Orlando Fringe Festival May 15-25, 2009

[pianojohn]

For those in the Orlando area, the 2009 Orlando Fringe Festival has begun! It is a 10 day festival of theatre, music, dance, comedy, and everything in between.

 

I have been a part of the festival for many years, and this year, I am music directing and playing piano for EDGES in the Green Venue. The show times are below:

 

5/15 FRI 8:05PM

5/16 SAT 12:00PM

5/17 SUN 8:50PM

5/21 THU 9:20PM

5/22 FRI 11:40PM

5/23 SAT 5:15PM

5/24 SUN 1:10PM

 

EDGES is not a traditional musical; it is an exciting new show about four burgeoning adults asking these classic coming-of-age questions. Written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (2007 Jonathan Larson Award Recipients) in their sophomore year at the University of Michigan, the contemporary song cycle carries an honest voice advocating introspection while maintaining wit and charm. Confronting emotions, escaping expectations, and deciphering complicated relationships - the songs cover such universal issues as love, commitment, identity, and meaning. Pasek & Paul want you to explore what happens when we are teetering on the edges!

 

It was created by the emergent musical duo, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who were just listed as part of the "50 To Watch" upcoming playwrights and composers by The Dramatist magazine. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul began their collaboration as freshmen at The University of Michigan and completed their BFA degrees in musical theatre in December 2006. they are the winners of a 2007 Jonathan Larson Award and at age 21 became the youngest recipients in the history of the foundation. The team’s musical revue, EDGES, has been performed numerous times at various professional venues and colleges throughout the country.

 

Pasek and Paul are writers for John Tartaglia’s Disney Channel television series, Johnny And The Sprites and contributed music to Off-Broadway’s White Noise (A Cautionary Tale) which won Talkin’ Broadway’s 2006 Summer Theatre Festival Citation for Outstanding Original Score. They were invited to participate in the first ever Johnny Mercer Songwriting Festival funded by the American Musical Theatre Project and were commissioned to write Horace and Morris But Mostly Dolores for Theatreworks USA.

 

Under the direction of Douglas White, EDGES will feature Luerne Herrera, Scott Sadler, Ame Livingston and Mike Rodgers. John deHaas musical directs.

 

This year marks the sixth Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival in which Excellent Adventure Productions will participate. The company earned the “Patrons Pick” award in 2004 for “Streakin’! – A Musical Flashback to the 1970’s” and in 2008 for “Dysfunctional Fables” and received much praise for their productions of “Cupid and Psyche” and “Thrill Me”.

 

Tickets are $10 with a Fringe Button and will be available beginning on April 13 at www.OrlandoFringe.org

 

For more information visit www.ExcellentAdventureProductions.com or www.MySpace.com/ExcellentAdventure

 

If you come to the show, please stop and say hello afterwards! Thanks!!

The cast of EDGES

[KrakenKing]

My friend has a performance there. It's some skit, don't remember the name. May show up though. If I do I'll stop by!

[pianojohn]

Just a quick update.

 

We got an awesome review in the Orlando Sentinel:

 

Fringe review: Excellent Adventure Productions’ ‘Edges’

By Elizabeth Maupin

Sentinel Theater Critic

 

Want to relive your 20s? Take the journey through Edges, a song cycle that will remind you of what it was like to want to be something other than what you are – or forces you, if you’re going through it right now, to face it full in the face.

 

 

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s song cycle captures those years, from the wistful longing to be somewhere, anywhere, else (“nothing ever happens in Monticello”) to the not-quite-confident insistence that you’re in way better shape than the people you knew in high school (“Better”). Parts of Edges are a stitch (the audience favorite is a song about a certain social-networking procrastination device), but more of it has the self-absorbed feeling that older people are glad to have left behind.

 

Still, the nifty cast (Luerne Herrera, Ame Livingston, Michael Rodgers and Scott Sidler ) can sell a song, and the clear-voiced, expressive Sidler is a treasure. I suspect Edges will divide the audience – those young enough to feel these characters’ longing, and those old enough to be happy it’s gone in their past.

 

Remaining shows: 8:50 p.m. Sunday 5/17, 9:20 p.m. Thursday 5/21, 11:40 p.m. Friday 5/22, 5:15 p.m. Saturday 5/23, 1:10 p.m. Sunday 5/24. Green venue.

 

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_stage_theat/2009/05/fringe-review-excellent-adventure-productions-edges.html