Show: 9
Title: The Quiet Piggy
Category: Clowning / Comedy / Drama / Improv / Physical Theater / Puppetry / Solo Show / Storytelling / Audience participation / Political content
By: Dawn Bentley
Written by: Dawn Bentley
Location: Strike Theater
Summary: A solo show from Minnesota Fringe's Executive Director, about art and politics and righteous anger.
Highlights: Self-proclaimed "not a theater person" Dawn Bentley makes her on-stage debut at the festival she's helmed for almost a decade, embodying the spirit of the festival: the Fringe is for everyone, and provides an opportunity to make adventurous art for experienced artists, first-time performer/producers, and everyone in between. In the (mostly) solo storytelling show, Dawn talks about running an arts organization during a period of fascism, when our government is attempting to quell free speech, which is what art is all about. Which is why we need art, and artists. The show is both personal (Dawn talks about changing careers multiple times, and taking up competitive running and body building in her late 30s) and political - raging against the current administration, wearing a shirt that says "Is he dead yet" (but of course not wishing violence on anyone). She illustrates her points with projections and props (my favorite is the rack of race medals), with Lucas Fanning playing the villains in a buffoonish clown style, making them extremely unlikeable (as if they weren't already), and uses music (Dawn is also a violinist, and talks about the formative music in her life) and a bit of audience participation (don't sit in the front row or on the aisles if you don't want to be accosted by the buffoon). When you're new and inexperienced at something, it's a good idea to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing (something, as she notes, the current resident of the White House said he was going to do, but instead has surrounded himself with incompetent yes-men). So Dawn enlisted Fringe vets Heather Meyer as dramaturg, and Rita Boersma and Jen Scott as co-directors (the latter also appearing onstage as the clean-up woman). With her first show, Dawn proves something she's been preaching for years, that art is for everyone and by everyone, that artists should be supported in making the art that matters to them, that all art is political, and that art is a vital and necessary part of a functioning democracy.