By Marc Fisher
Sunday, July 6, 2008
As the clock ticked toward an unforgiving deadline, Julianne Brienza and the crew of the Capital Fringe Festival experienced in a single morning last week the perils and pleasures of creating cutting-edge art here in the world capital of stodgy. They obtained a credit card, killed a rat, built a stage, painted an awning and tried to hack a path through one of the planet's most impenetrable bureaucracies.
That last bit looked like it would be the hardest job. Nobody beats the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, not even Brienza, a dynamo who started the festival of theater, music, dance and other performance in 2006, basically by walking around town, commandeering tiny theaters and then inviting any and all to come mount a show.
But first, the triumphs of the morning: Brienza virtually skipped into her office as she returned from the bank, where, after months of trying, she had persuaded a manager to approve a credit card for the festival.
Finally, three years into the venture, with 120 shows to be performed in 20 venues over 18 days, she would not have to carry the entire finances of the operation on her personal credit and ATM cards.
"I got the card!" Brienza announced to the rest of the staff. "This is big-time. This legitimizes us. It has a $30,000 limit."
By definition, the Fringe is out there. Struggling without corporate support or high-end donors, a fringe festival is a gathering of performers for whose quality no one vouches. The festival staff does not vet the plays, solo performances and other acts that will be presented Thursday through July 27 in a tent, warehouse, church, bar and a slew of theaters grand and obscure.
Washington's festival isn't even a tenth the size of the mother Fringe of them all, in Edinburgh, Scotland. But it's quickly becoming both a worthy competitor of similar events in New York and other U.S. cities and a real downtown crowd magnet during otherwise quiet July.
"It's a lot bigger than I ever thought it would be," Brienza says. "It's really a business now. The first year, we just did it. Now we have a cash flow report, a development staff, an executive committee."
Still, it's the Fringe. The office, in the former A.V. Ristorante, a Washington landmark at 607 New York Ave. NW, used to be a bar. The theater was once a storage room for the A.V.'s famous pizza ingredients. And the parking lot is being transformed into an outdoor stage -- if the D.C. government deigns to grant a permit.
Which is what brings Brienza to the District's bureaucratic labyrinth on North Capitol Street for the tenth time in two weeks. To win a permit to hold performances under a tent on the A.V. parking lot, she needs signatures from the city's food services, police, corporations, tax, emergency medical, health and safety, special events and fire departments. Having shuffled endlessly from office to office, she is finally down to one last approval, from the fire inspector.
Inside the Permit Service Center, Brienza waits 40 minutes until the fire guy shows up. The last time Brienza was here, he told her to take her plans back and change the word "Exit" to "Exit Sign." Now, faced with redrawn plans, the inspector focuses on the fact that the tent includes a stage curtain.
No document certifies that the curtain is fireproof, the city's man says. "It has to be verifiable," he says. "Then you can rock-and-roll."
But the certificate from the tentmaker states that the tent and its parts are fireproof, and the curtain is part of the tent, Brienza says.
Sorry, the clerk says. No.
Back at the office, Brienza calls the tent company in Canada asking for a letter attesting that the curtain is part of the tent. "I'm totally not kidding you," Brienza says when tent man protests that he has already certified that. "I would not call and ask for this if I was not serious."
Sorry, tent man replies. We have no other certification. No one has ever asked for this before.
Brienza calls the District and begs. Nothing doing.
At which point Scot McKenzie, the festival director, walks in to announce that a D.C. meter maid just ticketed everyone's cars.
The talk turns to rats -- not a rant against the traffic police, but against the actual rodents that are the old restaurant's main tenants. Staffers have taken to drowning the pests, and there is some optimism that the human beings are winning.
Just as there is optimism that the shows, or at least a fair number of them, will be good. The fun of the Fringe is in the risk-taking, both on stage and by the audience. This is not art you select by reviews you read in the paper. You pick shows based on the flimsiest of come-ons. Sometimes you are richly rewarded with a first glance at talent others will discover years down the road. Other times you see, as I have in past years, a tiresome political tirade by a sweaty man who believes that comparing the president to Hitler is the height of hilarity, or a singer whose skills don't carry outside of her shower.
To engage in the Fringe is to take a flier on life. Which is why Brienza waits one more day and shows up again at the District's offices.
The gods of culture shine upon her: A different fire inspector is at the desk. Curtain's fine with him. The plans are stamped, and the shows will go on. In bureaucracy, as in art, it's all about people and persistence.
For information on the Fringe Festival, go tohttp://www.capfringe.orgor call 202-737-7230.
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