And a merry Fringe Festival to you!

Hail the first week of August and the coming of the Minnesota Fringe Festival! Eleven days of theater binge! The hustle and bustle of the West Bank and its densely-packed theater spaces! The brightly-t-shirted volunteers! The quickie meals at Jimmy John's! The zero-to-five-kitty review ratings! I love it.


This year, for the first time since originating the role of the mayor in JAWS the Musical! ("You yell samurai, everyone says, huh, what?") in 2004, I am involved in a show. Ferrari McSpeedy invited me to direct their show, the first time they are working with a full cast for one of their shows. The show is called Speech!, and it is hilarious.

Drama. Comedy. Flower-print dresses. The world of the high school speech team has it all. Ferrari McSpeedy returns to Fringe with an almost-true tale of competitive forensics.

Fringe Festival favorites, Ferrari McSpeedy do away with their typical 2 person show in favor of a full cast for their new show about the world of High School Speech Competition. Set in 1995 in suburban Chicago, Speech! is a semi-kind of-autobiographical tale about a high school speech team and all of the drama, intrigue and inner demons that haunt them as they compete for spots in the State tournament. Speech! is sure to be a walk down memory lane for former speech competitors, or for that matter, anyone who ever attended high school.

You should come see it. Funny script, great cast, the top hits of 1994-1995; you can't lose.

We'll be performing it on the Thrust stage (above) in this Brutalist beauty, the Rarig Center (MAP!), which, with four stages, has become the epicenter of the Fringe in recent years:

There's a ramp next door. It costs money. Sometimes you can find street parking out on Riverview or beyond.

We've got five shows, all of them in good time slots, so check out our show page, come see the show, tell your friends, and give us some kitties!

Here's a little something to put you in the right time period: