Of Fantastic Fest and Frankenstein: Is Austin Weirder Than We Thought? [Theater]
After another successful year,
Fantastic Fest is knocking on the door of being -- against all odds -- one of the world's most important film festivals. That's not just hometown pride talking, either. That shit comes from Variety and Texas Monthly. But there's more to it than just movies, and the recently concluded 2010 edition of the festival was a fine example: In addition to the film portion of the festival, attendees buzzed about the Fantastic Arcade, which featured independent games from around the world at the Highball. Less heralded, however, was the new inclusion of theater as part of the Fantastic Fest program.
It wasn't just celebrity ringers, either. While Jeffrey Combs and Stuart Gordon's Nevermore filled the Alamo Drafthouse for four nights, local live-action radio drama The Intergalactic Nemesis was one of the festival's best-received programs, garnering a 4.0 user rating on the fest's website and positive reviews as part of festival coverage from sites like the geek bible Ugo.com. In addition, the movies-and-improv group Master Pancake played a Friday night showing of Independence Day that featured a live performance from Bill Pullman. That's one sort of nebulous theatrical performance, a live-action comedy show, and an honest-to-god play at a major film festival. And while theatermakers around the country lament their dwindling audience, nobody at Fantastic Fest was trying to figure out how to make theater relevant to a new crowd -- they were too busy playing to packed houses.
All of which leads to the question: Is Austin a better audience for theater than it gets credit for? Are local audiences willing to take chances that theatermakers around the country are desperately trying to figure out how to get their people to embrace? If the work is of the same caliber as Nevermore and The Intergalactic Nemesis, and finding it doesn't require developing a whole new set of interests, could the same packed houses that gushed over those performances find themselves thrilled by a show like, say, Trouble Puppet's Frankenstein? In short, could Austin theater capture some of the massively popular Fantastic Fest magic by creating theater that appealed to the same audiences?
Consider Frankenstein, the comedy/horror regularly re-animated and revived by Trouble Puppet mad scientist Connor Hopkins. The puppet show would be a perfect addition to Fantastic Fest: It's a genre piece, like most of the festival's films, games, and performances. It's fastidious in its aesthetic consistency and production value (more so than your average Troma-inspired South Korean revenge picture, even). It's funny when appropriate, takes its story seriously even while it pokes fun at the tropes, and is packed with novelty -- when was the last time most film festival attendees saw a live puppet show by a Henson Foundation-supported company? In short, it's high quality work that speaks to a very specific crowd, and it's the same crowd as Fantastic Fest. And while Frankenstein didn't struggle to find an audience for its most recent run at the Salvage Vanguard Theater, it's clear that there'd be potential for it to break to an even bigger crowd, if a festival like Fantastic Fest decided to include it in the programming.
There are a lot of reasons why Austin's lucky to be home to an event like Fantastic Fest. The relationship's symbiotic, too, of course -- the Nerd Universe wouldn't be quite so likely to descend on, say, Waco for eight days a year. But an overlooked part of what makes Fantastic Fest such a uniquely Austin event is its embrace of homegrown creativity in fields that are outside its mandate as a film festival. Yeah, they'll come for Buried and RZA/Elijah Wood karaoke, but they'll stay for The Intergalactic Nemesis. Maybe next year, that'll be Frankenstein, or whatever other bits of exciting, genre-inspired weirdness Austin theater coughs up over the next eleven months. If Fantastic Fest is willing to look to theater as a new way to delight an audience that's constantly in the pursuit of awesomeness, maybe the real question is: Can Austin theatermakers step up to the task?
