Day 6: 4 p.m. Time Slot

Show: Mouth
Die Roll: 8
Venue: Intermedia Arts
Artist: Nancy Donoval and Gerald Fierst

This show starts the moment you enter into the theatre. The performers hand out chocolates while you're on your way to sit down. Not any chocolates mind you, but dark chocolate-covered ginger. From that moment you know that this show is different than most others.

That, and the performers converse with you. They aren't "in character" or anything silly like that. They are just talking to you. About real things. I chatted with Nancy prior to the show's official start, and discovered that these two read all the blogs, and that right there is reason enough to support them. I jotted down in my notebook that were I to not like it I'd still make sure to plug it just for that reason. Thing is... I did like it. A lot.

Before anything else, I want to share something with you. One of my life goals is to have something that I do outlive me. Meaning, I would like to make a lasting impression on this world in a positive way. I want to be able to share what wisdom I accumulate through life and have others benefit in some way. That's why I became a playwright. A play that I may write could someday touch someone and make a difference in the way they live their life.

The thing is, for most of known history, storytellers were the ones who shared wisdom and taught lessons, and entertained in a way that affected many people's lives. The oral tradition of storytelling seems more temporary than the act of writing down something for publication, but it is also more immediate in its effect. I will be affected for the rest of my life by the stories, anecdotes and snippets of conversation that I heard at this performance. Nancy and Gerald accomplished in an hour of extemporaneous banter what I hope to do with my entire career.

So… On to my summary and thoughts on this specific performance:

The format is very conversational from the get-go. The two performers, Nancy and Gerald, just start talking to the crowd. They are not presentational at all, but they do keep the attention of their audience. I had a thought about a time that I went out to a bar with a bunch of folks, and one person was so engaging that for most of the evening none of the rest of us said a thing. These two were like that one person. They are the bar regulars that instantly command attention because they've got stories to tell. They've got something to say, and we all want to hear it. Why? Because they are truly communicating with us, making us feel special as the listeners. More on that in a minute...

So, the premise of this show is that Nancy & Gerald cull the local papers and other news rags and riff on whatever might have caught their eye. They mentioned that they used the Star-Tribune, the Utne Reader, the Pulse, as well as World Weekly News. But their show doesn't only consist of that. The news is really only a launching pad for a stream of tangential thoughts. The first thing that we were informed of was that these two are self-proclaimed Ice Cream Mavens. And after a bit of chatter about finding Ice Cream places throughout their travels, they recommended the Pumphouse Creamery which I will soon be visiting entirely based on their say so.

They skimmed topics from the Republican National Convention, to the Luis Palau thing that happened at the capitol, to tasting scotches at the Town Hall (a bar in the “7 Corners” area). The talk of scotch somehow triggered two complementary folktales about death visiting, and that kicked off a couple of personal stories about how their own families dealt with death. There were other bits thrown in, too.

Now, when two people just riff on whatever, and they are taking up the same stage space, you can imagine that they interrupt each other from time to time, and these two do. But, I found it very interesting that they interrupt each other and yet they are so giving of their attention to each other that there isn't the sense of frustration and anger that often occurs when you've been interrupted. And, as an audience member, you're not terribly upset that you never heard the ending of the story that was just interrupted.

I was in tears at the end of the show, and so I wasn't taking very good notes while Nancy closed with a statement that summed up poetically the thoughts that must have inspired the creation of such a work as this. She spoke of how we all need to listen to one another. That we need to recognize the contributions and existence of the person next to us.

My father and I got into a long discussion the last time I went home. It was a discussion about the meaning of life, essentially. Really it started out about politics, but it shifted many times as one conversation is wont to do. One of the things that I said during that discussion, which had come back to me while listening to Nancy and Gerald, was that we as humans have out-expanded our own capabilities. Sure, the technology is there for us to send signals around the globe, but we function better in smaller than world-wide communities. Humans work better together when they are in small groups that are able to cooperate and look out for each others' interests. It's hard to care for someone you don't know. When you know someone, you care. Mass media has made us think that we know people who are celebrities, or are from other parts of the world, but we don't really know them at all. And what's worse, we no longer take the time to know the people who are our neighbors. We no longer hear the stories they have to tell.

No one affects our lives more than the people immediately around us, and yet we often ignore them and what they have to say.

Gerald told a story about "singing the song" of his father. He told his mom & dad's story to his mother as his father was dying. And he celebrated that life, rather than cursing the death. I cannot do justice to what Gerald had to say. Any way that I try to relate it to you will minimalize how very beautiful it was. But I can tell you that I thought of my own parents. The stories they've told me about how they met, their early years, and the times of my childhood that I was too young to remember. In a few days I will not remember the exact details of this performance of Mouth. But I will remember enough about sitting there in that theatre and listening to them, that something will be triggered and I'll think of something else, and I'll talk to someone about it, and that will trigger another topic, and the conversation will continue. And I will get to know someone else, and listen to what they have to say, and they will do the same to me.

This show is different every time based on what life has thrown at Nancy and Gerald since their last show, and where their tangents take them, so I can't promise that you'll have exactly the same experience that I did. However, I can tell you that you need to go to this show. If you are only going to see one more show at the Fringe, make it this one. I am not kidding, and I am not just throwing hype at you. It may not be the frou-frouey comedy that you came to the Fringe for, but it is something that you'll laugh at, that you'll enjoy, and that will have an immediate effect on you that will far outlast the performance.