Kelly Preeper

…I’m still here. I’ve seen some great films, and met some really interesting people. And handed out my card. A lot. We had a great screening with just a handful of people: the festival itself is not really advertised locally in advance and the majority of people apparently thought it started ~Friday, but it was a wonderful experience.
Oh, and Robin and I had our picture taken with Evander Holyfield. He is a big man. I’ll post all about BNFF when I get home again. Now we’re off to the Carrousel museum (!) before the next screenings and the closing night party.

Screening Info: dead saints is playing on Thursday, Sept 22, at 9:30p.m, at the Riviera Theatre, which is located at 67 Webster Street, North Tonawanda, NY.  So, y’know, if anyone is actually ~in Buffalo, you should come see it and say hi!

Got to the Palmerston library and discovered our show was very close to being sold out, just in advance tickets–75 5 to 7 year old day campers. Also, my friend Jen from Everybody Dies came to see me.
Little kids are hilarious. At the end, when the shadow man disappears, you could hear all these little voices: “how did they dooooooooOOOOoo that?”, and during the preshow, every time a new bit of music started, one boy would say “whyyyyyy isn’t it started yet? cooome oooooonnnnnnnnnnn!” When adults are in the audience, the verbal jokes get laughed at, with kids, it’s the physical stuff, we have a ruby slippers bit that turns out to be pure gold with children.
I saw another great show last night. My friend Janelle Hanna is the star of a great one-woman show called Virginia Aldridge, Bsc. She is one of those people you can’t help but fall in love with as soon as she starts talking, and has the best sense of humour which always shines through in her work.

Blogging and fringing=lethal combo. At least for me. I know, thanks to the internet, that there are people who do it constantly, and well. I can barely keep up with my facebook!
So far we’ve had three shows of The Bright Idea, all well recieved, with really varied audiences: Opening was at dinnertime, so everyone took their kids home–we had about three kids, and a dozen adults in attendance. My best friend came to this one, and brought me a truly over-the-top potted plant, which has become something of a tradition(The other part of the tradition is that no matter how hard i try, this plant will likely die. I can only grow vegtables.). The plant needed its own seat in the theatre.
Show two was at bedtime, so again only about three kids. But this time we had a much bigger house…most of whom were fresh from the beer tent. Lesson learned; performing for (happy) drunks is just as much fun as performing for kids!
Saturdays show was the best. We had a big audience, and 2/3rds of them were under the age of ten. They had fun, we had fun. In line for another show that night, one of the fringe volunteers saw me, and then plugged Bright Idea to the entire line up, because she and her daughter had such a good time! In fact, on the way out, she got me to sign a flyer for the little girl, because since we were her favorite show, she’d be so impressed.
Aside from my show, I’ve seen 6 shows already, just from seeing people who i know(some good friends, some people i’ve run into through friends and been impressed by) All of them have been a lot of fun, and featured really talented people. My top favs right now are P-DALE (hiiilarious…and really offensive, consider yourself warned) and Sex, Religion and Other Hang-Ups, which may be the most singularly charming one man show I have ever seen.

There are a whole host of reasons why I don’t blog often enough. Most of them are just kind of pathetic, but the general reason is “I’m busy!” Today, I’ll share a wonderful part of why I am busy: The Bright Idea!

Here's our poster--yes, it is a working maze! (took me three tries...)

Bright Idea is one of the FringeKIDS  offerings at this years Toronto Fringe Festival. It’s produced by Tons o’ Fun, and promises to be just that. Rehearsals have been an absolute riot…the story is about two sisters, a bedtime story, and a shadowman from Shadowland who really wants to go home.  Clearly, it’s a comedy. It also has some fun elements of  choose-your-own-adventure for the kids. Check out the facebook event page, with dates and times–come join us! Bring your kids, your friends, and your friend’s kids!

Today is our tech day in our venue, the Palmerston Library Theatre. In a lot of theatre you really get a whole day, but this is fringe festival–there are several other shows sharing our venue, so we have a two and a half hour slot to set all the lights and sound cues, do a cue-to-cue run, and maybe do a dress rehearsal if we’re very lucky. The only reason we even have the chance to hope that we can manage it all in the amount of time we have is that our show is only a half hour long (for short attention spans). We clock in at about the length of an episode of Spongebob Squarepants.

Look for more news about The Bright Idea and Toronto Fringe 2011 in the coming days. I’m going to make a solid attempt at improving my blogging track record and this seems like a nice, newsworthy time to do it.

Maybe it’s cluster theory? Who knows?
All I know is that I have had more auditions in the last ten days than I have in the last ten weeks put together. And that’s not a complaint (except maybe about the prior dry spell). I’m starting to really enjoy auditioning, which I never used to do.
Hopefully soon the phone starts ringing off the hook and some of these folks start offering me jobs!