For all the gloom around the industry, one form of entertainment production in Hollywood is going gangbusters right now: short-form theater. And some otherwise frustrated writers, actors, and directors are rushing in.
Marlena Rodriguez’s credits include serving as a staff writer on Silicon Valley and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but she agreed to direct a small stage show at this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival, Near Sex for Work, because “it’s gratifying to be outputting things I’ve never done before,” she said. “Even though I am talking to my agents about staffing opportunities, I’m getting their feedback that there’s no jobs, we don’t know what to do.”
This year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival, the 15th edition, has a record 416 separate productions playing nearly 2,000 performances at small black box theaters like the Hobgoblin Playhouse, the Hudson or the Broadwater on Santa Monica Boulevard near Vine. It’s almost as if the tougher things get in Hollywood, the better things get at the Fringe.
Not that the big players in town are ignoring the action. Scouts from Netflix were spotted at I Hope You’re Having Fun in Hell, Dad, a satire about a dysfunctional family. It helps that it is written and directed by former Netflix and CBS development executive Adriana Martinez Barrona, and features actors with numerous screen credits, including Cinthya Carmona (Jenni, Pretty Smart) and Jill-Michele Meleán (MADtv, Reno 911).
With Fringe continuing until June 29 and tickets typically costing $10-$12 apiece, the festival allows for the kind of risk-taking that attracted many young creative-types to Hollywood in the first place. Pretty much anyone who can raise a few thousand dollars can put on a show, most of which are under an hour.
To see what a perpetual greenlight looks like, I took in more than a dozen shows during the Hollywood Fringe’s first week. Here are some that I loved or liked, and some others I haven’t yet seen that are getting buzz. Not every Fringe show is great, but even in the less entertaining ones, you can see an appealing hunger to create something meaningful. Each production typically has five performances at the festival. Some are already sold out.
+ In his one-man show Out There! Comedian Mark Vigeant plays a man desperate to recapture the thrill of his younger days as an outdoorsman. Gone are the friends who used to join him on camping trips. Now he’s set himself the task of surviving the Alaskan wilderness solo. With clever use of live video, hilarious audience participation, and a ton of vulnerability, Vigeant, whose film credits include a batch of short comedies, creates a portrait of a tragically ridiculous man who, unfortunately, has the time of his life.
+ Before Romeo, there was, according to comic performer Charlie Day, a young man in Verona named Paris who loved Juliet. In his one-man show Paris + Juliet, Day, sings and dances and soliloquies his cruel fate. It’s a meditation on love and self-absorption that showcases Day’s charisma. I was thinking while watching it that if a casting director is looking for a young version of Andy Richter, who was himself as a budding actor, a young version of Ned Beatty, they oughtta give Day a call. If nothing else, he’ll surely give an energetic audition.
+ Some Fringe productions showcase the highest level of theatrical finesse, demonstrating how this craft can be perfected at every level: lighting, acting, music, perfectly edited writing and staging. Somehow the Attic Collective nails this with every production of theirs I’ve seen. Two years ago it was a stunning reimagining of Hedda Gabler and this year, it’s And Her Children, a modern update of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children in which the protagonist is a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association. Hailey McAfee, who directed Hedda Gabler, steps into the starring role of what is mostly a one-woman show — other than a violin-player who faces a wall for much of the performance, acting as the main character’s nearly-completely repressed conscience. If the politics are a bit simplistic, the execution is on a level that left the audience in a stunned state as if something percussive had hit them.
+ Speaking of which, in the solo musical Rag Doll on a Bomb Site, dancer, singer, actor Shelley Cooper weaves a poetic spell that really does create a sense that you’re watching Austrian-American actress Lotte Lenya make her way in 1928 Berlin.
+ If there’s a prototypical Fringe show, it would be the one-woman sexual bildungsroman, in which the protagonist weaves her way through the hazards of dating to find her true self. I’m not mocking this. Well done, it can be as enjoyable and enlightening as Candace Bushnell’s original newspaper columns that inspired Sex and the City. I saw at least four of these, the best of which, Me, Myself and Other, uniquely mixes in the struggles of an American-Colombian girl who moves to strange places with her family and then grows up to face and fight through major health challenges. Star Diana Romero and director Maggie Whittum, both TV writers, manage to make the sure movements of Romero’s wheelchair across the stage a subtle but telling signal of Romero’s continued boldness.
Other shows more centered in this genre include a charming import – complete with charts and statistics on bedmates – from the Adelaide Australia Fringe Festival, Maybelline in her Slut Era; the bracingly anatomical Slap Ass Friday, in which a tampon flies into the audience, starring the enthusiastic New Jersey transplant Kaitlyn Gonzalez; and #MESSY, with comedian Julia Melim, a well-paced introspective rant which got the most laughs when mentioning a class on the practice of oral sex.
+ After their campy and charming performances in the two-hander musical comedy The Bezos Boys, well-described in the Fringe program as “Flight of the Conchords meets Severance,” stars Daniel Shanker and Drew Zwetchkenbaum stepped outside for a quick chat. Shanker agreed that it’s nice to actually be able to make something that an audience will see, unlike spending time just trying to get meetings with TV producers. “This is a vibrant creative festival where you can make good stuff and see good stuff,” he said. “And there are deadlines that push you to make stuff and resources to not have to sweat the hard stuff. They have a good system for funneling foot traffic and new audiences into your shows, not just your friends.”
Even hiring a good, veteran publicist is affordable at the Fringe. For just $250 – yes two-hundred-fifty-dollars, Phillip Sokoloff will take on a show, help draft a press release and send it to his roster of theater reviewers. “I decided a long time ago, I was going to be the most affordable publicist in L.A. Theater, that I would help people out who have very small budgets, and here I am, still doing it,” Sokoloff, 75, dressed nattily in suit and tie, told me at a stage door this week. God bless him.
+ Other shows I’ve heard good things about and hope to catch in the final week are Greek Viper, described as involving “a whirlwind romance, a tragic loss, and the lure of the criminal underworld;” The Tonight Hoax (“Twenty five years ago, a 21-year-old kid from the Valley pulled off an outrageous stunt: convincing The Tonight Show he was a foreign exchange student;” and Elton in Vice Boys Scandal, about Britain’s biggest ever libel case.
+ Regarding Near Sex for Work, I laughed so much I almost had an asthma attack. Star Daniel Shar’s ambition is to win the non sex performance of the year statue at the Adult Video News awards, the annual Oscars of the porn biz. He may be the hardest working man in the porn industry who never gets hard. He was recently nominated for his clothed work in the feature length hardcore film Birth. No spoilers here as to whether he won. But if you can handle some explicit talk about how car accidents can be a turn on, and clips of adult films with the genitals blacked out, and if you bring your inhaler to avoid oxygen deprivation from too much laughter, go see it.
The creative spirit of the Hollywood Fringe Festival is enough to make one believe this town has still got what it takes to overcome every obstacle and make world-changing magic as our proudest product.
