- OTHER MEDIA
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- Everyday Fringe
Taking the measure of our once-a-year DIY theater festival
- SF Weekly
- by Chloe Veltman
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- The cable car turnaround at the corner of Powell and Market was the
usual melee of tourists, panhandlers, commuters, shoppers, and boom-box
body-poppers on the evening of Aug. 9. Few people seemed to notice the
man in the bowler hat and tuxedo rolling a massive papier-mâche rock
up Eddy Street, though he was surrounded by an entourage of odd-looking,
noisy individuals, from a guy dressed as an alien to a bunch of besuited
bouncer types with false eyebrows.
- That performer Jack Halton's Sisyphean labors attracted so little attention
from downtown crowds points to one of the best things about San Francisco
— and one of the worst. While it's liberating to live in a city where
taking your pet boulder for a walk elicits merely a sideways glance from
passersby, the Bay Area's "anything goes" spirit backfires when
it comes to drumming up publicity for one of its most "anything goes"
performing arts events.
- The San Francisco Fringe Festival is here again, but I wonder: How
many people have noticed? Home to such eccentric companies as Survival
Research Laboratories, Lunatique Fantastique, and Thrillpeddlers, this
city ought to welcome Halton's Sisyphus on Vacation and all that is otherwise
weird, wonderful, and downright fringe-y in the theater scene with excitedly
jiggling antenna. Yet because the esoteric is just part of everyday life
around these parts, the Fringe — like many of our more colorful local
events, such as the Tour de Castro tricycle race and the Faux Queen Pageant
— seems to come and go with little more than a few hangovers and some
trampled fluorescent pink wigs to prove it ever existed.
- In a way, the marginality of the festival is a shame, as it truly is
one of the most relaxing, fun, and cheap theater experiences around. Offering
38 shows over 12 days, our 15-year-old Fringe may be minuscule compared
to the 59-year-old one in Edinburgh, for example, which this year offered
close to 1,900 productions by more than 260 groups throughout August. Yet
because of the small size of S.F.'s venues and our low barriers to entry
(no show lasts more than 60 minutes and all tickets are priced at $9 or
less), San Francisco Fringe Fest performances frequently sell out. Featuring
local performers like Dan Carbone alongside appearances by companies from
other cities (like New York's Banana, Bag & Bodice), the event is consistently
colorful and comes with few of the hassles of its hectic, high-priced Scottish
counterpart (not to mention that you don't need to pay airfare to get there).
- Then again, marginality can be good. It comes with the territory of
being an open, nonjuried event — anyone who wants to get up on stage
can do so. Fringe material isn't meant for the mainstream; that's what's
so great about it. When a fringe festival starts being embraced by mass
culture it loses out, as complaints from audiences and companies regarding
prohibitively high prices and the mob scene at Edinburgh prove.
- In this respect, SFFF director Christina Augello is on to a good thing.
"So we don't outgrow the audience, I would rather have [fewer] shows
with full houses than lots of shows with empty seats," she says. "We
could fill probably a hundred groups who'd come to the Fringe if I let
that much happen, but if you don't have the audience, what's the point?"
- Halton's Sisyphus-inspired publicity stunt may not have attracted much
attention, but as a statement about the Fringe, it's apt: For better and
for worse, creating wild, "out there" theater is all about toiling
relentlessly in obscurity
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