My Time at the Atlanta Fringe Festival

When I told people at my regular work that I was taking time off to work the Atlanta Fringe Festival, their response was, “what’s a fringe festival?” To any unaware, it’s a performing arts festival with a focus on small-scale acts, often local and comedic. For me, it was my first dive back into the theatre world since graduating. I teched a lovely venue in Atlanta called The Supermarket. In doing so I met lovely people, reintegrated myself with my craft, and found an inspiration I’ve been sorely missing. I ran the lighting and sound for my shows, nothing super flashy or that I have stories about. Instead, I’ll speak on some of my favorite shows I saw.

Mark and David Presents!

(Or as David would call it, David and Mark Presents)

David and Mark Presents was a lovely variety show focused around experimentation and craft within comedy. Most nights they involved another performer (such as the wonderful Kellye Howard) and took a supporting role, but my first night seeing them was my favorite. David Perdue performed some truly hilarious stand-up (that I wish I had the vocabulary to describe), and Mark Kendall wowed me with some gorgeous character work. Mark had been talked up to me by my coworkers, and for good reason. I was familiar with his work through his video “If Marta Came to Cobb County”, which I think about a LOT as a lifetime Cobb County resident. He had a hilarious character in a kindergarten-appropriate personification of Redlining. Redlining was VERY upset that people were saying the system was broken, he was doing his best at what he was meant to do! He was made to marginalize people, he’s not broken! The show gave me plenty of laughs and a great deal to think about in my comic pursuits

36 Views: a Story of Tits and Poetry

(What better symbol for womanhood than the one right in front of you… or rather, your front? I didn’t think this joke through)

36 Views is inspired by an art exhibit Billie Sainwood saw placing Henri Riviere and Hokusai in conversation. Both artists focused strongly on one symbol, their respective national icons of the Eiffel Tower and Japan. Sainwood, inspired by their ability to see one object through many views, created an autobiographical work with her tits as the point of focus. Through her poems we understand her and her body. What inspired me most about her work is the vulnerability displayed throughout her pieces. The joy she found in her feminized body, the awkwardness of being a fat boy, and the discomfort of knowing her body was wrong are all feelings I’ve had, but have struggled to know and express. This was the only show I saw that made me feel connected to myself and my queer community, and I doubt it will leave my mind any time soon.

My Name is Not Bin Laden

(I felt very bad when I couldn’t recall the performers full name for the first two days. I would say, “I know his first name is Osama but I forget beyond that. I know it’s not Bin Laden though!”)

Osama Mahmoud Ashour began his performance with a prayer, and then a discussion of names. His name is broken down as such: Osama means “lion”, Mahmoud is a derivative of Muhammad which means “Praiseworthy”, and Ashour is derived from Mesopotamian, meaning “lion-hearted”. He then breaks down the name of Osama Bin Laden, whose full name is Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden. We know the meanings of Osama and Muhammad; continuing, Awad means “reward”, and Laden means “soft” or “compassionate”. Translated, Osama Bin Laden’s full name might mean “The Praiseworthy Lion who earns Rewards from his Kindness”. That made me uncomfortable, and Ashour gave me an explanation why, that “it’s hard to sympathize with the enemy.” 

Over the course of the show, Osama Mahmoud Ashour tells stories of racism and identity that provide similarly powerful insight. Moreover, he’s incredibly funny. I’ll never forget his joke that, “if [he] could take over a plane with a screwdriver… [he] deserve[s] that plane!” Or him being lectured by his white girlfriend’s uncle about the Tower of Babel, ended by him saying, “and that’s why I like who I like and you like who you like” as some creed against race mixing, to which Osama thinks, “DUDE! I’m fucking your niece!” To me though, the most affecting part of his show was his final act story about his experiences with bipolar disorder. It was honest, blunt, harrowing, yet still funny. It contained one of my favorite one-liners I heard at the festival in “I have bipolar disorder which is really exciting about half of the time”. It was one of the only shows I saw that ended in a powerful silence rather than applause, yet in that silence was the same well-earned reverie.

