Having an open-door policy is a hallmark of the SF Fringe
Festival — and of any fringe festival, for that matter.
There’s an artistic director (Christina Augello) but no curator, and
the performers are all chosen by lottery. It’s perhaps the most
populist form of theater that exists. All proceeds go directly to the
performers, and ticket prices stay budget-friendly (in this case,
within the $7-$10 range), with the intent that audience members attend
more than one show. Not to mention that participating theaters only
sell 50 percent of the house up front, reserving the other seats for
walk-ups. The range of options is pretty all-encompassing, owing to a
complete lack of filters: comedy, drama, drag, solo performance,
musicals, storytelling, devised work, nonlinear scripts, and even some
sincere reproductions of classic material. If you see three gems and
one dud, consider it a worthwhile theater-going experience.
But there aren’t a lot of duds at this year’s SF Fringe, which runs
for 12 days in 9 venues, and includes 43 plays. Among the highlights
are Poste Restante, a fifty-minute play inspired by the “dead
letter office” — formerly the place where letters go when they
can’t be mailed. (It now has a much less romantic name: the mail
recovery center.) Actors Bonnie Duncan and Tim Gallagher — who
comprise the Boston theater company They Gotta Be Secret Agents —
incorporate acrobatics, dance, shadow puppetry, and stop-motion
animation into a storyline that’s as much about miscommunication as it
is about the mail. It’s apropos of their creative process, said Duncan,
since she lives in Boston and Gallagher resides in Philadelphia. They
swap ideas via e-mail, but often prefer old-fashioned forms of
information exchange.
Another promising work is The Texas Chainsaw Musical!, a
two-hour romp that documents a serial killer’s coming-of-age. The
script makes good on its title, even though it has nothing to do with
the film series. A “pantywaist runt” — a social reject who dreams
of being a superhero — falls for a woman who leaves him and winds
up in the hands of the serial killer. Pantywaist goes after her, and
wreaks havoc on the serial killer’s operation. Co-writers Chris Minori
and Cory Bytof intended to give it a down-and-dirty black-box treatment
but wound up with choreographed gore scenes and splattered blood.
If that’s not enough to pique your interest, consider these other
entries: The Frank Diary of Anne, which serves as a dramatized
blog about love, childhood, and YouTube; the German play Suicide
Me!, about a puppet-girl’s quest to snuff herself; I Prefer
Fur, a one-woman monologue with accordion backup; and Show No
Show, an absurdist, hour-long sketch from Cirque du Soleil
performer John Gilkey. Produced by Exit Theatre, the 2009 San Francisco
Fringe Festival runs Sept. 9-20. SFFringe.org or 415-673-3847
