Photo courtesy Parallelogramophonograph

Frontera Fest: Short Fringe
Through 2/16, Tue-Fri @8pm
Hyde Park Theatre (511 W 43rd St)
[info] | [tickets]

Tuesday night, Warren and I headed to Hyde Park Theatre to catch an evening of Frontera Fest’s Short Fringe. I love Hyde Park Theatre (disclosure: I recently put on a show there). I also love Frontera Fest though, much like a lot of the great music regularly available in Austin, I too often miss more of the Fest than not. Either I rationalize that the festival—which is a month long—will “still be going on when I have time.” Or I realize that I forgot to get tickets and nearly every night sells out, usually in advance.

But Tuesday was a lucky night. There were seats. And like any great night of fringe, the performances ran the gamut, to put it mildly. From Just as Long, a non-verbal shadow puppet show by Natalie George that was sort of like a trailer for Juno only without a pregnant teenager, to the astounding adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Talk to Me Like the Rain directed perfectly by Lindsey Lane, there was—okay this is a cliché but it’s apt so I’m using it—something for everyone.

Miriam Robinson Gould managed to fit the entire wild-ride life story of a fallen star into three short acts as she posed and danced and story-told her way through A Life for Love and Pleasure: Remembering Mata Hari. Jessica Arnold’s The Artist Behind Closed Doors struck a little too close to home in its depiction the isolating life of a frustrated, toenail picking writer left to dance in her underwear to Michael Jackson music and converse with sock puppets and a plastic Baby Jesus.

And I was tempted to saturate my pantalones when the group Parallelogramophonograph performed Improvised French Farce. It was unclear how improvised this piece was—the four comic actors' work together is magnifique. But who cares how they got there—they had the whole audience laughing itself silly.

Frontera Fest is such a playing-field-leveled egalitarian opportunity for creative types from all walks and skill levels to have a night in the spotlight. There’s no pre-judging—get your registration in when there are slots open and you’re guaranteed a spot. The judging happens post show as each night the audience votes to send one short piece to Saturday’s Best of the Week, culminating with a Best of Fest in mid-February.

Totally worth the $12 -14 price of admission but don’t wait to figure this out later. The wait for unclaimed tickets on sold out nights starts an hour before showtime and baby it’s cold outside.