi. I’m Ryan. I was invited to write a guest post for FringeFamous and decided to join in all the end-of-the-year-list-making fun. It also makes for some really easy writing. So here’s a list of the Top Ten shows I’ve seen this year. And yeah, I’ve seen more shows than you. Don’t like it? Get your own guest post.  (shows listed in chronological order)

Well, Park Square Theatre

Christina Baldwin gave the performance of her career. Barbara June Patterson is just adorable.

9 Parts of Desire, Guthrie Corp.

It was a toss-up between two Joel Sass-directed one woman shows and I picked 9 Parts. While Syringa Tree was beautiful and sweet, 9 Parts had balls. I like balls.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Children’s Theater

Perfect comic execution. Pure Theatrical Joy.

Dreaming Project, Upright Egg

This wasn’t a particularly good production, but I’ve never seen actors have more fun on stage. It was playful, imaginative, and fresh. I had a great time.

American Pilot, Walking Shadow

Subtle, precise, and clean. Political without being dull. Rich and engaging without fluff or bullshit. It’s the production that gave so much by doing so little.

Romeo and Juliet, Four Humors

This production perfectly captured the innocence and youth of the text and made the story ACTUALLY TRAGIC!!!! I was moved.

Great Hymn of Thanksgiving/Conversation Storm, Nonsense Company

It’s cheating a little because this show was at Fringe in ‘06, but it’s STILL the most unique and engaging piece of theater I’ve ever seen.

The Caretaker, Guthrie Corp.

Kris Nelson, Steve Epp, and Stephen Cartmell created the strongest, richest characters I saw this year. It’s not often an actor can sit still for 20 minutes and still have everyone on the edge of their seat.

Woyczek Project, University of Minnesota

Take Buchner, put it in an abandoned building, lead people like a haunted house, throw in a rave, add some puppets, play live music, and kick it all off with a clown. What?!

Twelfth Night, Ten Thousand Things

This production restored my faith in Shakespeare. A pure focus on text and storytelling really made this show

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And as a FringeFamous special, here’s my NOT TOP TEN list. Bear in mind that this is not a “Worst Ten”; I enjoyed some or parts of some of these shows. But as you’ll see, I thought there were some pretty big faults. (again, listed in chronological order)

Titus, Cromulent Shakespeare Co.

Shakespare is really, really difficult. Then add a director who said to me “I told them I hate Shakespeare and they hired me anyway” and you’ve got all the ingredients for disaster.

Sign in Sidney Brunstein’s Window, Starting Gate

I’ve never had to work so hard to figure out what’s going on during a play before. I never did get it.

Fishtank, Jeune Lune

I’m just upset that this was their last show. I know it wasn’t planned that way, but it’s like they closed with their finger in their ear rather than putting their foot down. It just makes me sad.

Q & A, Mu Performing Arts

Take two urban poets and give them their first play. Have one direct and cast the other as a lead. Then watch the misguided production wander aimlessly through Theatre 101.

Constance Wilde, Guthrie Corp.

What the fuck?

100, Workhouse Theater

This made my NOT TEN not because of the actual show, but because the artistic director gave a two-minute pre-show speech about winning an Ivey and all their accomplishments in the past year. Modest much?

Amanda Tears, Red Eye

I hope I saw this on an off night, because this was the longest 80 minutes of the year. Why is a 40 year-old woman the inner monologue of a 16 year old girl?

Macbeth, Torch Theater

I would have loved this show fifteen years ago when I didn’t have any ideas of my own.

Amazons and Their Men, Walking Shadow

If you’ve never seen a set devour an entire production, you missed the show of the century.

The Horse The Bird The Monkey and The Dancer, Sandbox

A Gorgeous design cannot make up for a script seemingly written for preschoolers.

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Artist of the Year: YOU.

Did you do a show this year? Did you see a show this year? That’s great. Do it again.

NOT Artist of the Year: Lynn Musgrave for all her humility in her recent post on Callboard:

“I’m delighted to have directed one of the shows on the list; I’m delighted to have received John Townsend’s nod as “Theatre Artist of the Year.”  I’m delighted to have been noticed and appreciated…Don’t get me wrong — it’s terrific to be singled out.  My production of Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage made Dominic’s Top Ten list two years ago.  I got a terrific end of year mention from Graydon after my last major turn on stage (in The Effect of Gamma Rays…) years ago.  As a sound designer,  I’ve received more than my due in reviews and a couple end-of year mentions…”

British playwright Harold Pinter is…

…

…

…dead.

