Friday, August 11, 2006

MN Fringe Blog: Cinderella Rant

Cinderella Rant
Saturday, August 5, 2006 at 11:32 PM
Filed under kids fringe

Okay, hopefully you have read the Cinderella review first (if not, I loved the show.)

Here's what made my skin crawl: Before the show, I read the back of the program. It innocently begins "PLEASE HELP OUR DREAMS COME TRUE" It then follows:

You can help us grow our audiences by writing a positive five star review! Please take a moment to fill out our "FIVE STAR POSITIVE FEEDBACK FORM" below. We will create a user profile for you on the Minnesota Fringe Website:www.fringefestival.org and enter your comments for you. The information you provide us will solely be used to create your profile. Please PRINT your name, email, password, and comments CLEARLY! If you need a reminder of what your login information is, send and email to cinderellafringe@gmail.com. And thanks agin for your positive support or the arts, the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and our "Cinderella".

As soon as I finished the players began a preshow skit about how nice it would be if the audience would write them five star-reviews. Actors came skipping through the audience and baskets of pencils were distributed. One of the students said "its hard to register a user profile".

I think pandering for positive reviews BEFORE THE SHOW HAS EVEN BEGUN is worse theater ettiquette than, let's say, taking flash photos during a performance. In addition, the show is good enough to stand on its own. While I understand the need to promote your show, there are less tacky ways of doing it. Furthermore, stating that the fringe website is "hard" just isn't true. Registering is easy. Finally, requesting your audience members' email addresses and passwords to open accounts on THEIR behalf is at best not in the spirit of the fringe and at worst a breach of privacy. But I really liked the show.

—Wendy Gennaula

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Comments

Posted August 6, 2006 at 5:58 PM by Ryan North
Wendy: I'm glad you saw Cinderella and even more glad that you and your children had a great time. Thank you. Now in response to your accusation of pandering for five star reviews - I have to admit, guilty as charged. You called it tacky. I thought of it as proactive, but I think (now) that you're more right. AND - I have to agree with you when you say that "the show is good enough to stand on its own." It is! I'm so proud of my young actors, their energy, their professionalism, their ensemble-ness... the begging for reviews shall end! Thank you for your honest feedback.

-Ryan North, Director

Posted August 7, 2006 at 11:50 AM by Steven Meerdink
I agree with your comments.

However, I have had several friends who have tried to register (last week) and have still not received a password. Fringe website easy to use??? Hmmmm .....

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