The Fringe

fringe I 1. Aus, Brit (hair) frange f 2. (edging) bordure f 3. fig (outer edge) périphérie f; (of society) marge f; (of bushes) lisière f; ~ groups groupes politiques en marge 4. ART the ~ ~ theatre le théâtre d'avant-garde II vt franger III adj no pl alternatif(-ive)

Hi blokes,
I know, it's been a while, but I'm back on track. I've been pretty busy lately, first because of this :


...then, because of this :


...and ultimately, because of... Well, let me tell you.


The first of these stories, I'm sure you've heard of. As those of you who have read the comments to the previous post already know, I "accidentally" (if I may say so) covered the collapse of the Twin Cities' I-35W bridge for French and Belgian medias. I happened to be probably one of the very few, if not the only French fluent English-speaking trained journalist present in this extremely underrated and usually quiet metropolis of Minneapolis and St. Paul, when it occured. So I e-mailed back home to say "Hello, I'm here !" and got quick answers from several radios and newspapers.

What can I say about this tragic and regrettable event, that you haven't already read or heard ? It was for me a rare opportunity and a fascinating experience to be able to watch that closely these big American news networks deploy their troops and surround the battle field with their helicopters in a split second. It was also a challenging occasion for me to realize that I could actually do this job "easy as pie" in a foreign English-speaking country where I had just arrived two weeks before and had no contacts of officials whatsoever. And finally, it also revealed itself a new way to meet interesting people.

But this blog isn't about me. It is about America, France and their complex intercourse (sic). On that issue, what I can say that was not in your morning papers is this : the same thing that struck me during my very first week here when I saw Michael Moore's latest movie "Sicko" on the American health care system struck me again during this crisis.
And that is : the Americans can't stop talking about how their way of dealing with 'socialized' services and collective goods is dysfunctional, obsolete and should be completely reconsidered taking inspiration from European countries... Hey Sarkozy subjects, doesn't that sound familiar to your ears ?


My American readers, who have only just been introduced to the "pointbreak strategy" of our new leader...


...will profitably read this enlightening analysis to understand its subtleties.

But you know what ? I think we should talk. I mean, France and America, as peoples. And directly, without the diplomatic pomp and circumstance or even the mediation of our governments. Because as much as our current presidents seem to get along...


...many of our leaders have their fair share of responsibility in our not always understanding each other that well, or worse. Take Mitt Romney, for instance... You thought George W. Bush had done a lot for the FIEND (French Image of Exactly what Not to Do), but THIS man is a puzzling case to study, if you're trying to answer the question : do they not tell us all that they know or do they just know so little ?

Whatever the answer to this question may be, the result is here : their cheap slogans and our relative ignorance foster mutual caricatures and sheer fantasies, hesitating between fascination and condescension, arrogance and shame -the Other being sometimes so superior and inspirational, sometimes such a foil, but always soooooooo different !
In fact, I am every day more amazed by how our political opinions express similar concerns on almost the exact same issues -well, except when it comes to God and Guns, at which points we differ substantially in our approaches.

Maybe that's why I've decided to study the American people very closely and to shed light not only on the mainstream. Enter "the FRINGE".

When you google "fringe festival", Minneapolis's comes second, right after Edinburgh's -without a doubt the biggest and the most crazy theatre festival in the world. From what I've heard, Edinburgh's fringe is simply mad and the next place on Earth I want to go to : the 2007 edition features 31,000 performances of 2,050 shows in 250 venues (among which are apartments, courtyards, bus stations, you name it...) This means an estimated number of 18,626 performers will have walked the streets of the roughly 460,000 inhabitants city of Edinburgh during the three weeks of the festival.
My friend Lorna Watson, one of the finest British comedians of the coming generation, is performing there this summer again, with her partner Ingrid Oliver. (These girls are just good for your serotonin rate.)

This is Lorna in a BBC-TV series she recently shot, "Rush hour" (she's the blonde curly-haired woman sitting in the car) :



So, coming back to Minneapolis's fringe fest', I've seen all sorts of shows there (sketch shows, interacive theatre, traditional American musical, buckets drumming and tap dancing, beatnik spoken word... and even this end-of-schoolyear community-program traditional dancing and hip hop express-your-teenager-frustrations-as-part-of-a-minority show by Asian kids -a very interesting insight in the dialectical relationship between irony and multiculturalism.) Some of these shows were really good.

My favorites ?

Well, as it happens, my top 2 are London-born solo comedians :

• Gemma Wilcox's "The honeymoon period officially over" Follow this woman !


• The Roodie Pancake Experiment's "A Brief History of Petty Crime" -had a nice chat with Jimmy Hogg after the show : he's the "funny in real life too" kind.

But then, they have really good writers-performers in Minnesota as well and I also enjoyed :

• Joseph Scrimshaw's "Macbeth's Awesome Scottish Castle Party"


• Tim Uren's "Masks of the Illuminati" (although they spoke too fast in that one and with too many different accents and using too many literary references for me to understand it all) -that's the same crew that also did the previous show, among others : these guys were performing 3 or 4 times a day !


• The Overheard Theater Project's "Somewhere Else Mother: True Stories of the Unexpected Homeless", a docu drama written and directed by Nicole Gurgel, a very talented young theatre artist I met when attending Jack Zipes's class on storytelling at the U of M during my first week here.

...and more in the realm of dance, music and poetry :

• 10 Foot 5 Productions' "Buckets and Tap Shoes, Here and Now"


• Penelope Freeh's "We'll Survive if We Don't Protect Ourselves"


• Adam Gregory Pergament's "Venice Gas House Trolley"
  
  Here's Adam's website "Flowpoetry"
  
  Listen to his flow :

And that's where I met this guy :


...who works and lives in St. Paul's Frogtown artist cooperative in a gigantic apartment that looks like this :



...and is a street theatre performer and mask maker. Check his myspace !

So, after "educational week" (I'll tell you about this later), "media and current affairs week" and "you are the media week", last week was definitely "fringe week".

It all ended pretty well with us going to this semi-underground blue-grass music festival in Mille Lacs, somewhere in the Northern Minnesotan woods, along a lake. But this is a story for another post...