The NEA recently released a new study which found some very interesting trends in both theatre attendance and theatre growth.  So here’s a question for you to ponder over your holiday break:

Why is the number of new theatres increasing, when the demand for theatre is not?

Welcome to Wednesday, stage suckers!

Have some time to waste while you wait for your boss to send you the expenses?  Here’s an interesting, if ultimately depressing article about America’s ever-decreasing hunger for straight plays.  Still unsatisfied?  Then check out Alexis Soloski’s idea for how to make things better.

Or you can just decide to drink the punch, embrace what’s coming, and tap dance your way over here…to the future of theatre the the U.S.A!

Here he is, ladies and gents…one more time before the holidays, IT’S GAYE!

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Hello my darling readers. The holidays have come upon us, and so has my friend from the gym. For my holiday post, I wanted to recommend some shows to see, but alas, I’m not extremely excited about many shows right now. I don’t have my usual Gaye-rection for the holiday season. I’m not sure what it is; the economy, the ever-growing threat of Project Runway being canceled, this tiny unexplained rash. Who knows? So this year, in lieu of my missing list of shows that would give me a Holiday Hard-On, I’d like to submit to you my first ever…

Holi-Gaye Wish List! (in no particular order)

• Chanhassen Dinner Theatre decides to be less boring.

• The Big Blue Blog decides to be less boring.

• Mainstream news outlets, like the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press pay closer attention to smaller theaters that would benefit more from reviews.

• Theaters that cater to younger audiences, like The Children’s Theatre, The Youth Performance Company and SteppingStone Theatre continue to thrive.

• Nobody does a production of Midsummer…for at least 3 more years.

• The Iveys gets a lot more Gay in a Good Way. There is a giant pool of talent in this state. Let’s use some of it for the show that is supposed to showcase this talent.

• Next year’s Fringe Festival is at LEAST as good as it was this year.

• Broadway’s The Little Mermaid goes up in flames. I’m not even gay enough to want to see that show.

• Somebody decides to produce Golden Girls: The Musical!

• More original work gets produced. And it doesn’t suck balls.

I hope all of your wishes come true in the New Year and I hope you all continue to be extremely Gaye in a Good Way!  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go Ho-Ho-Ho myself out.

One show that we left off of our holiday list this year, is Bedlam’s The Turducken. And we don’t really know why. The show sounds like a ton of fun. To make up for our little flub, we were lucky enough to grab some time with the author of the play, Josef Evans, for this week’s FringeFamous Five. Enjoy!

What is turducken, what is The Turducken, and does any of this have to do with John Madden?

JOSEF EVANS: Turducken (the food) is a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey. The Turducken (the play) is a musical sendup of holiday shows, dinner theater, and Chekhov’s The Seagull. Each is revolting in its own special way. Just like John Madden.

The premise of the show is a fictional dinner theater (known as “American Suppertime”) putting on their version of The Seagull as the annual holiday musical. Instead of putting on a play (as in the opening of The Seagull), these characters are putting on a Christmas-themed renaissance festival, which goes horribly awry and forces them to disband and get real jobs. After that, there are christmas wizards, Samuel Clemens impersonators, Santa standup, bad performance art, and a lot of ridiculous musical numbers. With actual dinner theater and a choice of three delicious entrees.

This play seems to be on its own little island in a sea of Twin Cities Christmas Carols and Nutcrackers. What made you stray from the traditional, no-brainer, slam-dunk holiday themes?

JE: Well, nobody needs another Christmas Carol or Nutcracker in any form. For that matter, nobody needs another Christmas show of any sort. So the challenge with this was always to create something apart from the usual. And, if nothing else, I am certain we have achieved that.

A couple of years ago (co-artistic director) John Bueche asked me if I would come up with some sort of holiday spoof that might work for Bedlam. I am always interested in characters who are experiencing failure in some way, and started working on a show about artists having to perform in all the usual Christmas junk, mostly as a vehicle to satirize everything else that’s out there. Then I saw a production of The Seagull, which I hadn’t thought about in years, and it seemed a perfect framework for the characters I was already working with. As the script evolved, it became a way to do a show that is more than just simple parody. There are genuine moments of humanity amongst all the ridiculous humor, and that is what ultimately makes The Turducken work and sets it apart from other shows at this time of year.

The Turducken sounds weird/quirky/awesome. Love in a Time of Rinderpest (Fringe 2005) was weird/quirky/awesome. Is this a result of the way Bedlam works, or are you just weird/quirky/awesome?

