Archive for the 'Events' Category

WHAT: The 6th Annual ALL HALLOWS 10-FOR-THE-FRINGE
10 plays-10 minutes each-$10!

WHEN: 2 days only

Friday, October 16th
hosted by Wayburn Sassy
and Didi Panache

Saturday, October 17th
hosted by Wanzie and Pepe’

TIME:
7pm Reception / 8pm Showtime

WHERE:
Lowndes Shakespeare Center (Mandell Theatre/Patron's Room)
812 E. Rollins Street
Orlando, FL 32803

About The Event:
Costume Contest Nightly
Top prize gets a 2010 Fringe Superpass
50/50 Raffles
Silent Auction
Beer and Wine by Donation (with appetizers)

TICKETS: (* we are in a smaller venue than usual, so please book tix in advance) GENERAL ADMISSION.
For advance reservationcall the Fringe office at (407) 648-0077 (MC/Visa). PLEASE DO NOT CALL ORLANDO SHAKES!

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Only 3 more days! (plus Patron’s Pick Day) Looks like When Pigs Fly and Alice in Wonderland have already been announced as Patron’s Picks for their venues, which sort of makes sense. If you’re interested in supporting the Fringe AND seeing TJ Dawe, check out Monday morning at 11:30, when TJ will be performing the Slip Knot.

As we rolled into the weekend last night with some light rain and lots of folks crowding the Shakespeare Center, I noticed three college-looking kids soliciting people for photographs. I walked up to tell them about Blogging Fringe, and it turned out they were the Orlando Metromix “SHOCK SQUAD”! Is Metromix the Sentinel one, that’s going to be changing their name? It’s not CityBeat, is it? It’s one of those. I went to see what coverage they had of the festival, and it was exactly one article - recommendations based on watching the preview. Also, no comments allowed. They asked me to link to them, and in hopes that they link back, here we go.

Check out Orlando Metromix’s Fringe Photoset - lots of familiar faces in there.

Last night, I lost my festival program. Normally no big deal, but this was different - I had written all sorts of notes in my program, marked down page numbers of shows, kept my tickets inside, and started to feel like my program was a treasured item - sort of like a stuffed animal or something, now lost. I checked the Brown Venue, the Blue Venue, the Ticket Booth, and the Garbage Can too, but my program was gone. I went to the box office to get some tickets re-printed ( handy reason for using credit card or the internet to buy your tickets), and proceeded to go through the tickets I did have with the volunteer to make sure I wasn’t missing any others.

Apparently, I’ve seen a lot of shows:

1. A Brief History of Petty Crime
2. American Squatter
3. Boom
4. *Flamenco con Fusion 08
5. Galapagos: The Directors Cut
6. *Mark Baratelli
7. Move!
8. MR. FOX
9. *Mr. Marmalade
10. On Second Thought
11. *once upon a time: The End
12. Oral
13. Parlour Games
14. perfectly broken
15. Power To Pleasing: The Sex Lives of Teenage Girls
16. *Red, White, and Ignorant: An American Love Story
17. Shadows In Bloom
18. Skip Peril and the Players of the Lost Trunk
19. *Swell
20. The Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook
21. *The Bric-a-Brac Vagabond Vintage Variety Show
22. The Cody Rivers Show presents: Stick to Glue
23. The Greg Barris Heart of Darkness Rock and Roll Circus
24. *The Screw You Revue: Déjà vu
25. *The Slipknot: A Benefit for the Orlando Fringe
26. Totem Figures
27. TV iMature
28. *Wet
29. When Pigs Fly

* Indicates shows I have not seen, but I have a ticket for.

All of these shows (that I have seen) are awesome. Go see them all. If I could only tell you three, I would include The Cody Rivers Show, On Second Thought and Boom (not in that order). I would say Power to Pleasing, but it’s sold out. I continue to tell folks that if they haven’t seen any dance, they MUST go - we always have great dance at this festival, and I’m seeing all of the 5 dance shows this year. Lastly, (not leastly) if you’ve never seen TJ Dawe, Barry Smith, Jimmy Hogg, Greg Landucci, Gemma Wilcox or any of the other out-of-town monologists (like Paul Hutcheson from On Second Thought, mentioned earlier), they are all worth your time and money. This is also not counting Patron’s Pick day, where I plan to see some shows that have floated to the top, but I managed to miss. It should be a fun experience.

What was also a fun experience was getting a random contact from some folks from Rake Theatre down in Boynton Beach - they’re putting on Fluency this week at the Fringe. Apparently, they are wanting to start an all-Florida arts blog - a very ambitious project. I have about 3 such very ambitious projects in my head, in the works with locals, or I at least own the domain name for them.

The South Florida folks’ project is called, of all things, Florida Arts Blog, which is a Wordpress.com site right now, but for some reason the posts about Fringe have disappeared… ::shrug:: Something and someone to watch in the coming weeks and months. I am trying to sell them on Florida Creatives myself, blogging can come later. They’ve also got a link to Mark’s Orlando Arts Blog up there… I wonder if they’ve been emailing him too…?

