The Minnesota Fringe Festival begins this Thursday!  Last night, we had our tech rehearsal for Bard Fiction, and it went swimmingly.  We’ve got a well-oiled machine here.  For Fringe, you only get one 3-hour tech rehearsal in your venue, so it pays to be ultra-prepared going in.  Below is a picture from our fight call.  Pardon the poor quality; it’s a phone pic.

From left to right: Noë Tallen, Ben Layne, Paul Rutledge, and Anissa Gooch

After tech, some of us went to The Independent for food and drink.  While there, I was accosted in the bathroom by a woman in crisis.  (The Independent, you should know, has a coed bathroom space; both genders share the same handwashing/mirror area.)  As I was drying my hands, a woman said, “Excuse me.”  I didn’t immediately think she was talking to me.  She repeated, “Excuse me!” more forcefully, so I turned to acknowledge her.

She smiled and casually asked, “Do you think I’m pretty?”  She seemed perfectly lucid.  If she was drunk, she hid it well.

I paused for a beat, bewildered, and replied with an honest, if hesitant, “Yeah, Sure,” which apparently, for her, was infuriatingly noncommittal!

“Oh, ‘yeah, sure,’ thanks! That’s nice,” she snarked.  I shrugged and left the bathroom.  Not only did she feel the need to ask a stranger if she was pretty, but that said stranger’s affirmative response is contemptible for being too tepid (which, frankly, was not because she wasn’t pretty, but because I was confused as hell).

Clearly, she was looking for an enthusiastic, “Holy shit, I’m in love with you! ”  Her decidedly un-pretty personality made me wish I had a response more like, “Well, give us a turn there, let me see your backside, darling,” or, “Show me your boobs, then I’ll let you know.”  I need to think faster in the future.