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FRINGE FILE #1: Amy’s Guide to Day 1

A promotional image for Antistrophe to an Andro-Sapphic Tragedy, presented by Greta Mae Meiser – one of more than 100 performing arts offerings in the 31st annual Minnesota Fringe Festival, which runs August 1-11. 

Today is the opening day of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Since its inaugural season in 1994, this celebration of the weird, experimental, unorthodox, short, and cool has grown into an 11-day festival and an annual highlight of the theatre season.

Fringe is a lot more than traditional theatre – you can see concerts, musicals, operas, dance extravaganzas, intimate storytelling pieces, and more, mixed up in different combinations based on the season. While the geographic footprint has shifted from year to year – the Rarig Center and Augsburg College are notably absent from this year’s venues, for example – the festival always surprises and frequently astounds.

The scattershot of Fringe venues means that a patron coming for one show might stay for another or three, just to keep their parking – and find themselves trying unexpected flavors and combinations of the performing arts. One of my favorite discoveries in latter years was a solo storytelling show that had me on the edge of my seat, which I only saw because I had come early to find parking in Cedar-Riverside.

Veteran Fringe UltraFans will tell you that doing up a Fringe calendar is an exercise in accepting change, especially as word of mouth starts to spread about the hottest shows. Here’s my blueprint for exploring the opening day of the Minnesota Fringe Festival:

  • 4:45 PM: Leave work early to grab a convenient parking space at the University of Minnesota’s West Bank campus.
  • 5:10 PM: Park. Stroll to the Barbara Barker Center for Dance to pick up a ticket for Vela Dance’s Amber & Gold.
    • Show Description: A collection of 6 contemporary dance pieces set in a variety of outdoor scenes. Experience themes of nature and interconnectedness through abstractions of farmers, sea monsters, and beehives, oh my!
  • 5:30-6:30 PM: Watch Amber & Gold.
  • 6:30 PM: Retrieve my scooter from the car and roll over to Mixed Blood Theatre to get a ticket to Playabunga Productions’ The Life RoboticSeeing how the actors squirm as the audience input tries to trip them up is a personal highlight!
    • Show Description: A robot yearns to live a normal human life… BUT it can only say what the audience texts in on their phones. Hilarity ensues as the crowd drives the action… 
  • 7-8 PM: Watch The Life Robotic.
  • 8 PM: Back on the scooter to the Southern Theatre to catch Flamenco X’s Peña Flamenca – La Corrida (Bullfight)Enjoy a quick beverage at The Corner Bar along the way (friends are ordering in advance). Lock up the scooter and walk the rest of the way to the Southern.
    • Show Description: Peña Flamenca la Corrida de Toros. Join us for an electrifying night of traditional Spanish flamenco music, dance, and theater. Immerse yourself in the passionate rhythms.
  • 8:30-9:30 PM: Watch Peña Flamenca.
  • 9:30 PM: Retrieve my scooter, roll back to the Barbara Barker Center for Dance to get a ticket for Greta Mae Geiser’s Antistrophe to an Andro-Sapphic Tragedy. Stow my scooter along the way.
    • Show Description: A poetic Neo-Greek tragedy that is at the same time enormous and intimate — a reflection on female sexuality, bodily autonomy, and all the things we hold sacred in a world eager to strip us of our agency.
  • 10-11 PM: Watch Antistrophe to an Andro-Sapphic Tragedy.
  • 11 PM: Home to bed.
Amy Donahue
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