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It's finally here!!! Tonight at 8:30 PM, at North Central University, my one-man physics show Schrödinger's Cat Must Die! opens as part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival!!! I am SUPER excited to finally be putting this show before an audience!!! It's been about a year since I started working on the show in earnest and now, after many months of writing, rehearsing, and so on, the day when it all comes together has arrived. I hope you'll join me at the show between now and the close of the Fringe on Sunday August 9. See you at the Fringe!

Fringe: Day TWO!

Last night's Fringe-For-All went very, very well! I was up 9th in the first half (15 companies in each half), following a couple of videos from out-of-town shows. With 30 companies up total in the evening the 3-minute time limit is very strictly enforced as the audience is instructed to applaud you offstage once your time runs out. For my show I chose to keep it simple: the description of the Schrödinger's cat experiment, punctuated at the end by the "crush the can" experiment that I also used in my trailer. My biggest fear was that something would go wrong with the experiment (which requires boiling water and steam to work correctly), and with only 3 minutes there isn't a lot of time to fix anything. Fortunately the experiment went PERFECT and the can crushed exactly when I wanted it to, plus the description of Schrödinger's cat went over very well.

I received a lot of positive feedback afterward which had me very excited! The Ritz Theatre was packed, which means a total crowd of around 200 or so people, and so the stakes at the Fringe-For-All can be high. Perform well, and people who might not have your show on their radar decide to check it out. Perform badly and even those who were interested in your show may cross you off their list.

Being in the first half allowed me to watch the majority of the other performances, including a few shows I'd seen previews of before, and overall the quality of the shows was very good. It's clear there will be no shortage of good shows to attend, the only difficult is fitting them all in (which I know I never will, especially with 10 performances of my own).

So I'm definitely pleased with how last night turned out, and I even made a mention in MinnPost today!

Over the past week or so I've participated in several Fringe previews, mostly library showcases, which have been a great way to start getting Schrödinger's Cat Must Die! before an audience. Tonight is my last preview, as part of this year's second Fringe-For-All at the Ritz Theatre in Minneapolis. Thirty different companies will each perform a 3-minute segment of their show. The Fringe-For-Alls have become a very popular way for people to get a sneak peek of a lot of different shows, enough that this year they held two, and so it's an excellent way to start building the pre-Festival buzz. I finally settled last night on what piece from my own show to do which I hope will grab people's attention and make then want to see more.

I've also enjoyed doing the previews as a way to meet other people doing Fringe shows this year. I've met a number of artists I hadn't known before, people doing some really interesting shows. That's the thing about Fringe. There are always shows that don't necessarily jump out at you based on the title or description, but once you see a piece of it really grab the attention. As we get a little closer I'll post some links to a few of the other ones that have caught my eye and I plan to make every effort to see. The unfortunate side of doing 10 performances is that it greatly curtails my ability to see other shows, but I plan to squeeze in as many as I can!

Last week, as rehearsals continued, I also did my first few runthroughs of the full show which is always an exciting moment. All the various pieces finally start to come together and you can see a coherent, final shape begin to emerge. The show is running a little long, and so will need to be trimmed down a bit, but that's always a better problem than running too short (which was my fear while writing the script). Other than that, it's now a matter of smoothing out the rough spots and tightening the show up to move at a good pace.

So we're into the final stretch now - just 10 days until Fringe and 11 days until opening night! Have you bought your tickets yet?

Last night I had my first Fringe preview as part of Rockstar Storyteller's monthly Word Ninjas event. About 15 different Fringe companies were present to perform for about 5 minutes each. Finding a 5-minute sample that captures the essence of my show is difficult, but I settled on a brief physical demonstration with the Assistant (which received some laughs, hooray!), then into a brief intro with Dr. Volt and the description of the Schrödinger's Cat experiment. It felt good to put a piece of the show on stage and see how it played in front of an audience, plus just getting the show out there will (hopefully) help build an audience. After all, opening night is just 23 days away! And don't forget, tickets are now on sale and can be bought here.

I've put together a video trailer for the Fringe which you can view below:

Also, today is the day that the Fringe Festival website goes live with this year's schedule. What does this mean? It means you can see all the details of this year's Fringey fun, create your own Fringe schedule, and of course buy tickets! So head on over today and check it out!