With sadness and a profound sense of loss, we bid farewell to our friend and colleague Bryan Burgess: A Fringe co-founder, our sales director, the man running the bar and a great light in our world. Too soon we are all forced to say goodbye to someone who loved unconditionally and was unconditionally loved.

As many of you know, the central Fringe team has been together for many years and has developed a close bond. Bryan was a critical link amongst us all. In many situations, he was the smartest, most level-headed, most loving, best friend we ever had. A man who always saw the goal line with clarity, listened to voices of others, who sought to understand while many of us struggled to be understood.

Bryan was the most loyal soul I will ever know; his sense of duty to friends and family was unparalleled in my experience. Never did I doubt his commitment, his passion, his sense of duty, his goodness.

I first met Bryan in Iowa City where many of us spent time together. We hosted many parties there, no doubt good practice for our future lives at Fringe. Bryan would arrive first, party the hardest, fall asleep last, and rise for cleanup in the morning.

Community was in Bryan’s spirit. When we were discussing branding for our imminent LA project, his favorite company name was “Us”. His role in the Fringe was to make sure everyone had a good time. This was Bryan’s personal mission, he cared about people’s experience not just the advancement of their careers. We might have lost this key element were it not for his efforts.

He loved reading, games, talking loud, drinking beers, conspiracy theories, pranks, wet dogs, potatoes, family dinners, YouTube, sleeping late, his friends. He hated hypocrisy, fascist cults, and the federal reserve bank. He didn’t need much to live happily other than good times, good friends, and a place to pass out when the party was over. He loved Hollywood and never saw much point in going anywhere else. Although I often called him a human tornado of destruction, he built far more than he destroyed. His was a chaotic good, a force of nature no man-made barrier could cage or deny.

For the Hollywood Fringe Festival, Bryan left an indelible mark. Future festival participants will benefit from his commitment to their good times. From this point forth, the bar at Fringe Central will bear his name with honor. A scholarship in his name will be established for participants unable to afford the registration fee. His spirit will playfully haunt every event so long as the Fringe endures.

In Bryan’s wake, an unbridgeable void remains we can only fill with our many memories of him. I will always remember Bryan shirtless, beltless, blue jeans dropping just a little too far below his waste, pbr can in-hand, a luminous smile on his face. Even in the face of adversity and conflict, Bryan always managed to smile. It’s his smile I miss most of all.

Now we must endeavor to smile without Bryan’s face lighting up our days, to march forth without our fallen friend. To try to understand or at least accept; to be at peace with his life and death.

It’s been several days now since he left us, it’s still so hard to understand, to make sense of his final exit. I keep hoping the next day will be easier, but each day I feel his presence in my memory a little more distant. Every molecule in my body struggles to hold on to him. It’s up to all of us to keep the flame of his life alive.

Biting the bullet, closing our eyes, putting our heads down and charging into the next day. That’s how Bryan did it. That’s how he lived.

Ben Hill, Festival Director
The Hollywood Fringe Festival
www.HollywoodFringe.org

We are happy to report that Theatre Asylum has added more shows to it’s post-Fringe lineup. More ooportunities to catch those special shows you missed in June. For more information check out Asylum’s website

Special thanks to Matthew Quinn at Asylum for providing producers and audiences a second chance to Fringe.

Ben

For those of you who missed some shows you were dying to see at Fringe 2010, Theatre Asylum has given them new life this month and next. Check them out!

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THEATRE ASYLUM’S BEST OF THE FRINGE
July and August 2010

The 1st annual Hollywood Fringe Festival has ended, but we at Theatre Asylum/Combined Artform are not willing to let it go. So as is traditional with most fringe festivals, we will be presenting the Theatre Asylum’s Best of the Fringe. Come and see the shows with the best reviews, awards and audience raves that you may have missed during the Fringe. It is exciting to be able to extend such a wide range of performances and we will be adding more shows throughout the month. Don’t miss this limited run of the Best of the Fringe. Hope to see you at the Asylum.

