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FESTIVALS Fringe & Howl You howl when you realize there are two festivals in your backyard inside the same few weeks. Fringing is a more individual thing…
by Frances Madeson
 he Ninth Annual New York International
Fringe Festival (FringeNYC),
the largest multi-arts festival in North
America, comprised of 180 offerings in
20 venues throughout downtown Manhattan,
took place August 12-28th. Nearly
70,000 people attended the 2005 festival,
produced by The Present Company,
under Producing Artistic Director Elena
K. Holy.
With this year’s 50-page program describing
the offerings from eight foreign
countries and 22 US states, how was I
best to Fringe? Well, geography is destiny,
so I Fringed at my local Mazer Theater,
where I saw 4 shows in succession on
one heavenly day. A Fringe binge.
3:00 p.m. Byuioo (which means beautiful
in the show’s argot) is a funk-rock musical
with a six-piece band, performed by
a 17-member cast in a made-up language
with such total commitment and passionate
emotion that everything that needs to be
communicated absolutely is. The action,
set in a seedy traveling freak show, deals
with coercion and liberation, loyalty and
betrayal. Nate Weida, 24, wrote the music
and book, (yes, even in gibberish there is
a book) and also performed on keyboards.
David Jefferson Sorrells, the Artistic Director
at Chapel Hill High School, where
Mr. Weida attended and composed his first
musical at age 14, directed the spirited,
no-holds-barred production.
5:00 p.m. The Consolation of Poetry
is a beautifully executed show, ostensibly
about the writings of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, but equally an exploration of
the obsessive nature of the relationship
between artist and muse, almost always
a case of “aesthetic arrest.” Playwright
Barbara Neri, a very fine actress from Ann
Arbor, interweaves the words of the poet
while dressing in reproductions of her period
clothes, including corset, hoop skirt
and a bracelet fashioned from human hair.
7:30 p.m. Amerika, an intellectual
bonbon by Alexander Poe, finds a 24-
year-old Franz Kafka getting reamed out
by his publisher— “Nobody in Prague
wants to read a story about other people
in Prague waking up as bugs!” Instead,
he is urged to write an adventure story set
in America. And somehow he, his father,
the publisher and his secretary, as well
as his colleagues at the insurance agency
where he holds his “day job,” all get
ensnared in the story, the machinations
fueled by Kafka’s magic typewriter.
9:45 p.m. The premise of the completely
delightful Love is in the Air is
that a troupe of hapless Estonian clowns
found but then accidentally destroyed the
sole print of a classic roaring ‘20s silent
movie. They enact it while a trio of dejected
musicians, wearing full clown regalia,
perform on piano, drums and other
percussion, accompanying the on-stage
action. The “film” is replete with misalliances,
flappers and tramps, and the big
dance number finale where everything
gets more or less resolved.
The 3rd annual HOWL! Festival of
East Village Artists went into full throttle
featuring over 200 events and 1,100 artists
August 21-28th. The festival is home
to both enduring events, like the Charlie
Parker Jazz Festival in Tompkins Square
Park, as well as to “Dirty Laundry: Loads
of Prose,” a first-time literary evening at
the Avenue C Laundromat.
The kickoff celebration was held at The
Delancey and artists of all stripes crowded
into the three floors for some controlled
mayhem. Among the guests, I spotted novelist
Jonathan (The Extra Man; Wake Up
Sir!) Ames; East Village icon, performance
artist Penny Arcade; vocal sound effects
genius Zero Boy; and elf-eared Reverend
Jen and her constant companion, a lapdog
in a tote bag named Reverend Jen, Jr.
On the roof, the never-ending free food
line twined around a koi fishpond, as the
grill blew smoke over the ramp to the
Williamsburg Bridge. The patient and determined
were rewarded with barbecued
burgers, hot dogs, ribs, chicken kebabs and
grilled corn provided by Avenue A’s newest
addition to nightlife, Mo Pitkins House of
Satisfaction. Some guests became art themselves,
having their faces and other body
parts painted while waiting for dinner.
Most of the action was happening down
in the basement club, where Mr. Murray
Hill, “the hardest working middle aged
man in show business” served as the Master
of Ceremonies to Theo and the Skyscrapers
and DEVA (a DEVO cover band).
Philip Hartman, Executive Director of
FEVA, cheered the crowd on, noting that
this was the 50th anniversary year of Alan
Ginsberg’s landmark poem. “Look around
at the creativity and diversity, feel the energy;
East Village artists are here to stay!”
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