JE: I think it is a symbiotic situation. I get a lot of blank stares with this kind of material in traditional play reading groups. At Bedlam, I get laughs. They understand how to make the illogical logical — and funny. One of the best reviews I’ve ever come across for our work together described “laughing uncontrollably — not because the moment was funny (though it certainly was), but because they finally broke my brain.”

I actually first started writing plays after seeing a Bedlam production (Freewheeling in the Attic of Whim) back in 1999. It was crazy in all these ways I’d never seen before, and a redefinition for me of what theater could be. Since then, I’ve written a number of plays as commissions that (by necessity or request) follow standard rules of dramatic structure, with very straightforward dialogue and action. Writing for Bedlam is a perfect release from that, and a place where I can develop an artistic voice that’s closer to my own.

What do you find to be the advantages/disadvantages of directing your own play as opposed to not?

JE: I don’t like directing my own plays, so I only do it as an option of last resort. I think as a playwright, one is by nature focused on the text, to the detriment of everything else that’s necessary to offer good direction. When I write a show, I care above all about how it sounds, and not enough about how it looks. That said, it’s often a challenge to find a director who can work with the kind of stuff I write, just because it is so weird. Sam Johns (director of The Turducken) and Maren Ward are two of the best.

If you could change one thing about the current Twin Cities theatre scene, what would you change?

JE: Less holiday shows. More new plays.

Josef Evans is a Twin Cities-based playwright, musician, and theater artist. His work has been produced in Seattle, Denver, Detroit, San Diego, St Louis, and Newark, among others. Notable recent plays include Love in a Time of Rinderpest, a Minnesota Fringe Encore selection in 2006, and The Only Americans Welcome, a commission for the Sargent Shriver Peace Institute (Washington DC). He is an associate artist with Bedlam Theatre and resident playwright with the Zamya Theater Project, an annual collaboration between homeless and housed artists. He holds a B.A. in English and Theater from the University of Notre Dame, and is a graduate of the University of Washington (Seattle) playwriting program. Josef is a member of the Playwrights’ Center and the Dramatists’ Guild of America, Inc., and performs regularly around town as part of the Dreamland Faces band.

Howdy theatre geeks!

Hey, quick question for you:  Are you familiar with the Moon & Staci show on KS95?  Yeah?  Me too…I’m a big fan.  So then you, like me, must’ve thought to yourself on several occasions, “These guys are SO TALENTED.  I wonder why they don’t do more theatre?”

Fear not, kiddos.  Guthrie Corp. has heard our cries.

That’s right!  Staci, of Moon & Staci, will be appearing in Guthrie Corporation’s 12/23 performance of A Christmas Carol!  WOO HOO!!  I probably wasn’t going to see this production, but how the hell can I stay away now?  I mean, there’s a chance that Moon might be in the audience making fart sounds.  Count me in!

Run over to her blog.  She’s got pics of her trying on her costume and everything.  She spells the title of the show incorrectly, but it’s Staci…you just can’t get mad at her.  She also says that she’s “soooooo excited for it”.

Oh, me too, Staci…me too.

Apparently, I recently insulted a little something called Drew Jansen. As it turns out, Jansen wrote the music and lyrics for A Servants’ Christmas at the History Theatre. I listed the show as one of this year’s holiday productions that I wished I could murder. During the past few days, Mr. Jansen has published several negative comments to a 7-month-old post of ours. I guess Mr. Jansen thought that everyone would be as excited about the show as he is.

Now, normally I’d do something immature like call Jansen a “weenus” or an “ass hat” and say that he should suck it up and get thicker skin or simply stop reading a blog that offends him so much. But in this case, I won’t. I gotta believe that writing a musical is very hard work. It probably takes an insane amount of time. When you finally finish the damn thing, it must feel a little like your child. And if anyone said something bad about my baby (or the theatre producing my baby), I might think about throwing a negative comment or two their way.

That being said, I did want to point out one little thing that Mr. Jansen included in his comments to FringeFamous. Unfortunately, he wrote the following:

“Remember: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, blog.”

