Unraveling at the Fringe

Several people have posted reviews of some Fringe Festival shows they've seen, along with their ratings. For me, though, the purpose of the fringe festival isn't so much to see or measure quality entertainment. After all, as I've mentioned, as far as art is concerned, I have no idea what I'm doing and thus it's easier for me to appreciate.

No, the purpose is to gather another year's worth of random input. So without further ado, I bring you: 40 tidbits of randomness, in alphabetical order by show name. (Yes, I have a leaning toward puns. So shoot me.)

Needlephobic spasms. No, no, his house - the Hur house; it's enough to turn gay men straight.

Wah - I love pizza - but I Kant!

People never to break up with; people never to buy dinosaur souvenirs from.

Airport jokes and flamenco made interesting; human relationships the MIT way.

Eat here - get gas for free! Dancing in the rain and the worst audition ever.

Brain sucking ingenious crazy dance! Anorexia personified, and at least one continuously improvised dance scene!

Dinosaurs aren't souvenirs, they're EOLed products. White clothes make great projection screens! Breakdance fusion!

Queuing was stolen from the British; also, There was a young man from Peru, whose limerick stopped at line two. Non-lost innocence and a squirt of toilet humour. Non-toilet-related private moments made public and an encounter with Sweden's orb of literacy.

Speaking in tongues, the musical. Verbal smilies!

The missing minute from my life.

You can't escape a guilty conscience... and eventually, your creations will take on a life of their own (ergh, tell me about it).

Nunavut -- twice. Dames in disdress, vs. a very different form of fake but extremely convincing shyness.

Always have a lawyer look over your contracts, particularly if you make them with the devil. Speaking of which: Stephen Harper and David Suzuki, together at last, along with Terry Fox's right sock.

Octopus dance (I wish I'd had a fork). Vegetable dance (enough to make you dizzy).

Learning English from Entertainment Tonight and a wishing well talks back to cheapskates. Criminals are people too.

Honourable mention, even though it was free and thus doesn't count: 11-second dance parties, 16-second slowdance parties (thanks, Cheer Politeness), 22-second dance parties, and so on. To heck with the popular kids! To heck with respectable theatre!

Peer pressure and mutual motivation

And now for the obligatory Advogato tie-in.

Last year at the Fringe Festival, I saw 26 shows in 10 days, and it was exhausting. When I set out this year, I decided: no sense overdoing it. I'm not going to try to beat last year's insane record. I'll just see as many shows as I want to see, then I'll stop.

So then I saw 40 shows. Oops. What happened?

What happened was peer pressure. None of us really wanted to see that many shows. But when you have a few people working together and encouraging each other, the positive feedback loop can be irresistable. "Come on, you can't be tired yet! I want to see one more!" "Come on, there's a show on - let's leave work early!" "Come on, you already bought the multi-ticket pass, so you might as well use it up!"

I learned a couple of years ago now that you should never let a person work on a project at work alone; it's hard for someone to get motivated that way. This is the idea behind pair programming, but you don't have to go that far; two people can work on parts of the same project, as long as their work is slightly mutually dependent - say, at least one reason to rely on the other person per day. Then if one person falls behind, they're disappointing the other person, and vice versa. This mutual motivation technique can be extremely effective, and it vastly outweighs the cost of having a second person working on the project, because it'll probably get done more than twice as fast.

So now, thanks to all that motivation, I feel like I've accomplished something. It turned out to be something ill-conceived and stupid; who the heck needs to see 40 shows in 10 days?? But I guess that's my point. Motivational techniques work, even if you're trying to get people to do ill-conceived, stupid things.