Art is created within contexts. These words provide a framework to discuss my first day of FringeNYC. The context isn’t always the most interesting part, but it is important. Over the past seventeen hours, I’ve spent about two hours walking in New York from one theatre to the next, three hours on trains to and from New York, four hours watching plays, and five hours sleeping,

Eternity in an Hour

The first play I attended was Eternity in an Hour. If I wanted to be snide I could say it only seemed like an eternity. When I moved to New York thirty years ago after dropping out of college, I arrived with hopes of making a living as a writer. The only living I’ve really made by my writing has been writing computer programs. Poetry, to me, is the queen of the literary arts, and William Blake was one of the masters. When my eldest daughters were young, I often read William Blake to them at bedtime.

Plays about poets have always had a special attraction to me, so I was excited to see this play. I’ve seen such plays about Wilfred Owens, Edna St. Vincent Millay, H.D., and various Scottish poets at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and I looked forward to what this play had to offer.

It started off on the wrong foot. I had written down the directions to the wrong venue. Fortunately, the venue I wanted was right next door, so that didn’t present a problem. Once seated, it was announced that they were having technical difficulties with the projector, but the show would be starting shortly.

The projector presented various illustrations of William Blake on the large screen behind the stage. Perhaps it was because of the lighting, but for whatever reason, they just didn’t engage me. The play started around Blake getting an exhibition of his illustrations and the dialog about the pressures he was receiving to paint more like a ‘normal’ painter. This was followed by the reviewers, in animal masks panning his work. Novel, but also not engaging. It provided a context for the play, but wasn’t especially interesting.

Where the play did come alive was during the interpretive dance around the reading of some of Blake’s poems and ended with an inspired rendition of his poem, “And did those feet in ancient times” set to music in the hymn Jerusalem by Sir Hubert Parry.

I also told my daughters when they were young, that they were free to play any computer games that they could create. As a computer programmer interested in education, this seemed like a good constructivist approach to twenty first century education. However, it also taught my daughters another important lesson. Miranda described it in a piece she recently wrote entitled The Exhilaration of Creation. Eternity in an Hour could have been a wonderful exploration into the Exhilaration of Creation. Nonetheless, it provided an excellent way to start the New York Fringe festival as it explored Blake’s creativity.

My cellphone was having difficulties connecting to the Internet and I didn’t have much of an opportunity to send updates as I walked the streets of New York, passing the apartment building where my first wife had lived and the hospital across the street where my eldest daughter was born. I didn’t get the opportunity to send pictures of discarded Trivial Pursuit cards scattered on the sidewalk or an old abandoned computer waiting to be picked up.

The Banshee of Bainbridge

After Eternity, I walked through the West Village, past Washington Square Park and over to Lafayette where I planned on attending The Banshee of Bainbridge. The Robert Moss Theatre is smaller than The New School for Drama Theatre. I would guess it seats around 70 instead of the approximately 110 that New School seats. The New School for Drama Theatre felt half full, or half empty, depending on your point of view. The Robert Moss Theatre was full. It wasn’t sold out when I arrived to pick up my tickets, but it may well have sold out before the play started. Many of the people attending were friends of family of people in the play, and the mother of the sound designer said she hoped I would write a good review.

The blurb for the play describes it as being about a 33 year old Irish-American Bronx native who, after the death of his mother, believes it is his duty to return his once all Irish neighborhood back to the way it used to be.

I must admit, I’ve never been to Bainbridge and I’ve never seen a banshee. My life, and my reactions are very different than Mij Sullivan’s. However, it seems like a better description, without giving away too much, would be about Mij struggling to cope with his mother’s death, learn how to get along with others, and about the role of forgiveness. Throughout the play, various characters, including his long estranged father, an Irish priest, and a garbage truck driver he looks to as a friend, present him with different ways of coping. A tension exists on whether he will act out responsibly or irresponsibly.

I’ll leave it up to you to go catch this play to find out. If I wanted to use a tired old cliché, I would describe the play as gut wrenching.

The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival

By my calculations, I had half an hour to make it from Bainbridge to New Orleans for The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival. Google told me it should take eighteen minutes to walk from The Robert Moss Theatre to The Soho Playhouse. Yet I must have been in a fog after the encounter with the banshee, since I arrived in time to pick up my ticket and find my seat just as the stage manager started to talk about the exits.

The SoHo theatre was the largest venue which came closest to resembling a typical theatre instead of the black boxes so typical of fringe festivals. The house was not sold out, but it was pretty full. The play is five true stories of survivors of Hurricane Katrina carefully weaved together into a wonderfully presented masterpiece. I was immersed in the play, in spite of my concern about being able to leave quickly enough to catch a late train back to New Haven.

Then, all of a sudden, a scream came from the audience. The actors paused as one of them was launching into a new component of her story. They froze. Was this a device to break down the fourth wall, to bring Katrina home? Brilliant.

The house manager commanded, “Actors Halt!”. The actors relaxed, showing concern on their faces. Next, the house manager asked for the house lights and if there was a doctor in the house. One of the women in the audience was having an epileptic seizure. She writhed. A person told those around her to make sure she didn’t bite her tongue or bang her head. Slowly, the woman slumped and after brief consultations, the house manager directed the house lights to come down and the actors to resume.

Quickly, I was drawn back into the final stages of the stories. It was the first play of the fringe which I attended that received a well deserved standing ovation. As I left, an ambulance arrived for the poor patron who had had the seizure. I caught my train and got home to get some sleep before today’s marathon of theatre.

Day one of the New York Fringe Festival started off with a marvelous journey. This morning, I tried to check some websites to find that my laptop’s display has flaked out. I’ve quickly written my blog post, without sufficient editing, and will soon shower, have some coffee and hit the road again. I look forward to today’s adventures.