Other things happening this weekend would be:

Orlando Silent Rave (see a video)
Saturday, May 24th, 5:24PM @ the Green Lawn of Fabulosity

Kite Flying 2.0 with Radio Rickshaw and Greg Barris
Sunday, May 25th 11AM - 5PM @ the Green Lawn on Drunkenness

Zombie March 3.7 with Rich Weirdos and Friends
Saturday, May 24th @ 3PM Park Ave and 5PM Lake Eola

If you know of more cool stuff, leave a comment and we’ll get it listed.

Why is May such a great month for holding events? Sure, for our Northern friends, it means the end of bad weather, the opening of roller coaster parks, and a change in the scenery as the trees and flowers start to show their summer colors, but here in Florida, it’s more like the start of the summer’s hot, humid, rainy monotony, the arrival of the tourists, time-share owners, kids on summer vacation, religious zealots protesting Gay Days, and of course, bad drivers in rental cars.

The main reason I look forward to May every year is the arrival of the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival (Thursday the 15th through Monday the 26th). Every year, theatre companies, dancers, comedians, clowns, musicians, improv actors, writer/directors, solo acts and large ensembles, exuberant teenagers and road-hardened veterans alike grace Loch Haven Park with their creativity and energy, and Orlando gives every ounce of it (and more) back to them as many of the national and international acts begin their Canadian Fringe circuit, which brings them to a new city every two weeks. Show prices range from free (as in free software) to $10, and all shows require the one-time purchase of a $6 festival button - 100% of your ticket money goes to the artist. This is one of the only unjuried, uncensored events I know of in Orlando outside of a few open-mic nights, and even some of those are passing judgment on the performers (the other best example here is BarCamp).

18 months ago, I started gathering a group of my friends together every third Monday of the month for an event called Florida Creatives Happy Hour (Monday the 19th, 6PM @ Loch Haven Park). Now, those original 8 friends are hardly in the same room, but the group has grown to something resembling a small political party representing the creative professionals and hobbyists here in Central Florida (with a group getting started in Jacksonville as I write this). This month’s Florida Creatives falls during the Fringe Festival, so at 6PM on the 19th we will be descending upon their “Green Lawn of Fabulousness” to have a beer and some soul food and socialize. At 7:45, we will be attending American Squatter, starring Barry Smith, the creator of last year’s sell-out hit Jesus in Montana. Tickets are $10 plus your $6 Fringe button.

Despite the fact that Fringe starts on the same day every year, another festival seems to think they are better than the Fringe, by starting on the exact same day. Yes, the Florida Music Festival runs Thursday the 15th through Sunday the 18th this year, at pretty much every available venue downtown. In past years, you’ve been able to buy a one-time pass that gets you in to all the shows for the whole weekend, as well as nightly passes - buying a ticket to just one show will hardly do such an event justice. The festival also has a short film as well as an art contest, check these out too if you can find the time in between all of the other events happening at the exact same time.

What other events? How about that bizarre craft bazaar held semi-bi-anually at Stardust Video & Coffee, Grandma Party? (Saturday the 17th, 10AM to Sunset) For some reason they opted out of celebrating Earth Day in favor of overlapping with FMF and Fringe this year - the reason why is left as homework for the reader. Actually, if you find out, please try to explain this one to me too. At G-ma Party, you’ll not only find loads of handmade goods, like the cereal-and-eggs inspired work of the Breakfast Bunch, but trendy t-shirts, buckets of buttons, live music by some of Orlando’s best local bands (at least those who are friends with the festival organizers), a bal-looney community pool, and of course rummage piles and raffles.

Not as culturally significant, but still worth a mention, the second ever Florida Drupal User Group meeting will be held at the offices of MindComet in Maitland this Saturday (May 17th, 1PM). Check out the event and any follow-up at groups.drupal.org/florida.

Still more to come in this round-up of events, because I couldn’t write such a blog post without mentioning the Corazon Art and Music Festival being held at the Orlando Brewing Company (Sunday the 18th, starts 1PM, All Day). As I’m writing this I don’t have access to any listings, but I know tickets are $5, and I can give a serious recommendation, as this event is being thrown by Robert and Jonathan from Gamble Records, the folks who brought us the ELLA Music Festival in October. I expect you will see lots of singer-songwriter type acts, and you can trust Robert Johnson’s rolodex to bring you some great music (and art?).

There must be more happening during the next two weeks, but isn’t that enough? Of course, we can’t forget about this Friday (May 16th, 8AM-11AM) and the Likemind Orlando coffee meetup at the Lake Eola Panera Bread. This month there will be free coffee and hopefully a few free copies of a book called Murketing - I don’t have a lot of details about it, but I know the publishers of the book are sponsoring the coffee and snacks all over the US, so they get serious props.

If I’m missing anything here, please leave a shout-out, and I’ll try to include it in the next bulletin. Until next time, have a great May!