Another year, another Fringe. I’m looking forward to this one, but before I talk about it I need to take a moment to say: What the HELL is up with this button nonsense?
“$5: A Fringe button is required for entry to all Fringe Festival shows.”
The only reasoning I can come up with for this is (1) we sell quantity bundles and want to make it marginally harder for you to share them amongst yourselves and (2) we’re willing to anger and alienate you – when you forget your button at home and have to spend $5 for a new one – in order to make you do free promotion for us.
Well, free for the Fringe folks anyway – the rest of us pay $5.
That bit of new idiocy aside, there’s a bunch of fun-looking things kicking off tonight. My preliminary list is after the jump, based on a quick scan of the offerings. There’s three specifically I’ll call out though:
The Gilbert & Sullivan Youth Players present The Mikado
We saw them last year and they were superb. These kids are talented and they’ve been well guided.
If you see something, say something
Mike Daisey, possibly best known to the internet-world for an odd incident that was highlighted on BoingBoing, Daisey is an amusing fellow who does a Spalding Gray-like monologue performance. Now he’s taking on the Department of Homeland Security.
Even if this didn’t sound like fun, this is a show at Studio Theater that would normally cost you almost twice as much. However during the Fringe they’ll accept the $20 per Fringe tickets for admission as well. It’s one more step – you need to get your tickets through the Fringe office or online – but I’ll do a little more to save $50%.
the rest of my initial eye-catchers after the jump…
Revolutionary: Isadora Duncan’s Words, Music, Dance
The Sticking Place
Unintended Consequences: Three one-act comedies
Yearning to Itch What Waitresses Will do For Tips
The Fiddler Ghost
3 Murdered Clowns
Through The Looking Glass
Poe & All That Jazz
Diamond Dead
Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue – The Oresteia
Cox & Box
A Report of Gunfire
On Sale Now!
How I Got Rich in a Year, Using That Secret
Good Enough For Government Work
Fool for a Client
Well I used to say something in my profile about not quite being a “tinker, tailor, soldier, or spy” but Tom stole that for our about us page, so I guess I’ll have to find another way to express that I am a man of many interests.
Hmm, guess I just did.
My tastes run the gamut from sophomoric to Shakespeare and in my “professional” life I’ve sold things, served beer, written software, and carried heavy objects… sometimes at the same place. It’s that range of loves and activities that makes it so easy for me to love DC – we’ve got it all.
I think Cousin-of-We-Love-DC Jessi Baden-Campbell is in Jerry Springer: The Opera.
The $5 button makes me not want to see anything. I was an avid supporter of Fringe since it began, telling everyone I knew to just see SOMETHING (in the hopes they’d then see more). In fact, I ended up buying multiple “10 packs” with friends each year.
But this feels like a big “F.U.” I’d understand if the button was an extra option: “give us another $5 and you get discounts around town!” Hell, I’d even consider buying it. But don’t force it on me. Besides, I stopped wearing buttons in junior high and my job doesn’t require Flare.
Ticket prices are already high enough for shows that are often a gamble. But now an extra $5 (or more, if I lose the damned button?) for a show that’s as likely to be sucky as it is to be sublime? No thanks. I’ll just pay the full price (or usher, or use my wiles) at Woolly and Studio for the only shows that are calling me.
p.s. – in my anger, I forgot to specify that’d be the “Mike Daisy” and “Jerry Springer” that look like fun.
Also, I know some folks in a Fringe show that are just as annoyed by the buttons. They’re planning to buy a bunch to have on hand for people who are only coming to their show. Smart move.
You won’t need a button for Mike Daisey–he’s not in a fringe venue.