First Days in D.C.

Hello from Washington, D.C. and the Capital Fringe! After arriving Sunday night, we have gotten settled in and started gearing up for opening night on Thursday.

We're staying in a dorm-style hostel with twelve bunk beds to a room, which means it feels... just like home! ;) Or at least fairly normal for a Fringe experience. We also have a kitchen, which means we get to cook lovely and relatively cheap meals, always a plus. The kitchen is kind of exciting, with multiple stoves and several giant refrigerators.

Today we really got going on Fringe marketing, which means that we walked all over the place distributing postcards. For the first time in Uncut Pages history, we are close to running out of postcards! Clearly Julia's artistic training is paying off. We split the postcard distribution between two groups, Charlotte and I doing the box office area, and Shannon, Gill, and Deborah heading out to the area around our venue, while Rachel got our programs photocopied and made sure we have enough tapes to preserve Gallathea for posterity.

The box office is really cool! It's small, but roomier and less overwhelming than the NY or Philly Fringe box offices, and there's lots of cool art, including a big fancy red couch-sculpture and a slightly haughty-looking but intriguing "Muse" sculpture. Also, it looks like a fair number of our postcards have been taken since Alex put them there, so that is quite encouraging.

On further encouraging notes, we found out that there is at least one ticket sold for every show! This is quite a feat, since even on our best-sold nights, selling at the box office in advance has never been our strongest suit. Saturday night is looking especially promising. With the very limited advertising exposure we have had, this was very gratifying to hear. Of course, there are still plenty of tickets if you are reading this and haven't gotten yours...

We also got some prime real estate for some of our postcards, like right next to the cash register at Starbucks and a place of honor at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The lady who was working the front desk at the Folger Shakespeare Library was especially nice, and told us she would make sure the other workers knew to alert visitors to our postcards and try to help us sell the show. We also got to peek in the theater at the Folger, which is always a cause for celebration. It is such a gorgeous theater, even when, as now, it is being carefully ripped up for restorative construction.

As I was walking back to the subway after visiting the Folger, a free newspaper with the word "Fringe" on it caught my eye, and I grabbed it. I was remembering the magical moment when, as we got ready for our first Fringe show, I picked up the Philly City Paper and saw that Production Values had been chosen as a featured "best bet" show by their critics, but I wasn't expecting much here, since we're only in town for the second weekend of the festival and have not really been in touch with any critics. As I flipped through the paper, however, I saw that it was a GLBT publication, and lo and behold there was a list of about 7 plays that they thought would be of interest to the community-- including Gallathea.

Sometimes the magic holds. Which reminds me, I have reason to believe that a certain mysterious Professor has given his (always mixed) blessing to our production... but I don't want to give away all my secrets in one blog entry.

Anyway, tomorrow it's off to the venue for our tech-and-dress rehearsal(s). Send us lots of good thoughts!

:) Becky