Featuring:

T-O-T-A-L-L-Y! (Winner of Top of the Fringe & LA Weekly GO!) In this powerful one hour theater piece, Kimleigh Smith takes the audience through a journey that is totally uplifting, totally heartbreaking, and totally powerful. T-O-T-A-L-L-Y! is the ultimate cheer. It will have you howling in your seats in hysteria and clutching your heart. Kimleigh inspires audiences through her hilarious and honest story to embrace their inner superheroes and find the strength to move forward no matter what. The cheer “That’s Okay, That’s Alright…get back up and Fight, Fight, Fight!” has an entirely different meaning once you see T-O-T-A-L-L-Y. 7/10 @ 8:00 PM, 7/18 @ 7:00 PM , 7/ 24 @ 8:00 PM , 7/31 @ 8:00 PM.
Buy Tickets – $16

KILL YOUR TELEVISION. (Most Socially Aware Show, LA Weekly GO! & Backstage Critic’s Pick) Writer-performer Jeff Gardner’s dialogue-free solo comedy with a hilarious and insightful look at the insidious nature of television. It’s often said he who has the remote control has the power. Not in this living room…take a bizarre plunge into the other side of the screen and discover why they call it “Programming.” An exciting hybrid of pop-culture satire, physical theatre and the absurd. 7/17 @ 8pm, 7/23 @ 8PM, 7/31 @ 6:30PM and 8/14 @ 6PM.
Buy Tickets – $12

THE BAD ARM – CONFESSIONS OF A DODGY IRISH DANCER (LA Weekly GO! & Backstage Critic’s Pick) is an uproarious one-woman play by London-Irish dancer-performer Máire Clerkin. Amid astounding bursts of rhythm and physical theatre, this ugly-duckling-never-quite-swan recounts her experiences of sex and booze and rock and roll like only a convent-educated Irish catholic girl can. If you thought all Irish dancers were curly-haired cutie-pies with perfect posture, meet a scowling misfit from London in this outrageous antidote to Riverdance. 7/24 @ 6:30PM
Buy Tickets – $15

THE WASTE LAND (LA Weekly GO!). Filament Theatre Co. presents a workshop performance of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. Using the text, 5 actors create a symbiosis between found objects and movement to create a series of broken images, water, rock, Stetson, Jerusalem, trams, Thames, clairvoyance, secretaries, unreal. 7/17 @ 2pm, 7/24 @ 10:00pm, 7/31 @ 7:00pm, 8/7 @ 8:00pm
Buy Tickets – $10

55 MINUTES OF SEX, DRUGS AND AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION (LA Weekly GO!). Smoke ‘em! Drink ’em! Shoot ’em up! You choose one of the 20 “naughty bits” and nervous making topics and we tell fast, funny, emotionally honest stories of the pleasures of forbidden love, wretched excess, reckless living, potent language, and making a good confession. We’ve got strippers, junkies, gamblers, trannies, getting oral, getting physical, getting it over with. When the music stops one lucky audience member picks a topic from the fish bowl and joins us on stage as an active participant in the story. No holds barred! 7/29, 30 & 31 @ 9:30pm, 7/31 @ 3pm
Buy Tickets – $15

THEY CALL ME MISTER FRY, the critically-acclaimed one-man show written by and starring Jack Fry and directed by Jeff Michalski which has run for more than 2 years in Los Angeles and performed to critical acclaim, standing ovations and sold out houses across the country including a 3 month extended off-Broadway run at the Comic Strip Live Theater, 2 command performances for the Dept. of Ed. in Washington DC, and endorsed by Stephen Colbert on the The Colbert Report. Selected One of the Best of the Fest and the BEST MALE MONOLOGUE from DC theater Critics in the 2009 Washington Cap Fringe Festival. 7/11 @ 3pm, 7/24 @3pm, 7/31 @ 8:00pm, 8/7 @ 3pm.
Buy Tickets – $15

MY PENIS – IN AND OUT OF TROUBLE. Bill O’Reilly calls him a sexual extremist, and Dennis Miller wants to punch him in the nose. Solo Performer and two-time Best In Fringe Festival winner at the New York International Fringe Festival, Antonio Sacre performs at the inaugural Hollywood Fringe with “My Penis – in and out of Trouble,” a 60 minute solo performance piece directed by Paul Stein. Thursdays 7/15 – 8/5 @ 8pm. Tickets $15. http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/118963
ZOMBIÉNCE! – An Improvised Zombie Musical. With the audiences’s help, the Improvatorium Players create a unique musical tale of mankind facing off with the undead! Every show is it’s own opening and closing night as the story is never the same. Under the direction of Patrick Bristow, Improvatorium takes on it’s biggest challenge to date. You don’t want to miss this high wire act of improvisational daring, comedy, music and horror. 7/9, 16, 23, 30 & 8/6 , 13, 20 & 27 @ 8pm.
Buy Tickets – $10

