Taking libation at the Kitty Cat Klub last night after an evening of Fringing, I ran into an acquaintance who asked me to recommend shows and was considering checking them out until he learned that single-show tickets to Minnesota Fringe Festival shows this year are $12—and I didn’t even mention the additional $4 for a required Fringe button. “I was thinking they’d be more like five bucks!” he exclaimed.
Clearly $12 for an hour-long show is too steep for that guy, but how about for everyone else?
Well, on the one hand, $12 can buy you a ticket and maybe even a box of candy at a first-run movie, which will potentially give you two hours of $300 million 3D action.
On the other hand, though, at $50, a five-show pass gets you five hours of varied on-stage entertainment for a total cost of less than many tickets at the Guthrie or the Orpheum. So that’s not so bad—and that’s how I’d recommend doing it. Fringe shows are like the bottles of Bell’s Two Hearted I was drinking at the KCK last night: the more of them you pop, the better time you have.
At any rate, the numbers tell the story: last year’s Fringe saw over 50,000 tickets sold, an all-time record. To paraphrase Elvis, 50,000 Fringegoers can’t be wrong.
Speaking of the Fringe, I’m off to it! Today’s schedule: Once Upon a Time in the Suburbs, Damn You Auto Caress!, Underneath the Lintel, Hero, Losing My Religion, and The Folly of Crowds: A Heterosexual Buttsex Play. Whew! Read my preview of the 2011 Fringe, with lots of recommendations, in Vita.mn—where I also just posted a review covering the shows Flesh, Brain Fighters, and Macbeth: The Video Game Remix.
Photo: Mo Perry in Brain Fighters. Photo courtesy Joking Envelope.
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