This year I both tied and surpassed my previous Minnesota Fringe records. Last year I saw 50 shows. This year I saw 50 shows, but I attended 52 performances, 2 were repeats. That is also something new this year, I’ve never attended a Fringe show twice before. For me Fringe is all about choices, there are more shows in the Minnesota Fringe festival each year than there are time slots in which to see them. In any other year the thought of seeing a repeat of a show rather than something new would have been unheard of. That’s how good the two shows I saw twice were, their greatness outweighed the possibility of seeing two unique shows.
The two I repeated were Allison Vincent’s Daddy Issues and Emily Boyajian Transition: A Story of Two Trans People Becoming Themselves. The thing these two shows had in common was they both brought tears to my eyes both times I saw them. When it came time to award The Stages of MN Best in Fest Award I decided the only thing I could really live with was to award it to both shows. Daddy Issues will be part of the Fringe Encore series at The Phipps Center for the Arts in WI. The performance is 7:00 PM Saturday August 17th at 7:00 PM go here for tickets to Daddy Issues and the four other Fringe shows https://thephipps.org/events/fringe . Transition: A Story of Two Trans People Becoming Themselves we can only hope will get a remount at some point. I’d love to see a group like Out Front Minnesota or Transforming Families of Minnesota utilize this wonderful creation as entertainment at one of their fundraisers. Boyajian’s orchestral score and inspirational lyrics would be very appropriate for a black tie affair. One can hope and dream.
I also want to list the next ten best shows of this years festival, these are in alphabetical order:
Next 10 Best:
- 5 X 5
- A Horse Walks Out Onto a Stage and Dies
- A Murder on the Great Grimpen Mire Express
- Beanie Baby Divorce Play
- Good Ones
- Juliet & Juliet: Improvised Shakespeare
- Love Lies a Bleeding
- Pants on Fire
- Put a Needle in Me
- The Peter Pan Cometh
Every year I continue on this Blogging journey I find myself connecting more and more with the theater community. Minnesota Fringe is such a great festival for fostering those artist and audience relationships. The person you just saw in a show is sitting with you at the next one. But it’s also a great time to connect with fellow theatergoers. I appreciate all of the artists who took a little time to talk with me throughout the festival about their shows and what projects they have coming up. I loved talking to other audience members about what they had seen and what they thought I should see. I have a special warm place in my heart for those who came up and introduced themselves as readers of my reviews. Sometimes it feels like we do this in a vacuum, I try and avoid looking at my blog stats until end of year and then just to ensure that the reach is growing. So it means an awful lot when people come up and let me know they are reading and seeing shows based on my recommendations. That is a situation that has been tending to happen at more and more shows and Fringe led to the most per 11 day span ever. So faithful readers whether I met you at a show or at Fringe or haven’t yet, I thank you.
To end here is a link to the Minnesota Fringe Golden Lanyard Award Winners and some photos from this years Minnesota Fringe Festival. I just wish I’d gotten more Photos, I always forget to do that. https://minnesotafringe.org/awards
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