Well, the Fringe is pretty unfair to writers. It’s unfair to everyone. Yet it’s there, it’s big, it’s loud. And when anyone anywhere is making a big fuss over theatre, how can one not?
I’d co-produced a reading of Adam Klasfeld’s Good Fences Make Good Neighbors at a Chashama space a few months ago – and to say that, really, I just helped that poor hard-working guy get space and took care of a few other assorted things. The kind of stuff I’d rather not do if *I* had a reading going up. At the time I’d offered to help him with directing but he didn’t need it. He had a director already.
Adam decided to put his show into the Fringe… his director was on board. Gave my standard pre-Fringe warning. Same thing always happens, once they’ve decided to do it, it’s going to get done.
Three weeks before show open – around the beginning of August – he called. His director was gone to England – paying work. For some crazy reason, I volunteered to block his show and get it on its feet. We had two days.