Show: The Traveler
Company: Dramaton Theater
Venue: Mad Cow Theatre (corner of Pine St. and Magnolia Ave.)
Show times: Thu Nov 2, 9:15 PM; Fri Nov 3, 7:45 PM;
Tickets: $15
Call: 407-297-8788 - info and tickets

I didn't know what to expect from The Traveler going in to the show. What I found was something very special. New York's Dramaton Theater made themselves famous doing non-verbal theatre, but the Traveler is more straightforward. The play is a collection three short stories about people on literal different walks of life. The first two stories are adapted from previous works, namely Richard Midleton's On the Brighton Road (1911) and William Yeats' Purgatory (1922). The third story was written for Dramaton by Enma Ito of Fantoma Theater Company of Osaka, Japan. The stories really go together to make up a whole in this piece: hats off, kids.

Possibly the most notable part of the show are the puppets.

Once again I have no time to post, as Jack and the Beanstalk starts in 15 minutes. I might not make it!! Very quickly I wanted to point to a video by Blogging Fringe's friend Mark Baratelli. He made a video about himself of all subjects, and he mentions that he will be performing in Sunday night's show. Check it out:

YouTube - 11-3-06 Mark's Weekend

After seeing The Traveler and Songs of Mirth and Mayhem today, I went to Club Pita with a friend, and we hung out a bit late. I need to get some sleep now, but I will post the reviews tomorrow afternoon, promise.

If you read Elizabeth Maupin's blog today, you'll see that she was having some trouble with her blog software.

Show: Wiley and the Hairy Man
Company: Paul Mesner Puppets
Venue: Mad Cow Theatre (corner of Pine St. and Magnolia Ave.)
Show times: Wed, Nov 1, 7:00 PM; Fri, Nov 3, 10:30 AM; Fri, Nov 3, 1:00 PM;
Tickets: $15, $12 with Student ID
Call: 407-297-8788 - info and tickets

Paul Mesner is clearly an accomplished puppet performer and builder. I know this because he performed the entire show on his own, live, doing all the voices AND running the tape machine! Paul has been performing Wiley for almost 20 years now, testified by the fact that some of the puppets are built from "Reagan Era Government Cheese Boxes".

Uh-oh! Some of our first Non-Fringe content starts to leak in. The Orlando Puppet Festival opened today with a wine and cheese reception, followed by a screening of Handmade Puppet Dreams, a collection of shorts compiled by Heather Henson and Michelle Renee Bousquet. Following that was one of many presentations of Paul Mesner's Wiley and the Hairy Man.

From Mark Baratelli's MySpace Blog:

Take-aways
-get good photos
-make video and audio pieces while your show is not in performance
-pass along good material to help spread the word about groups
-submit your cool photos/video/slide shows to the Fringe Myspace and be featured
-And of course, subscribe to the Fringe blog

He left one out: send an email to info@bloggingfri

Voci Dance is hosting an experience downtown all this weekend at the brand new CityArts Factory.

All Hallow's 10 is over, Fringe applications are due in a few days... what does that mean?

Time do make the interviews!!

To you, loyal readers of BloggingFringe.com (yes, all 20 of you, and a few MySpace friends) I pose the following charges:

1. If you are participating in an upcoming Fringe show in any market (America, Canada, Europe, etc.), I would like to hear from you. Send an email to info@bloggingfringe.com and let me know.

I think everyione reading this blog can agree that a performing arts center would greatly improve the quality of life and the image to outsiders for Orlando and Central Florida. I saw over on Mark Baratelli's MySpace blog his post of a video trying to get support for OPAC. He did not make it, but he appears prominently at the end, along with an earlier shot of several SAK performers.

Inevitably, festivals like the fringe will launch a new web page every year -- SXSW, FFF, OFF (they aren't even at the same URL this year), the list goes on. Check out this year's offering: OrlandoFringe.org

Posted from Flickr

The problem with this constant cycle of ::slack off:: ::panic:: ::get donated service:: ::slap stuff together:: ::relauch:: ::cram info into a very small space:: remains that it is a major headache every year, and in my opinion an exercise in futility. Someone who knows what they're doing (and I am not saying anything against Rachel Joyce, I went to school with her and she is very knowledgable) to sit sdown and take the time to think about where things should go an how they should be organized. It's called information design, and it is a highly specialized field. I'm not saying we need to call in the big boys for this, but from seeing what I have in previous years, most festivals need an information archticture like they need to sell tickets.