HOLLYWOOD FRINGE: SOCKED IN

Easy Targets

http://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/los-angeles/13358-hollywood-fringe-socked-in

GELFAND’S WORLD—So there I was, sitting in the front row of a little theater on Santa Monica Blvd when a rolled-up pair of socks came flying through the air and hit me in the back of the head. I wasn’t alone, since the actor on stage was himself getting bombarded with socks. Within a few minutes, the stage was covered with socks. Thus begins my account of this year’s Hollywood Fringe festival.
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Take three or four hundred theatrical producers and directors, some of them young and a few of them very young. Give each an opportunity to develop a play or a musical and then present it to the public over the course of a month. Make sure that the ticket price is low, and see what develops. That’s the Fringe.

Technically speaking, the weekend of June 2 represented the preview stage of the festival. It was so early in the process that when I dropped in on the festival headquarters, the staff were sitting on the floor, sawing and hammering. Apparently this year’s HQ was not quite in shape for the opening night party. The official opening will take place midweek.

Still, that didn’t intimidate the large number of actors and directors who were presenting previews. In order to sample the breadth of this year’s festival, I attended a one-man presentation of a serious subject, the boffo-yucks show involving audience sock throwing, and a semi-serious melodrama about the origin of Dracula.

First, let’s talk of the socks. Easy Targets is presented by a group that calls itself the Burglars of Hamm. The underlying idea is that some performances can be so bad that the audience wants nothing more than to punish the actors and the author. I certainly know that feeling. The theater company describes the show as follows: “Easy Targets is for every audience member who has sat in the dark at a bad play thinking they now know what prison must be like.”

So the Burglars present four short one-man pieces (on other nights they present woman shows). Audience members are invited to throw rolled up socks at the actor. In fact, the company rents out the use of the throwing-socks at two pairs for a buck.

Thus we were treated to a one-man show consisting of a guy in a chair (Hugo Armstrong) pretending to be a truck driver reminiscing about long haul trucking, blowing the big horn for kids in passing cars, and musing on the meaning of life and procreation. Armstrong worked the character, managing to sound both sanctimonious and a little stupid.

The hit of the show, at least for me, was Albert Dayan, who walked out on stage and very seriously presented an argument for why white men are the ones who deserve sympathy. He kept in character so well that the playlet became a little scary. A lot of socks were thrown. Being in the front row, I have to question the throwing ability of some of the folks in the back, what with socks dropping all around me and whizzing past my ear. However, neither myself nor the actors were injured in the making of this show.