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Green Bay is a Weird Town (He means that in the good way!)
(Derek Lee Miller in Bay Creek at Green Bay Fringe 2025. Photo by Arnaldo Utera)
So there’s this guy I know pretty well named Derek Lee Miller. I’ve done some shows with him and I’ve watched him build some fun solo stuff. You’re probably most familiar with him from Fringe shows with Transatlantic Love Affair and The Winding Sheet Outfit. Derek performed at the Green Bay Fringe in their first two years – 2024 and 2025 – and he’ll be returning this year as part of a special choice award he won last year.
Perhaps you’d like to join him? Applications for Border Buddies closes this week on January 15. If you win a spot, you’ll get a guaranteed slot at both Minnesota and Green Bay Fringes! (Applicants must reside in either Minnesota or Wisconsin. (Green Bay Fringe runs July 16 - 19.) Still on the fence? I asked Derek to tell us a little about Green Bay–both the festival and the town!
Hey, my dude. Thanks for blogging. What show did you bring to Green Bay Fringe?
In 2024 it was The Banana Wars, in 2025, Bay Creek
Have you done much Fringe touring?
Touring used to be my full-time gig when i was in my 20s. In the past couple of years, I've started racking up some Fringe festivals around the US.
Many Fringes have a "personality." For example, Minnesota Fringe tends to have a lot of nerdy, pop-culture, and deep dives, Orlando Fringe tends to have a lot of game shows and drag performance, and Cincy trends toward returning artists and local favorites. Did you find that your Green Bay Fringe had a certain personality?
Green Bay is just getting off the ground, so I don't think they're established anything specific yet. There is a high percentage of touring artists (mostly from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Chicago), but the few established local groups tend to bring the most audience in. However, Green Bay fringers will flock to something if it's truly wild and unique. The Mothman Cometh, out of Chicago, was packed to capacity when I saw it.
How were your house sizes and/or enthusiasm? What might touring artists expect?
House sizes are usually pretty small. They're still building an audience base. However, a lot of the artists go to see shows on their passes. One of my performances in 2024 was almost completely filled with fellow artists, and they are wildly supportive and hungry for new things, especially those artists who have come in from smaller communities and haven't had much access to the diversity of performance that we get in Minneapolis.
There didn't appear to be much in the way of local media coverage, and right now Green Bay doesn't have an expansive audience review system like MN Fringe, so you probably won't leave there with many reviews. However, the board, staff and volunteers that run the festival are all wonderful, kind, quirky people who work very hard to make sure that it's a very fun experience, and they are very generous with official awards. My last show there made low ticket sales, but I did come home with an official award that I can slap on my marketing materials in the future.
Artists out of Minnesota Fringe may be unaware that not all Fringes are the same. Does Green Bay Fringe have any differences you'd highlight to Minnesota artists traveling there for the first time?
Most other Fringes Festivals do not have professional venues with professional technicians, and you’ll find that’s true here. Since Green Bay is so new, they are still cobbling things together. Your venue will most likely be small, will most likely not be a regular theater venue, and may not have many tech elements or even a technician to run them. My venue in 2024 was the lobby of the local Democratic party, which had fluorescent office lighting, no storage, and only a rudimentary sound system that I had to run myself. My venue in 2025 was the rehearsal space for a local theater company, which did have storage and a basic four-color lighting rig, but I had to bring my own sound system and run it myself. Most of the venues are event spaces at bars, restaurants, art galleries and book stores, or found spaces like I've had. Whatever you bring to Green Bay, be prepared to run it all yourself; you may not always be able to rely on the house tech like you can at MN Fringe.
Noted. Not unusual for a lot of Fringes! What about housing?
Last year, Green Bay did start trying to get volunteer housing for artists, but it's not guaranteed. I didn't get placed with anyone until about three days before the festival started, and the offered housing was 40 miles outside of town. This will probably improve over time as they build more audience, and I was actually surprised that they started trying to do in only their second year.
