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Be Kind to Your Arts Volunteer

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The Minnesota Fringe Festival begins this evening, and if you haven’t considered attending a few shows this time around, you should. Almost anything can happen on stage with one major exception – the show can’t last more than an hour. This is a major draw for theatergoers with active bladders, as well as those who want their entertainers to get to the point or at least get it over with.

One reason to be hesitant – the festival relies on the support of an army of volunteers who take tickets and run the stages while being informative, courteous and efficient. Another reason – I am one of those volunteers.

Given what we know about my memory (or at least what people tell me about my memory), “informative” can be a challenge, sometimes. Especially when there are 168 shows at 18 venues. Still, I stand by my off-the-cuff statement to one curious patron last year that the show “An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein” did not include an actual appearance by Shel Silverstein. I totally guessed on that one because Silverstein is dead, and I turned out to be right in spite of the strength of Fringe shows that feature zombies. “Courteous” is a strength area – I’m fairly certain I do OK on that one. “Efficient”? I admit I’m a work in progress.

Here’s my dirty little secret: though I have been in the employment pool for over 35 years, I have never had a paying job that required the physical handling of money. There are no burger joints in my background, no movie theaters, no coffee shops – in fact, there are no cash boxes anywhere in my resume. Also, I am a uni-tasker. I do one job at a time and I try to do it carefully, even if that’s not the fastest way to move the line (and it never is). You could say I’m retail – impaired.

This is a significant, self-inflicted handicap. In the crush time before a show starts, Fringe volunteers need to quickly decipher and make note of each type of admission various patrons will present, including the “all show” Ultra Pass, the 10 Show Pass, the 5 Show Pass, the Kid’s 5 show pass, and single show admissions. They must keep track of discount admissions (senior, student or MPR member), and if the patron cannot produce a Fringe button, the volunteer must explain that one is needed along with the ticket. It’s a one-time purchase ($4) but an every-show requirement, and if you forgot it on the kitchen counter you will have to buy a new one. And volunteers must be firm if anyone attempts to enter the theater after the doors have closed. All Fringe shows begin on time and there is no late seating.

Did I mention that I freeze up in a confrontation? Not total paralysis, but there might be long pauses, stammering, sad eyes and some gulping – more than enough to dull my persuasive powers. I’ve learned that people will not cede an argument out of pity.

Fortunately, Minnesota Fringe volunteering is the perfect entry-level experience for someone with my unique collection of shortcomings. The audiences are polite art lovers who have a high tolerance of ambiguity. They come to the festival predisposed towards forgiveness, whether they are being patient with an artist who thought he could build an entire monolog around his cat’s tumor, or a volunteer who can’t add. It is a rare and beautiful quality for an audience to possess an open and adventurous spirit. People at the Fringe expect to have their expectations challenged.

Note to one of last year’s customers: The blank look, the fumbling around in the cash box and all the finger-counting that accompanied the process of my making change for your fifty dollar bill was not, as you may have thought, incompetence. I was presenting a tiny drama about the value of paper money when offered in exchange for the fruits of a creative mind. Question: Can anyone truly “buy” an idea?

I hope I gave you something to think about, and I encourage you come back. I’ll be at the same place wearing this year’s volunteer shirt. My new show asks if it’s really possible to “control” a crowd.

If you had to create a piece of solo performance art, what would it be about?

58 thoughts on “Be Kind to Your Arts Volunteer”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    My solo piece would be a Reality Show of Jacque having Performance Anxiety. We could call it “Freeze Frame” and it would consist of Jacque becoming completely frozen in terror before a solo, a speech, a role, then becoming unable to move. This particular trait was one of several that actually interfered in a potential career as a musician. However, once I actually freeze it is really boring. Kind of like watching those live mannequins in a store window. Will she blink?

    Unlike Dale, I can really get into a confrontation without any panic, though, with all the options of name-calling, accusations, foot-stomping, and door slamming fully functioning!

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  2. Morning all! Been super busy this week after being out of town last week.

    My one-woman show would have to be “The List Making”. This show would consist of slavishly writing down every detail of what needs to be done, complete with bullet points, repeated entries for things that might need to be done more than once in the coming time frame (like “kitty box”). The encore would be the actual printing of said list with clipart for decoration and my newest trick… making each line rainbow colored! Anyone who wants to stay for the second show can see the colored highlighters come out for when items get crossed off the list.

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      2. Happy Birthday VS!

        What a great movie… “The pellet with the poison’s in the flagon with the dragon! The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true! “

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    6. Thank you all for the glorious birthday wishes. I left home right after my post and just came into the office to be greeted by all these fun thoughts.

      Wonderful video clip, Steve. I love Danny Kaye.

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  3. Well, the entertaining show might be “How Anna Explains Technical Things for the Non-Technical” (a highlight: describing WordPress blogs as tupperware containers for web content). Or perhaps the “Things Anna Has Done to Teach Kids About Music and Art” (including a quick change into a tutu and cowboy hat, and a guest appearance by the Pink Ukulele). Those would be the more entertaining ones, anyway. Otherwise you’re stuck with things like “How Anna Avoids Pulling Weeds” and “Getting Daughter to Eat Her Dinner.”

