Second Helping

During the first two years of Boulder's International Fringe Festival, something about its "Pick of the Fringe" component didn't seem right. A panel of judges chose the Fringe's best works for an end-of-festival showcase, relying in part on audience votes that were prone to ballot-stuffing mischief — not the kind...

By Joel Warner

August 23, 2007

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During the first two years of Boulder's International Fringe Festival, something about its "Pick of the Fringe" component didn't seem right. A panel of judges chose the Fringe's best works for an end-of-festival showcase, relying in part on audience votes that were prone to ballot-stuffing mischief — not the kind of process representative of a freewheeling affair like the Fringe. "Fringe tends to be an un-juried, uncensored festival," says artistic director David Ortolano, "and here we had this event that was completely juried."

That's why today's pick of the Fringe, titled Fringe Encore 2007, takes the third Boulder IFF in a slightly new direction. The performances put on at various times this evening in the festival's nine Boulder venues are those that sold the most tickets at each of those venues during the festival — voting by commerce, pure and simple. Which of the 350 performances will get the nod? Maybe it will be Pressure to Prove: The Sex Lives of Teenage Boys, the sequel to last year's Power to Pleasing: The Sex Lives of Teenage Girls, which was performed in a theater bathroom. Or it could be Calculus: The Musical!, surely a fan favorite in the home town of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado campus. Tickets are $5 to $15, depending on the show; for more information, go to www.boulderfringe.com or call 720-563-9950.
Tue., Aug. 26, 2008

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Joel Warner is a former staff writer for Westword and International Business Times. He's also written for WIRED, Men's Journal, Men's Health, Bloomberg Businessweek, Popular Science, Slate, Grantland and many other publications. He's co-author of the 2014 book The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, published by Simon & Schuster.

Contact: Joel Warner