They’re actually hitting out of the park as a new festival; it's been a joy to watch! Any after-hours events or anything like that?
They haven't had much in the way of sponsored events yet, but the staff always makes a good time happen. Did you know that an after-hours artist party with a breakfast cereal and milk bar is an absolute blast? Did you know that Baileys cream whiskey can be used in place of milk on cereal?! Green Bay has taught me these things and many more.
I’m so glad you have such a good time there! I'm always a little jealous when you send me polos...I feel like I'm missing out on a good time. I know you’ve been performing at Minnesota Fringe for 20 years; was this a little bit of a relaxing experience after all your old man years?
It was such a reaffirming experience to see everyone at a Fringe festival so positively excited that anything was happening at all. It kind of reset my brain back to my first days doing Fringe when I was in my 20s. There were no expectations, no resentment at anyone else's success, no judgements about how things were working; it was just fun. I hadn't had that feeling doing theater in a long time.
Aw! What other good memories will you carry from Green Bay?
Last year I went to see Brad Lawrence (a touring artist out of NYC) do his new one-man show The Big Secret. It's a difficult show to promote, since the "secret" in the title really does need to stay secret before you see it. I think there were about five people in the audience besides me, including two sweet, somewhat conservative older ladies who just loved their local community theater and had only just heard about this Fringe festival thing. They had no idea what they were about to see. Just picked it on a whim. I think they might have been a little disappointed that the show was literally just a guy walking out on stage and telling them a story. No song and dance. No music. No tech. Not even a lights out at the end of the show. They were both sobbing by the time the show was over. I think Brad might have changed their lives.
I think Brad changes many lives. *waves* Hi Brad! Any tips or tricks you want to share about Green Bay?
Everyone buys their tickets ahead of time, so there's no lines to work if you're used to flyering or handing out postcards. Lots of local businesses let people put up posters in their windows. The Festival itself runs a pretty active Instagram account and gladly reshares anything you post about your show.
Green Bay is a weird town. Because of the Packers, it's jam-packed with restaurants and bars, but in the summer, no one is at any of them. Every time I walked into a restaurant with friends, we were literally the only people there, which means you get great service and some decent food and drinks. And everything is incredibly affordable. If you're used to paying drink prices in the Twin Cities, your jaw will hit the floor when you are only charged something like $4 for a mixed drink. There are some good taco trucks roaming around, so be on the lookout for those.
I'm a pretty outdoorsy person, so I greatly enjoyed all the nature preserves and wildlife areas around the Bay. Every morning I would get up, pick a different park and go for a hike before the festival started up. There's also a little zoo (If you camp at Brown County Reforestation Park like I did, you may be woken up early in the morning by the lions roaring). The Neville Public Museum has some good exhibits and a surprisingly nice dinosaur collection.
Green Bay is full of summer festivals. Both years I have been there, the Fringe overlapped with a giant art fair that took up several blocks in downtown. In 2024, my venue was right across the street from a three-day punk rock festival. There was an anime convention in town last year. There's probably more than that going on. It's a lot more than you would expect given the size of the city.
I heard tell about a neato nerdy shop….
There's a place in Green Bay called UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records. It's in a basement, and it feels like they should be selling bongs down there. It's actually a strange assemblage of vintage toys, games, records, comic books and novelty items. You may or may not be able to buy things from them. The woman behind the counter while we were there was very unsure about that. Go there and see if you can actually buy that vintage Planet of the Apes board game.
Well thank you, Derek. Again, I'm jealous. What's up next for you?
Just waiting for Fringe to pull some balls out of a cage.
Yeah, I see you’ve applied to Minnesota Fringe again this year. Good luck to you! (And if you don’t get in and I do, I fully expect you to show up for rehearsals this summer.)
No problem. Tell Mike Eserkaln at GB Fringe that Bad Stories for Bad Children was f-ing brilliant and he should bring it here.
Good to know. Will do!
Applications for the Boarder Buddies touring lottery closes this Thursday, January 15.
