June 21 Update

Greetings, all-

Another Fringe day…and here I am writing you past 2:30am, sitting on a Fringe Central couch amidst the bitter remains of kicked kegs and wildly unsorted flyers (seriously, I spend half my life sorting your flyers).

A few themes of the day:

• The hand gesture of a plane taking off – seemingly to represent the the uptick in house sizes
• Various jokes involving flyers and flyering (there is no proper way to spell that word)
• Everyone seems to be talking about crack/meth heads – not sure why
• Ever more exotic pronunciations of the word “Edinburgh”

This was the biggest, most badass Monday in LA theatre history – and you are all the players. And yes, I will plug it again: End your night at Fringe Central where the beer flows and the gods swoon.

Don’t worry, not gonna tell you how much I love you tonight.

Ben

(serious news time)

FREE/PWYC SHOWS
Thanks for all your submissions. We have posted a free/pwyc link of free shows. It’s been a harried day, so if I missed anyone’s show or misrepresented your PWYC details, please let me know: http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/learn/content/342 Got some free/pwyc shows to announce? Send an email to support – god knows we don’t get enough emails.

AWARDS
So a quick course corrections in awards … thanks to those of you who didn’t say outright the original plan was a bad idea. Turns out it was very bad – don’t say we don’t listen to those of you who don’t mind calling us out on bad ideas. I am going to make a proper post about this tomorrow (too tired now), the gist of the matter is this: We are moving to a peer-reviewed system where every registered participant project will receive a ballot. As I said, more info in the harsh light of day.

FRINGE JAM
Tonight was the largest jam yet and MC’d by the inimitable Kent Valentine of the British Invasion featuring the piano stylings of James Sherwood. Thanks to a rocking set by kings of comedy Booth & Pat, the stand up of Abie Philbin Bowman (sans the Jesus jumpsuit), the comedy assault of Jim Smallman (apparently I look like Hugh Grant on steroids…not gonna live that one down anytime soon), and more laughs and larks from BI and beyond (can I interest anyone in yet another interpretive dance?). The end was a perfect love song to Fringe (and the potential finale of our imminent documentary), 30 jammers on stage, singing “We are the Champions” to an audience of no one. That was the single Fringiest moment thus far…thank god we have it on tape.

REVIEWS
The reviews are in – check out the online versions of LA Weekly and Backstage for reviews for over 40 shows in the Fringe. Take what you can to market your shows for the rest of the Fringe. Suggestion: Print many copies of key parts of your reviews (preferably the favorable parts), and staple them to your pre-existing flyers. This is what people do…in Fringes. We have also seen scores of reviews from LAist, LATheatreReview.com, and the constant and wondrous coverage from Bitter-Lemons.com. And, of course…the ever developing Fringe Reviews from members of your community: http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/reviews

Yes, these emails are getting more and more bizarre…but there is a crackhead in the lobby.