Austinist Interviews Frontera, Part II

Judges

Austinist: There’s something I’ve always wondered about. The judges – are they the same people every week?

Ken: We just drag people off the street. (Austinist laughs.)

Christi: They’re panelists, we call them, and no, they’re not the same every week, and not the same from year to year. I generally approach people who are active in the community, sometimes active as audience members, community members, actors, writers, directors, designers, and every week there’s a different panel that comes to every show, Tuesday through Friday. And they choose the four – this year it will be the four – that they would most like to see again. And then there’s a panel that does every Saturday.

K: One panel does all of the Saturdays.

Short Fringe Logistics & Crew

A: Another thing I’m curious about, from kind of a director or actor’s perspective, the stage is currently completely bare. Short Fringe must have a lot of logistics. Is it sort of akin to UIL where people have their pieces, they bring ‘em in, they do their thing, they gotta get out?

C: It is kind of akin to that, although we do all the putting up and taking down, unless it’s very complex. We provide them with kind of unit set pieces if you will. Some cubes, benches, a variety of chairs, there’s a couch, a love seat, and then anything beyond that they have to provide because obviously we can’t store everything. There’s not enough room for that.

A: No way.

C: So when they come we go through a really – and I have to give Vicky and Annie all the credit for this; they created a machinery that makes this thing work – when people come for their techs, they sit in the lobby, they get a little speech about everything that’s going to happen, they come in, they put all their stuff in the dressing room, they come back here. The actors show the ASM where things are going to go, where their entrances and exits are, and the director sits here and has a paper tech, and then we throw up the cues and they say “Yeah I like that” or “No I don’t like that” and go through that process, and we do a cue-to-cue, and then they run it. And hopefully we discover everything we need to know about that show during that period of time. But our ASMs do all the setup and the strike unless it’s something that’s really complicated, or if there’re valuable musical instruments, or something like that.

A: Right.

C: And on the night of their show, they have to come and have all their props in boxes labeled, bring their set pieces if they have additional ones, get them on stage by 7:00, our ASM will arrange things backstage according to the order of the evening’s shows, and then we rock & roll.

A: So for the audience, they will see five 25-minute pieces…is there one intermission?

C: Yes.

A: So sometimes between shows the audience will see a lot of scurrying going on.

C: We tell people that they need to have no more stuff than can be set up and struck in 5 minutes. And it’s often less than that. Our people – we really train them well. They don’t spike anything – they do it all by length of feet, they get it all walked off. They take copious notes, and get things exactly the way people want. And they have the opportunity to…we’ll say, “This is set, do you like it?” And they say “Okey dokey” or “Can you move that stage left an inch?” and they’ll run out there and do that.

A: And booth crew is also…

C: All us.

A: ‘Cause I’ve seen some pretty technically….

K: Challenging?

A: Yeah! (Ken laughs.) And that’s pretty impressive that you have the same booth crew doing some shows that are really straightforward, and others that are pretty tough.

C: We split the crews. We have an odd crew and an even crew, and one crew works weeks 1, 3, and 5 and the other works weeks 2 and 4.

Playwrights

A: Okay.... While I’m picking y’all’s brains about insiders, can you tell us anything about the Katherine Catmull TBA slot? (Christi laughs.) Is that the name of her show, or is it a mystery…?

K: It’s a play that deals with ghosts.

A: Ah, so is TBA the name of the show…?

K: No, she was still working on a title when she turned that in.

A: Did she write it?

K: Mm-hm.

A: And is in it?

K: Yes, both.

C: This is the third year, I believe, that Kathy’s doing a solo piece, and they’re always fantastic.

K: And the first one she did just recently got published in a book, Monologues for Women by Women, which has a lot of Austin writers in it, as a matter of fact.

C: A lot of Script Works writers have been included in those things over the years: Dan Dietz, John Walch has pieces in Monologs for Men by Men.

K: I think there’re almost ten Austin playwrights in this latest edition.

A: Is it locally published?

K: Nope.

A: So it just happens that we have a lot of really creative playwrights in this town…which we certainly do.

Nakedness

A: What is Naked Wednesday? (Laughs.)

(Long pause.)

C: I have no idea.

A: There’s some graffiti in your booth that says “Naked Wednesday Frontera Fest 2003.”

K: Oh, that year there must have been more than one show…must have been one of M’s plays….

C: M...I’m sure…he routinely has naked people in his shows.

K: And I think that particular night, because of the graffiti, there must have been more than one that night.

A: Can we look forward to any nakedness this year? Do we know?

C: We don’t generally know the content until tech week. And we don’t set the order for the evening until we’ve seen all the techs, because as many questions as you ask people, “Are you going to spill anything? Do you have any whatever…?” and then you see their run through, and there’s going to be ten pounds of glitter on the stage, and you’re like, “Thought you weren’t going to…?” and they’re like, “Oh, we forgot about the glitter!” So we see everything, and we determine what’s going to make the biggest mess, what’s going to take the most setup, and we also try to arrange the evening a little bit by content.

A: What do you mean by content?

C: As far as not having all of the solo pieces in the first act, and the 8-person shows in the second act, or all the music here, try to mix it up a bit so there’s a little more even-handed variety throughout the evening.

A: You know what really annoys me. When I’ve come to Frontera Fest shows because I have a friend who is doing something, I’ll come at the start of the evening, and even if my friend has their performance before intermission, I stay. Is it hard on the actors, or not?

K: Oh, that people leave? Uhhh, wouldn’t you say 80% stay?

C: Yeah. The majority of people do stay. Sometimes we’ll have something, like for instance in the past we’ve had school groups come in, we’ve got like ten 5th grade girls doing a show on stage, and sometimes it’s better…their folks will get up and leave, and that’s a pretty big group leaving, but we have to tell them, we’re not responsible for the content of the other shows. Or you should know that there’s going to be nudity on the same night as your children…. (Austinist laughs.) You never know! But sometimes it is “I just came to see my friend and I’m outta here now,” but that doesn’t happen all that much.

A: That’s good.

K: But yeah, I’m sure that it bums people out. You’ve got a full house, but by the time you get up there, “Hey, where is everybody?”

* Image (c) Hyde Park Theatre