Fringe Frolics

Nicola and I have both been volunteering at the Wellington Fringe Festival, which has been taking place between 17 February and 11 March. What does this involve? Helping with ticketing, mainly. At each venue, there’s a designated ticket-seller, who has an eftpos machine. But most of the tickets are sold in advance, so all they need is to be scanned, and this is our job. Fairly straightforward, but sometimes people show up on the wrong night, haven’t got the right tickets etc. so there’s sometimes a bit of arranging to do to get them into the venue.

One of the main venues is Te Auaha, which has a large theatre, a small theatre, and an open cinema area as well. There may be up to six events happening on any one evening. I had four shifts organised over the festival period, but unfortunately missed the first one due to a bout of gastro (which also caused me to miss out on a Toastmasters competition, much to my annoyance). My first, next shift was at Te Auaha, where five performances were being done on a Friday night, and one event in the cinema. There’s usually three people personning such a night, which allows the volunteers to attend a show, as well as doing the scanning and ticketing. At other venues, such as FATG (Fringe At The Gryphon), where there’s only one theatre, you get to see the show(s) if you want to. Overall I did two Te Auaha shifts, and one at FATG. Here’s what I saw:

Caution Wet Floor: a one-man show, about a cleaner at Auckland Airport. For the most part, he pushes a mop around, as ordered to do so by unintelligible commands from his phone. In between, he fantasises about his mop being his girlfriend, going on a date with her, asking her to marry him, and flying away on a honeymoon to Hawai’i. In between, there’s a lot of mopping. There’s no intelligible dialogue, or even monologue – it’s mostly mime or proto-sounds mimicking words. At the end of the show, he finishes his shift and goes home, and then has a perfectly normal conversation with his friend about computer games. He’s probably got about 20 minutes of material, but stretches it out to nearly an hour. A bit weird, but that’s Fringe for you – you go and see things that you wouldn’t normally pick because they sound, well, weird.

To Be Frank: Another week, another one-man show with no words. This time, the protagonist is dressed as a Frankenstein’s Monster, with misshapen limbs, an inability to speak, and, at first, an inability to even stand up. He(it?) figures the latter out fairly quickly. He pulls balloons out, inflates them, draws faces on them, and falls in love with them. The first one he loves a bit to much, and it bursts. The second chases him around the stage. Eventually he forms a lasting relationship with one. There are moments of hilarity interspersed with pathos. Another weird one.

Women Drinking Hemlock: This one was at FATG, the first of two shows that evening. This was a proper play, with words, dialogue, action, scene changes, and a plot. I know! The plot revolves around two bars across the street from each other – an old, established bar run by two men who are complete arseholes, and a new bar run by a bunch of…wait for it…women! The men’s bar is threatened by the newcomer, and they do everything they can to put them out of business – firstly by undercutting them to the point that they’re losing money hand over fist, and when that doesn’t work (because the women make better beer), they decide to poison their new beer with hemlock. It all ends disastrously for the men, the women recover, and the men go to jail. The play focuses on the interactions between the staff at each establishment, previous relationships, and end happily ever after.  

That’s it for the Fringe Festival this year. There’s an after party next week which we’ll probably drop into, but most of the folk volunteering and working are those young types, so we won’t cramp their style for too long. Next up: Cuba Dupa and Classical On Cuba…watch this space!