In the spring of 2020 I was excited to experience my first Minnesota Fringe Festival when Covid-19 shut down live in person theatre. There was an online festival and I did review a few of the productions. In 2021 Fringe returned but I was away on vacation and unable to participate. Finally summer 2022 has arrived and I’m throwing myself into covering my first in person Fringe Festival! To say I’m excited would be to state the obvious. To say I found the process of making my Fringe schedule overwhelming would be an understatement. There are nearly 120 different shows with close to 600 performances. Apparently, it’s possible for one person to see 55 different shows during the festivals eleven day run from August 4th through the 14th. I am not that person. I have several personal commitments (code for soccer matches, podcast appearances and non-fringe shows) that conflict with the festival. Right now my schedule is set at 35 shows. I have room to add a show or two if there’s something that I must see and providing that it’s running in one of those two or three free slots I have open, in which I was planning on breathing.
It’s a lot! I don’t know how I would have begun to narrow down that list of shows or figure out how to schedule them if it weren’t for two things. First, my fellow Twin Cities Theater Bloggers. This group of experienced Fringe goers have given me so much help in how to make the most of my time during Fringe, companies whose productions I should try and see, and strategies for not only attending each show but when to find the time to write about them as well. If you are not following our group on facebook you should https://www.facebook.com/TwinCitiesTheaterBloggers. I don’t see and review every show in town but there’s a good bet if I haven’t, one of my colleagues has. Several of us will be covering Fringe, while we’ll be too busy to post much as a group, we will be posting our thoughts on what we’ve seen on our individual blogs regularly. Secondly, The Minnesota Fringe Festival website has a lot of built in tools to help you make your Fringe schedule. So whether you want to see one show a night or only have two days you can go and want to make the most of your time, go to https://minnesotafringe.org/ . There is a full list with synopsis of each production, you can go through and favorite the ones you are most interested. Then you can view the festival by date and location and create a schedule on your Fringe account. It’s a great site and it was invaluable to me in solving the tetris like puzzle that is scheduling 35 shows acoss 11 days.
Stay tuned to my blog starting August 5th for post with short reviews of what I’ve seen and what I recommend. Don’t miss a single review from The Stages of MN, on your computer from the home page on the right enter your email address and click subscribe, on your mobile device scroll to the bottom of the page. Also you can follow me on Facebook, search @thestagesofmn and click follow and on Instagram thestagesonmn.
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