Fort Worth Fringe Festival (9/9/2022) @ Fort Worth Community Arts Center

—Jan Farrington

First impressions of the 6th Annual Fort Worth Fringe Festival? Some crisp, compelling writing and fine performances, mixed with several…works in progress? That’s pretty normal, really. Presented by the Theatre Network of Texas (Dennis Yslas, Executive Director) and Arts Fort Worth (Marla Owen and the staff of the old Modern Art Museum, now the Fort Worth Community Arts Center), this year’s festival has nine entries, mostly from the D-FW area or other parts of Texas (plus Minnesota and New York). After a two-year pandemic break, the Fringe returned in 2021—and will take a while, I think, to reach the variety and quality it had attained in its early years.

However, DAY ONE was plenty interesting enough to keep me watching all through the afternoon and evening. Here are some notes about what I saw on Friday 9/9/2022, in totally random order:

I Really Don’t How How to Say This… is a clever concept from playwright Charles Jackson Jr. of Poetic Thespian Productions. (He’s involved also with Fort Worth’s Jubilee Theatre and Amphibian Stage.) It’s a sci-fi-ish story about Megan (Christina Cranshaw) who is too scared to break things off with her childhood best friend Natalie (Kelly Stewart). Fortunately, the near-future has a “service” that will scan your brain and make a digital version of…whoever (friend, parent, spouse, et al.). It’s just practice, with that person’s voice coming from a speaker—a way to feel braver, and ready for the “tough talk.” What could go wonky with that? The dialogue feel nicely natural, and both Cranshaw and Stewart give us lively, distinct characters: Megan unsure and curled inward, Natalie clearly the arms-wide Alpha of their twosome. Though Megan only hears her, Natalie appears to us as a silhouette behind a screen, and Stewart’s restless hair-flipping, hand swoops (and interruptions of Megan) tell us why her friend might be feeling a bit squashed. To tell much more about the plot would spoil things—but it was a bright point of the day’s lineup at the Fringe.

Funny and booming Brad McEntire, playwright and artistic director of Audacity Theatre Lab, came in with a character I won’t soon forget in Robert’s Eternal Goldfish—a ranting gent who told us (repeatedly) how much he hates “so many things.” Frankly, he seemed to enjoy it, tracing it all back to boyhood, and being abandoned alone in the ocean when the snorkel boat left him behind. And somehow, that long-ago event does feel connected to the dreadful curmudgeon he’s become, and to the goldfish he almost-accidentally buys in an oddball pet store. McEntire keeps this fishy story swimming along as Robert tries (and fails) to deep-six his new pet. His dreams only get weirder night after night, and (gasp) he’s forced to interact with other humans. To know more…buy a ticket.

Another great character—who turned out to be the playwright and actor as well—appears in Shattering by Juhanna Rogers. “It’s hard to tell a Black woman’s story,” she says—but for Rogers, who swings into a rhythmic, dancing, poetic telling of her own life from girlhood to PhD, the hard parts are what make the story worth the telling. The “shattering” originates in her early experience of a mirror breaking into shards of glass that leave her injured. The healing is both physical and spiritual—her foot mends, but it takes longer for her to re-assemble her life and learn to “fall in love with all of me”—the girl, teen, and woman she sees in that reflected self. Shattering is about breaking free, about seeing yourself through your own eyes, not through other people’s perceptions.

In theater, “Red Nose” work is a specific kind of clowning (not the slapstick circus sort) that uses “the smallest mask in the world,” the round red nose. The Maverick Theatre Company (originating at UT Arlington) puts the technique to work with Red Knoz…AT NITE! (or in the daythyme!), directed by Felicia Bertch. I see where they’re going, and the clown characters created have a sweet, funny charm, and a childishness in their play and “foolishness” that’s endearing. They need to pare down the length of the show and vary the pace, in my opinion—but there’s something valuable in this series of scenes, however tentative some feel at present. There’s a twosome making a heart (one arm each) overhead to the “LOVE (is all that I can give to you)” song…a stripey clown’s endless tries at launching a paper airplane, and another’s rush to pick up and hide the papers involved. (Is he saving his friend from frustration—or just teasing?) One clown leaves a “breadcrumb trail” of licorice whips across the stage, a lure (we think) for another character—who comes along, picks them up, and sucks happily. A highly unfair “SPELL BEE” is held: one character gets “cat” and the other “bologna.” And an especially quiet clown in a horned (Wagnerian?) headdress comes on, eyeing us steadily as she sits, pulls a pile of oranges from her bag, and tries to stack them improbably high. It’s oddly hypnotic. I wasn’t sure quite what to make of the show, but my end thought was that it did feel like watching children’s play and friendships: You’re never quite sure what’s going on, and which ones are friends at the moment. But you keep watching.

The advance blurb for Julia Nelson’s one-woman Henry V made me jump to see it—but the piece needs work. It’s clear this energetic young actor/writer knows her Shakespeare : her company, Bare Bones Shakespeare, has produced Hamlette, the Princess of Denmark, and five-actor touring productions of Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. (I would have loved to see their blazing one-hour Caesar, done at the Dallas Public Library last spring!) Yet I think, (and Nelson may well ask “Who asked you?”) that this particular piece needs another “cut” (working with another Shakespeare-wise partner always helps) that keeps more of the original text. In Henry V there’s too little straight Shakespeare, and too much “telling us” the play in a modern voice. On a technical note, depending on a cell phone to deliver the dialogue of the play’s many “other” characters simply didn’t work on the day I attended. I checked with younger ears than mine, and though Nelson was close enough to hear it herself, we didn’t catch more than a few words from the phone. There must be a simple fix for this problem; the concept itself is fine, and in fact rather clever. It’s a grand idea to woman-up just about everything Shakespeare wrote…and I hope to see more of Bare Bones Shakespeare.

STAY TUNED for more reviews from the Fort Worth Fringe—DAY TWO! And don’t worry, if you missed anything on Day 1, each show has several performances through Sunday, so odds are good you can catch it later!