Art may be the engine of social progress, but the Boulder International Fringe Festival already has learned that fun is the engine for ticket sales.
The second 12-day big-buzz freakout launches Thursday in everything from theaters to bathrooms to taxis to coffee shops to sidewalks all across Boulder. Seventy acts from as far away as Germany will present everything from theater to circus art to storytelling to film.
This year’s motto: “Experimentation is encouraged, risk is minimal … fun is maximum.”
But fun can be a slippery commodity in the oft-misunderstood and easily ridiculed world of experimental performance art.
Images spring to mind of apoplectic poetry slams, shoebox contortionists and vain acts of public self-excrementation.
Not at the Boulder Fringe. It will be far-out in spots, to be sure, but most offerings are accessible and family friendly.
“The work in a fringe festival can actually be quite mainstream,” said fest executive producer David Ortolano. “It’s not the material that defines something as fringe but its location. Fringe got its name for where it is, not what it is.”
And when Ortelano says “fun,” he really means the whole fringe-festival atmosphere. “The fun to me is not necessarily the type of shows we offer, but the community and the atmosphere we are building,” he said. “The fun is walking down the street, and everywhere you look, people are buzzing around and artists are vying for your attention.”
Last year the buzz included the overblown but hilarious fallout over a Boulder newspaper exposing one of the fringe actors performing at Boulder High School as a dancer at Boulder’s Bus Stop strip club.
Talk about fun!
But this year’s slate is loaded with performances that might qualify as fun in their own right. Many are using puppetry, masks and clowning techniques, which Italian actor and teacher Giovanni Fusetti says all come from the same (fun) performance family.
“Puppetry is a form of mask theater,” said Fusetti. “The only difference is the mask is projected from the hand rather than the face. The idea is the same in that you adopt something that is not your own physical form in order to tell a story.”
Boulder’s Sophie Nimmannit, who will perform the spidery “Arachne” at the fest, said, “Puppets and masks are the theatrical crafts that have created magic and wonderment through the ages, causing audience delight and fright.” In her adaptation of the Grecian myth of transformation, the eight-legged Nimmannit uses body-integrated puppetry and masks to switch through a triangle of characters.
Other programs include the Seattle company Nebunele’s “The Secret Ruths of Island House,” in which three masked octogenarians, all named Ruth, talk of the Great Depression, World War II and grandchildren as they chart the differing paths that led each to the same remote house.
One of the more anticipated offerings comes from Denver’s Buntport Theater. It will debut “Something is Rotten,” in which a long-lost sock reappears before its narcoleptic owner as a ghost and tells him he must stage “Hamlet.” He and two pals do so, out of a suitcase. The cast features a $1.99 goldfish portraying Ophelia, a Teddy Ruxpin doll as Polonius and a bulldozer as Laertes.
“So we have some new members in the company,” deadpanned actor Evan Weissman.
Fusetti will perform in “A Pu-Pu Platter of Love” in collaboration with Boulder’s Octopus League. He’ll also offer intensive workshops in clowning and physical comedy (one is terrifically titled “Seriously Stupid”).
Most Americans’ contemporary images of the clown are limited to circus or children’s icons. Others might think of Shakespeare’s jesters. But Fusetti’s perspective is built from a more contemporary idea of the theater clown rising over the past 30 years from Jacques Lecoq and carried on today by modern masters Bill Irwin and Geoff Hoyle.
“(Lecoq) started the idea of the clown as very personal comic character,” Fusetti said. “In doing so, he took all the clown makeup and costumes away, and just left the red nose as the essential mask of comedy.”
The fundamental purpose of putting on any mask is to reveal something different about yourself, Fusetti said, “but all one needs to add is a small red nose to convey a fundamental human foolishness.”
For an actor, mask theater is also about switching from the sole intellectual delivery of text to the physical idea of playing and movement. “The theatrical clown is all about the human ability to perform by using body and motion, and not just words,” Fusetti said.
“For the audience, it’s a basic, pre-intellectual form of theater. It’s the actor as a player rather than as interpreter, or intellectual, or deliverer of messages. The messages here are in the movement itself rather than in the text.”
Buntport has dabbled in puppet theater before. In “Titus,” for example, brothers Chiron and Demetrius were portrayed as a car radio and a gas can. At last year’s fest, Buntport staged “Elevator,” a play from its past catalog, but this year it was determined to debut a new work for the fest. “Something is Rotten” will later have full runs at TheatreWorks in Colorado Springs and at its own theater in Denver.
“This is huge for us because the festival is trying to bring innovative new stuff to the area,” Weissman said. “That is what we like to do, too, so we support them in a big way. And it helps us, too, because even after 19 original shows, our scope is still fairly limited. A lot of people still think of us as an improv comedy group.”
And a lot of people still think of experimental theater as, well – shoebox contortionists. “That’s why people need to come to the festival and they will discover that theater in this city doesn’t have to be only dinner theaters and the Denver Center,” Weissman said. While Buntport presents only its own original material, none of the 94 theater companies that staged at least one show in Colorado last year could truly be described as avant-garde.