No matter how much I want to try to agree with someone, when they say something that ridiculously pompous, I just can’t let it go. Here’s a quick list of 20 blogs maintained by local artists or companies:

• Mike Fotis (actor/writer/improvisor)
• Minnesota Fringe Festival (local company — only maintained during the festival…when they’re the busiest.)
• Matthew Foster (writer)
• Rik Reppe (writer/storyteller)
• Ben Thietje (actor)
• Matthew A. Everett (playwright)
• Alan Berks & Leah Cooper (MN Playlist — not a blog, but more content than your average blog)
• Gemma Irish (playwright)
• Clarence Wethern (actor)
• Jared Reise (actor)
• Ten Thousand Things Theatre (local company — actor Steve Hendrickson just contributed to this blog)
• Guthrie Corporation (local company)
• Aric McKeown (actor/improvisor)
• Leigha Horton (actor)
• Josh Eakright (actor/writer/improvisor)
• Butch Roy (actor/writer/improvisor)
• Jen Scott (um…she does just about everything)
• Joe Bozic (actor/writer/improvisor)
• Brave New Workshop (local company — and it’s actually a podcast…cool!)
• Phillip Low (actor/writer/director)

If you’re a local artist and you have a blog that I didn’t mention (I’m sure there are several), please leave me a comment and let me know. But don’t waste your time searching for a Drew Jansen blog. Unlike all the local artists listed above, he’s too busy “doing”.

If you’ve always dreamed of meeting Will Smith, falling in love, and having a quaint little marriage ceremony in Stillwater, now’s your chance.

As it turns out, he’ll be at Southdale in Edina attending a Friday screening of his new movie “Seven Pounds”.  The first 250 people to bring a non-breakable, non-perishable food item will have a chance to sit in the same room as Will Smith as he watches his own movie.

Good luck!

There are quite possibly 8,563 holiday shows in the Twin Cities this year. Enjoy A Christmas Carol? You have at least 8 versions to choose from. Maybe The Nutcracker gives you the biggest boner. You’ll have to make do with only 3. Yes, from Christmas Klingons to Hanukkah goblins, you’re sure to get your fill of holiday hack jobs this year.

But have no fear. FringeFamous is here to help you sift through the crappy shows and pull out the ones that won’t make you feel like you just got punched in the dick. So, here they are, ladies and gents…our Top 10 Not-Assy Holiday Shows of 2008!

10. The Santaland Diaries — Theatre Limina puts this on every year over at the Bryant Lake Bowl. I’ve never actually seen it, but I’ve heard good things. David Sedaris wrote it and he’s totally gay, just like Christmas.

9. All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914 — Okay, I admit it. I would rather shoot myself in the eye with a nail gun than sit through this Theater Latte Da production. So why is it on my list of not-assy holiday shows? Because it’s not assy. It’s actually very well done. And if you bring your grandma to this show, I guarantee she will put away that ugly Christmas sweater and just give you a huge sack of money this year.

8. Kevin Kling - Tales from the Charred Underbelly of the Yule Log — Kevin Kling rocks socks off. He just does. Keep in mind, it’s a one-day-only situation. And if you have family in town, you can show them around Guthrie Corporation, which has an amazingly long escalator and futuristic furniture!

7. The Holiday Pageant — If you haven’t been over to Open Eye Figure Theatre, you’re missing out…and will continue to do so, as this show is over at the Pantages. Michael Sommers is a pretty brilliant dude and this one-night-only performance will certainly not disappoint.

6. Martini & Olive’s “Silent Night Fever” – Grant Richey and Judy Heneghan have been doing this schtick for years and it really never gets old. They, however, are very old.

5. Black Nativity — It’s hard not to feel in the holiday spirit when you’ve got all kinds of jazz and gospel music filling the house. So yeah…this Penumbra production has all that.

4. Fat Man Crying — Joseph Scrimshaw is almost always a no-brainer. Tim Uren is good for the soul. And Katie Hartman is a Fringie award-winner! SHE WON A FREAKING FRINGIE!!

3. A Klingon Christmas Carol — How can you not go see this show? Even if it’s the suckiest piece of suck that ever sucked…how can you not go see it?

2. A Christmas Carole Petersen — Tod Petersen’s holiday show is a must. It loses a little something now that it’s over at the Ordway’s McKnight Theatre, but not enough to keep it off your holiday list.

1. All I Want for Christmas is 700 Billion Dollars: Our 50th Noel – The Brave New Workshop is the best theatre in town at making me like theatre. They can probably do the same for you. But you’ll never know unless you attend this show.

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5 HOLIDAY SHOWS I WISH I COULD MURDER

1. Guthrie Corporation’s A Christmas Carol – I can’t believe it’s possible to spend $70 to see A Christmas Carol.

2. Chan’s Another Night Before Christmas — If the show is as clever as the title, I could’ve made this #1.

3. History Theatre’s A Servants’ Christmas – The Most Boring Theatre in the Twin Cities has done it again!

4. Park Square’s Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol — How cheap do you have to be to produce a one-man holiday show?

5. Hennepin Stages’ A ‘Don’t Hug Me’ Christmas Carol — Just when you thought you were as sick of A Christmas Carol as one person could be…