FAQ: Fringe Answered Questions
24 shows, 120 performances, multiple venues, and after parties every night can make any virgin Fringer overwhelmed. But don’t let the variety and surging schedule scare you away, strap on that bee pin and see some Fringe. Starting off the festival is a free preview party tonight (8 p.m. at 7 Stages, free to all) that will offer eager audiences snippets from each show. Bring a pen and some paper and mark your not-to-miss shows for the rest of the week. Still feeling those anxiety rooted hermit-like tendencies? No fear, Chris Alonzo, marketing manager for the Atlanta Fringe Festival, is here. And he is offering up an insiders guide to AFF.
Q. The Atlanta Fringe Festival is opening tonight with a free preview party at 7 Stages to help audiences choose what shows not to miss. What are the varying factors that will influence these choices?
A. Well, everybody’s got their thing, which is what’s so nice about a Fringe: whoever you are there’s gonna be something for you in these 24 completely different shows. For me, personally — I’d be looking for whoever had the craziest, weirdest three minutes. If it could conceivably be an LSD fever dream, that’s the show for me. It’s the Fringe! Who gives a shit? Go for it.
Other people maybe would prefer something more subtle, or just straight up funny, or a dance piece centered entirely around words being spoken. Whatever it is we’ve got you covered.
Q. The Atlanta Fringe Festival is taking place at four locations: 7 Stages, Horizon Theater, Theatrical Outfit, and The Village Theatre. How did the festival choose where to hold each show?
A. The biggest concern is location: in an ideal world all of our spaces would be on the same block and people could just cross the street to go from show to show. That’ll be easier to nail down once we get more established, but we’re more than happy with the spaces we’re working with in only our second year. We thought we were at least two or three years away from being able to have all of the spaces within 5-10 minutes of each other, like we do this year.
Secondary concern is just whether or not they get it, whether they’re excited about this mission of creating a tighter community of artists in Atlanta as opposed to just renting a room to us. Our venue sponsors are definitely on board, especially with a venerated place like 7 Stages opening up their doors for opening and closing night parties and hosting Fringe HQ. They get that a real theatre community involves so much more than just whatever happens between the beginning and end of a show.
Q. What are the insiders highlights for this years AFF?
A. We love all of our children equally, of course. But some definitely stick out. Jett Backpack, in particular, if only because they’ve been at the Orlando Fringe right before coming to Atlanta, so all this great press is pouring in. Everyone should do another Fringe as a warm-up before coming to ours. (I kid Orlando. Orlando Fringe is so great.)
A few weeks ago I started noticing all these mentions on Twitter where DaVida Chanel was recruiting local rappers to perform in Hip Hop is Alive: the Musical. I love that. Same with Apocalypse Clown from Seattle, who were looking for local musicians to feature as characters (something that the guys in Krog! are already doing locally.) Thimblerig Circus and Rachel Teagle are local favorites — Rachel has moved, but her work still gets produced at Serenbe Playhouse — and their shows are guaranteed good times.
The most fun insidery thing I can offer is that Funda Yilmaz of Love, Peace and Joy Productions initially had a long list of requests for the condition of their performance space, and then a few weeks later chucked them all and asked if they could perform outside instead. We couldn’t do that, for a number of reasons, but I love the open-mindedness and spontaneity of that mindset. To us, theatre is best when artists remember that they are God and there are no rules.
Q. What with the buttons with the bees on them? How do interested audience members receive them? And why should they never take them off?
A. The buttons are an easy way for us to keep track of unique visitors: everybody who walk in the door for the first time needs a button. It’s also pretty much the only revenue we keep as a festival for operational costs: everything else goes to the artists and the venues (mostly the artists.)
You can grab them for three bucks at any show or during our Fringe Central office hours at 7 Stages. And then don’t take them off because there are so many discounts you get for wearing them! Plus there’s just the fun of rolling up at the bar afterwards and seeing other total strangers also wearing the button. It lets you know immediately, “This stranger next to me at the bar has exceptional taste in entertainment.”
Q. Each night there is an after party at either Joystick Gamebar or Matador Cocina, why should audience members keep the party going after the shows?
A. Because that’s the fun part! Our big emphasis is on community, especially since performances like this, in smaller houses with generally smaller casts, are so intimate. You spend an hour with these people, sometimes with only one or two performers, and you walk out feeling closer to them. And then what? You go home? Pffft. It’s such a nice thing, on both sides, to have that conversation that started in the theatre keep going in a more relaxed environment. I saw it firsthand last year both as a performer and audience member. It was so cool to watch those boundaries between performers and audience melt, and we just became a bunch of people hanging out in Atlanta who really dig art.
