2024 Audience Reviews

Company: Cherie Sampson
Show: every.single.one
Venue: The Southern Theater

Innovative use of choreography and projection art

This is what Fringe should be about, namely, art that uses the attributes of theatre to articulate something that doesn't fit entirely into other formats. The subject of the show--the nature of cancers that have a strong genetic component and how we deal with them--on one hand seems as if it could fit into a lecture, but that format would be insufficient to articulate other important details of the subject, namely, how different people react to the crisis and how they decide to treat it. You get a perspective on this through the projection art and the choreography in a way that would be hard to convey through the more linear nature of a formal talk. There is a preview video of the work, which will give some idea about the project, but I would also caution that the work in an actual physical space is quite different from the video. As a specific example, the production I saw was at the Southern Theatre, which has a brick wall instead of a flat projection screen. This, along with the choreography in front of the projection, necessarily created a much stronger sense of the three-dimensionality of the work. every.single.one is set up to be experienced in real time and in a theatre space. Strongly recommended.

Company: American School of Storytelling
Show: More Better Stories
Venue: American School of Storytelling

Marie Cooney and soda bread

This is yet another time I've had a chance to see Marie's work at Fringe. Her work is dynamic, and by that, I mean that it changes from show to show, which is something that I've learned from and taken away for my own productions. It's not easy to do, but it allows for a greater collaboration with the audience and how it responds. The stories in this year's episodes are totally different, less mythological and more autobiographical than last years. Curious to see what Marie will come up for the 2025 Fringe. In addition, this year's innovation was food, specifically soda bread. I'll have to think about how to incorporate that into one of my future shows.