“We need fringe theater like we need art-house cinemas,” Weissman said. “People need to see a lot of different styles so they can see that theater can mean a lot of different things. Whether it’s theater, talk radio, newspapers or any medium of artistic or political expression, there has to be diversity to it.
“This festival is doing that, and we all need to support that.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
10 acts not to miss
There will be 350 performances at the Boulder International Fringe Festival, and here are 10 you might want to sample:
“SOMETHING IS ROTTEN”
WHO: Buntport Theater Company, from Denver
WHAT: Puppet theater|This sassy “Hamlet” is wholly re-imagined by the lauded, all-original local company “using only the shirts on our backs and the socks on our hands.”
WHEN: Aug. 20-21, 23, 25, 27 at the Dairy Center’s East Theater.
“SHADOWS IN BLOOM”
WHO: Gemma Wilcox, London
WHAT: Solo, multicharacter theater|
In the continuation of her award-winning series, Wilcox transforms seamlessly from male to female, from kid to crustacean, from flora to fauna in telling the tale of a young woman on the edge of her independence.
WHEN: Aug. 18-20, 22, 26-27 at Dairy Center’s East Theater
“SEX LIVES OF TEENAGE GIRLS”
WHO: Giving Voice Productions, Boulder
WHAT: Environmental theater |This edgy 2005 audience favorite, uniquely staged in a real women’s bathroom, tells actual teen stories that look at age-old issues every woman can relate to.
WHEN: Aug. 23-27 in Dairy Center’s women’s bathroom.
“4.48 PSYCHOSIS”
WHO: Kenny Storms, Denver
WHAT: Theater of cruelty|This last and most haunting play written by Sarah Kane is a glimpse into the fragmented mind of a woman on the brink of suicidal psychosis. It was written shortly before the writer’s own suicide.
WHEN: Aug. 18-20, 23-24, 27 at Boulder Co-Op Commons Community Center
“COMPLETELY SATISFIED MEN”
WHO: Other Burger Theater, Brooklyn
WHAT: Monologue |Author and actor Ryan Eggensperger illuminates America’s self-satisfied machismo in this one-man tour-de-force that has been compared to the work of John Leguizamo and Anna Deavere Smith.
WHEN: Aug. 18, 20-21, 23-24, 27 at the Dairy Center’s East Theatre
“ARACHNE”
WHO: Sophie Nimmannit, Boulder
WHAT: Solo theater, puppetry |A talented daughter, proud father and angry goddess collide. Puppets, masks and a human spider scuttle and weave through this tangled Greek myth adapted by a member of Denver’s LIDA Project.
WHEN: Aug. 19-20, 22-23, 26-27 at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
“A PU-PU PLATTER OF LOVE”
WHO:The Octopus League, Boulder
WHAT: Clown theater |Five red-nosed traveling musicians serve love songs and stories from around the world in a way that challenges our notions of big-wigged and big-shoed clowns.
WHEN: Aug. 18-19, 21, 23, 25-26 at the Dairy Center’s Carsen Theatre
“ZEN CABARET VERSION 7.0:
PLAY MONEY”
WHO: Rogue Elements, Boulder
WHAT: Experimental music performed with physical comedy, poetry, audience participation, and absurdist retail therapy |This cross-pollination of artists employs Dadaist randomness, improvisation and social commentary to form a modern-day “traveling medicine show.”
WHEN: Aug. 19-20, 22-23, 25-26 at the Dairy Center East Theater
“FLAWED GENIUS”
WHO: Yellow Belly Theatre, London
WHAT: Clowning blended with physical comedy, improvisation, piano and brassy British humor |Barnaby King plays a flawed hero who travels the world seeking to educate, civilize and improve people wherever he goes. He traverses the emotional extremes of joy and sadness as we laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of being human.
WHEN: Aug. 18-20, 22, 25, 27 at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
“PIRATES IN CORSETS,
OR PMS PINAFORE”
WHO: Pirates aRrrrgh Us, Boulder
WHAT: Musical comedy|Two men infiltrate a ship run by a bawdy band of female pirates to steal their secrets, but they get more than they bargained for. Gilbert and Sullivan are rolling in their graves.
WHEN: Aug. 18-19, 22, 24, 26-27 at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
– Compiled by John Moore
Boulder International Fringe Festival
Here are details on the festival, which runs Thursday through Aug. 28:
70 unjuried local, national and international artists, chosen by lottery
350 performances of theater, performance art, spoken word, puppetry, circus art, music, dance, multimedia, film, visual art and storytelling.
15 venues, including theaters, art galleries, coffee shops, libraries, churches, rooftops, taxis, restaurants, parks, open space and retail shops around Boulder
Tickets: Theater, free-$15; film, $8; music and visual art, free; 720-563-9950