The Phil Mitchell Radio Hour

(A faith-skeptical show which engages in the great Christian tradition of saying certain Christians are heretics who are going to hell)

I heard about The Phil Mitchell Radio Hour from its performer, Noah Bennett, at My Name is Not Bin Laden. The premise instantly grabbed me; a radio evangelist is on-air as the rapture is happening. Bennett delivers on all that premise implies and far more. Once the rapture begins you might think it difficult to raise the stakes, but boy does he. The audience is at once meant to delight in Phil Mitchell’s suffering while also empathizing with him. It is a comedy in the way Dante’s Inferno is, where you get to delight in the suffering of evil men.

Phil Mitchell is, however, evil in a thoroughly charming manner. His character is not outright hateful, but is instead a fraud. A man advertising his ghost-written book, soliciting money despite his already great wealth. He does this through Bennett’s incredible movement work, mimicking Elvis, Michael Jackson, and the herky-jerky televangelist style David Byrne used in his “Once in a Lifetime” music video. This show was (of those I saw) the highest in spectacle. It made strong use of sound cues, projection, and lighting, which is highly impressive assuming Bennet only had one tech rehearsal in his space like the performers in The Supermarket did. It served to really immerse you in a goofy version of the televangelist’s studio, and to drag you down into hell as the show went on. As it turns out, there were also effects for fake blood, And those herky-jerky movements also work well to give the impression of becoming a puppet to Satan. The Phil Mitchell Radio Hour is a show that revels in evil; both the mundane evils we see in modern religion and the supernatural evils we fear from religion.

I Blame Florida

(Me too girl, me too)

This show was a very interesting surprise, I thought it would be about politics and trauma inherited from a Florida childhood and it turned out to be about the performer having stage 4 colon cancer. The performer, Kelly Spillman, did not hide this fact. It was in the program. I just didn’t read it because the other guy working lighting/sound alongside me worked all of her shows except for one and I just never read the descriptions because I figured I’d see them anyways. Truth be told, the surprise made the show go from a wonderful semi-comic narrative to something far more tense and shocking. She was right there in front of me and I was thinking, “Holy shit is she gonna die in this story?!”

Despite the heavy subject matter, the show was surprisingly light. Confronting death is a time for some absurdity. Navigating doctors and Facebook support groups are fertile ground for funny and interesting anecdotes. One horrifying one was of someone who passed away after their stage 4 colon cancer ATE HER VERTEBRA. This led to the other of my favorite one-liners in the festival, “I can’t have my vertebra be eaten! I’m a stand-up comedian! I need all my vertebra!” The joke took a second to land on me, but it made me laugh so hard my lungs hurt. 

I Blame Florida was a fantastic show to experience. Directly after the only performance I worked, Spillman was leaving to go to the airport. She was taking her performance to the Hollywood Fringe. She more than deserves the work. 

So that’s it.

I finally did some theatre work a year after graduating. I remember seeing an email celebrating that milestone at work and immediately breaking down. A full year and I hadn’t become an actor. A full year and I hadn’t written nearly as much as I wanted. A full year and I hadn’t I hadn’t I hadn’t I hadn’t. Now I have. The day before the festival’s end I was afraid. I didn’t want to go back to my job at the movie theater. I didn’t think I could when I finally had work that fulfilled my like this and paid better. I said as much in a safe space, and I got the advice to enjoy the days I had left, and find the time for sadness once it was over. I didn’t know if I could, but ultimately I drove northbound on I-75 feeling content. I can’t say if I’ve found the time for sadness. I’ve procrastinated on this article, I’ve dealt with half a dozen other things and coped by spending all my time playing The Binding of Isaac and Crusader Kings 3. I’ve felt low.

But I’m young. Most every performer I interacted with had spent years or decades honing their crafts. They had went to grad school, or spent years honing skills doing stand-up or taking acting classes. I don’t find any comfort in comparison, but I still find resolve in the connection. I find resolve that one day I’ll move into the city and be able to accept an invitation to hang out at a bar after the show. That the connections I build won’t be stretched over the twenty-five miles I drove down I-75 until they snap. That one day I’ll look at some young, lost college grad in the same way people looked at me, with respect, camaraderie, and recognition that the kid sitting there is an artist. For two weeks, the Atlanta Fringe Festival gave me a community, and that’s something I’ll never forget.