The Company was notified in the Spring of 2003 that their production of Mickle Maher’s THE HUNCHBACK VARIATIONS had been chosen to appear at the 7th annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival. A three-week gathering of over 1200 theatre, dance, music, performance, spoken word, movement and visual artists from all over the world, the Fringe selection was an exciting honor for the Company ­ not only as the first St. Louis group to appear at this prestigious Festival, but also for the chance to expose their work to audiences outside of St. Louis.

With the Philadelphia shows scheduled over the opening Labor Day weekend of the Festival, Midnight chose to give St. Louis audiences a couple more chances to see HUNCHBACK, with one weekend runs at The Commonspace in August, and at Technisonic Studios in late September.

In Philadelphia, HUNCHBACK was booked into Mum Puppettheatre, a great 80-seat storefront theatre, on a bill with New York dancer Karen Bernard’s THE MADONNA SONGS.

As one of at least a dozen shows being presented each day during the Festival, Midnight had to share audiences with other offerings, but MIDNIGHT/MADONNA (as the overall presentation was billed) audiences grew with each performance, and were uniformly responsive.

Most of the Festival took place in Philadelphia’s Old City, a very concentrated area, where most usable spaces were turned into performance space. It made for a full and week of activities. Midnight’s hotel was on the site where Ben Franklin started the original University of Pennsylvania campus, and Ben himself was buried on the same block, along with several other signers of the Declaration of Independence and other historical types. The Liberty Bell and the new Constitution Museum were a stone’s throw from their hotel, and walking to their shows each night, Joe and David passed Betsy Ross’s house. Old City is also the site of an evolving restaurant/bar/gallery scene, which the boys of Midnight took time to sample.

In summary, Midnight’s Philadelphia experience was a good one: viewing some of the best of current “fringe” theatre, presenting their own work to new audiences, and cramming in as much extracurricular fun as possible. In retrospect, the Festival is a very contained one, with most of the work there, by, for and often about Philadelphia. Breaking into the consciousness of local newspapers and audiences with so much being presented, is challenging, even for local groups.

But the Midnight Company was proud of its work there, pleased with its reception, and somewhat giddy about some of the fun of it all. All in all, a splendid time was had.

for more information, visit The Fringe website.

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