Minnesota Fringe Festival 2024: Wrap-up and Favorites

Another Minnesota Fringe Festival has come and gone. Technically it's still going today, but I finished my Fringe yesterday with a total of 31 shows (actually 31 performances of 30 shows, but the repeat was improv so it was a different show!). This is a good number, but not anywhere near a high for me; I had some other conflicts that prevented me from seeing more (follow my friend The Stages of MN for some 40-50 reviews). Still, I saw some really amazing shows, some old favorites and some new. With the loss of the U of M Rarig Center, the festival felt more spread out this year; I found myself driving around more than I wanted to (it's difficult to feel the community spirit alone in a car in Uptown traffic). But those were the limitations we had to work with, and they did the best they could with them. It was still a lot of fun, with lots of chances (even for introverts) to chat with fellow theater-goers and even some artists. So much fun that I had a hard time narrowing down the list to a dozen or so favorites; there were more shows that could have been on this list, and I really did not see a bad show this year. 

Here are my favorite shows of the 2024 Minnesota Fringe Festival (in alphabetical order). Click the show title to read the full review.

• 5x5 - my always and forever favorite Transatlantic Love Affair returns to the festival where they got their start, with five performers cramped into a five-foot by five-foot square taped on the floor to tell five stories in the most delightful and playful physical theater way.
• As Above, So Below - Michael Rogers gave the best performance I saw at Fringe this year, sharing the darkest moments of his life in a stream of consciousness style that was visceral, mesmerizing, and incredibly moving.
• The Banana Wars - also on my favorites list in 2017, I'll never tire of watching Derek Lee Miller unpack something as seemingly obscure as the Banana Wars and weave a relevant and fascinating tale about the history (and present) of our country
• Blackout Improv Does Something! - just Blackout doing Blackout things, which is smart, funny, relevant improv with social commentary from the Black perspective (and special guest Theo Langason performing three wonderful original songs!).
• The Camp Out - this may be the first Fringe show I've ever seen twice, mostly because I had an empty timeslot in my schedule and I was there, but I was happy to have a second experience with long-form improv at its best: six talented improvisors just being in this story of friendship and grief (and for the record, the two performances were completely different).
• Daddy Issues - #TCTheater favorite Allison Vincent gets personal in her first solo show, using all of her skills in storytelling, physical theater, and transforming into different characters to share the story of the death of her father in a moving, funny, relatable way.
• The Dumb Waiter - newish theater company Jackdonkey Productions impressed by making Pinter (not usually my favorite) understandable and relevant, with all-around spot-on execution of this one-act two-hander about two hit men waiting to do a job.
• Heart Ripped Out Twice and So Can You - traveling artist Linnea Bond did what artists do: she took an unimaginably painful experience (open heart surgery doesn't cover half of it) and turned it into something beautiful and weird and hilarious.
• Holy O - touring artist Lauren Hance's solo show about a nurse who may or may not become a nun was interactive, communal, healing, and uplifting despite the heavy themes covered.
• Pants on Fire - perhaps the hardest I laughed at the Fringe, the game show in which funny people spin yarns and other funny people guess if they're telling the truth or lying only gets funnier when the Four Humors take over.
• The Peter Pan Cometh - Clevername Theatre's third mash-up so weird it shouldn't work but it does, the story of the boy who never grew up and the existential story of broken dreams meshed brilliantly. A clever concept perfectly executed.
• Show Me Your Wings - multi-hyphenate artist Rhiannon Fiskradatz, aka MaMa Faerie, wove a dream out of music, storytelling, visual arts, puppetry, and more, and gave us a show that was also an experience.
• Two Bowls of Cereal and Some Bacon - a dynamic storytelling performance by Mahmoud Hakima with some dark depictions of child abuse, but told in a beautiful and almost hopeful way.
• The Wind Phone - definitely my favorite venue of the Fringe (a lovely outdoor park tucked in the U of M campus on a beautiful summer evening), but also a sweet and poignant and sometimes funny collection of monologues about grief and loss.