TAXI STORIES. An 80 minute one-person show in which the author/actor, David O’Shea, recounts stories from his seven year tenure as a NYC taxi driver during the 1970’s and early 80’s. This is NYC of Ed Koch, when homeless slept on cardboard boxes in front of the abandoned Apollo theatre, Time Square was filled with three-card monte players, tall transvestite hookers, and midnight cowboys, and “Pac-Man” was a brand new video game. 7/9 @ 8pm, 7/16 @ 8pm, 7/24 @ 5pm, 8/14 @ 8pm
Buy Tickets – $15

NANO NATION Poor Dog Group’s NANO NATION is an investigation of the American Myth. As with many folkloric creations, the piece deals with the creation and dissolution of power. In the performance we encounter a women who, after having managed to free herself from Male-centric forms of domination, begins to scrutinize her own origins by considering her female heritage. She realizes that her descent, her own folklore and derivation, have attached themselves to her as a physiological inscription of the past and that if she is intends to explore that mythic formation she must focus on their resting place: her own body. July 9th @ 9:30, July 16th @ 9:30 and July 24th at 10:00.
Buy Tickets – $10

BONNIE IN BRIGHTON. The US Premiere of this moving and funny one-woman show about a Texan girl’s unconventional adventures in a British seaside town. This hit coming-of-age story has already wowed British audiences. Part travelog, part love-letter to a city, the show explores the idea that sometimes you have to pretend to be someone else to find out who you really are. Winner Best Female Performer Brighton Festival. Sundays 7/18, 8/1, 8 & 15 @ 7pm , 7/25 @ 5:30pm.
Buy Tickets – $10

LOS ANGELYNE. Written and Performed by Katherine Saltzberg. In this autobiographical theater piece, the personal becomes public as Katherine recounts how L.A. icon Angelyne-the queen of billboard self promotion-invaded her family. Thursdays 7/29, 8/5, 12, 19 @ 8pm
Buy Tickets – $10

All shows are at Theatre Asylum and Lab located at 6320 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, CA 90038.
Tickets are available at www.brownpapertickets.com or 800-838-3006. See website for scheduling and ticket prices. www.theatreasylum-la.com and www.combinedartform.com/bestofthefringe.htm.

When we began this whole thing we had several goals in mind, many of which were realized during our first fringe. I am happy to report we can check off two more…

• Post-Fringe partnershops between Hollywood venues
• Extensions of Fringe Shows past June

Our Fringe International Award winning show “Burton” starring the inimitable Rhodri Miles as Richard Burton has been extended under an unprecedented partnership between Theatre Asylum and Theatre of NOTE. One amazing show, two amazing venues.

Read all about it (including dates/times/addresses) on Steve Julian’s Blog. Burton plays today through Saturday at Theatre Asylum in Hollywood.

Let’s hear it for community! These are harbingers of great things to come…

Ben

Heyah guys…remember me? We just spent quite a bit of time together doing this thing called The Hollywood Fringe Festival.

I just want to say – and I want the entire community to read it – that you are the most amazing, splendiferous, hard working, committed, fun-loving, caring, empathetic, joyful, spastic, organized, soul enriching bunch of party people son-of-a-bitches I have ever had the fine honor to work alongside.

Each of you has put your jobs, hearts, purses, souls, and bodies on the line to make this happen. And guess what – it happened, BIG. No one in the long history of time – amidst the failures, the shit jobs, the let downs, the disappointments – will ever take this away from you. Don’t let anyone ever make you feel bad about your time here or that it wasn’t 150% worth it. You made magic happen from nothing. What did we have? Five bucks, an idea, and a lot of expendable sweat. And somehow, we pulled it off. Just a bunch of jerks from DC, Iowa, Chicago, Los Angeles, and beyond – proof that good friends, good times, and good intensions still matter in this often soul-sucking world of compromise.

You are all beautiful – and without you, we’d all be working in restaurants or cubicles with nothing to give our souls warmth.

And yes, I know I can be a bit eccentric in my management style, thanks for making all the allowances for my own quirks. In seasons of high stress, all our little “foibles” we like to keep hidden come a’ramblin out into our confined, collective breathing space.

You are all invited back next year. As the festival will be a bit different and we have all learned at long last our Fringe strengths and weaknesses, we may be doing different things with our time. I promise to delegate more and guarantee I won’t be such a raving control freak as I trust your sense of commitment 100%.

You made this thing for me, you are my friends, my comrades in arms, and I would happily lead you into the flaming pit of battle any moment of the year.

Stay frosty, Fringe People.

Ben