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  4. My solo piece would comprise the juggling act I do managing three cats and a terrier with a strong prey drive, and how I have to synchronize letting the cats in from out of doors when the dog is waiting at the door to jump them. It gets complicated. Daughter starts her first real job today, learning to be a barista at a coffee shop called Serendipity. Boy, is she excited.

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  5. If I had to do a show, I could probably scrape up some kind of story in the fashion of Kevin Kling. It would be a play or short story performed by one person, hopefully a person far more talented than I!

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  7. Good morning all,

    I’ve never done any writing of the type that could be used for a Fringe show and I’ve never done any acting. I think, if I had to, I could do a Fringe show which I’m sure would not be too good, but who knows. From writing as a guest for this blog, I have found that I like writing about people. For the Fringe I could write about a fictional person that resembles some of the hippies that I knew many years ago. I have done public speaking, so I can get up in front of people and speak. I don’t know about acting. That would be a big stretch for me.

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  8. I haven’t acted since I had the lead in a high school play, so not sure I could pull this off. Perhaps if I pretended I was Meryl Streep playing Julia Child I could do a demonstration of cooking a favorite meal in my pressure cooker. In my mind, I could have a lot of fun with this, though I’m not sure how amusing spectators would find it. Perhaps, handing out a small plate of a delicious Boeuf Bourguignon at the end to everyone in the audience might serve to ameliorate the situation. Let’s throw in a nice glass of Cotes du Rhone to be on the safe side.

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      2. I have found that one at top Ten in Woodbury, and at Skol Liquor in Minneapolis.

        It might be fun to do an animal-themed wine tasting – Le Grand Noir has the sheep on the label, Rex Goliath has the rooster, 14 Hands a horse, Yellow Tail a kangaroo, Toasted Head a bear…Chasing Lions…Toad Hollow…Black Swan…you could have a barnyard and a zoo lined up in bottles.

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      3. Every year for Chinese New Year, the teenager and I host a dinner for our nearest and dearest. One of my friends always makes it a point to find wine that somehow matches up to the Chinese Zodiac. I don’t recall any real stinkers over the years!

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  9. My poetry performance group was once invited to do the Fringe, but we reluctantly decided the logistics were too much for us (I think we were going to have to provide our own mikes, does that sound right?). So if I was doing a Fringe show I’d get us together and finally do that reading. We’d have to get one of the original members back from North Carolina, but it’d be worth it. If I’m allowed to make a pitch: an acquaintance of mine, local speculative author Michael Merriam, is doing the Fringe this year, so be sure to check out “Darkly Through the Light Waters”!

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  10. I wonder if there could be a show about people writing on a blog?
    I see it lit with wet, rather foggy light…………… (That’s an old lighting joke for me. Sorry)

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  11. Perhaps “365 Ways to Express Pain,” but that would fail to pass my test that all art is either hyperbole or litotes.
    I am reading a book, picked up the hard copy for 8 bucks at B & N, which has a sort of performance art in it, page performance art. “Selected Works of T. S. Spivet.” The 12-year-old boy narrator draws/maps/charts as glosses many of the things he mentions. The narration is maddening, no 12-year-old, no matter how bright would talk like that. Very Huck Finn like, which reminds me that the genius of Huck Finn is in the boy narrator talking like a boy but expressing all Twain needs to express.
    But interesting nevertheless and makes me think of tim, Steve, Jim, Anna, maybe others as readers. I would send it on to anyone who wants it, but I must keep it. It has a scene in it with the boy and his father in a pickup that is stolen from my childhood, so eerily like my childhood, it’s unsettling and empowering.
    http://www.cookeagency.ca/books/Larsen-R_TS-Spivet.htm

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    1. I’m reading it, too, Clyde. I quite agree the character of the kid is not convincing. But I push that to the back of my mind and take joy in all the wonderful ways the word “map” can be applied.

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  12. I can see me doing a bit like the Lili Tomlin character who never finished a sentence, trying to give the technical reasons behind what I know about food as medicine. I understand when I read, but am absolutely tongue-tied when I try to reiterate.

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  13. All morning I have had snippets of the re-written song with they lyric “Be kind to your web footed frieeeeend….for a duck may be somebody’s moooooooother…” going through my head. But with “Be kind to your arts volunteeeeeeer….” instead. (Though I doubt that Dale is either a duck or somebody’s mother…)

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  15. In my performance piece I cast myself as the genocidal dictator who orders the annihilation of 50,000 Japanese beetles. I describe their slow tortuous deaths by drowning and show no remorse.

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  16. Apropos of yesterday’s discussion…heard on the news Cargill is recalling a bunch of ground turkey due to salmonella contamination.

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    1. Also apropos of yesterday’s discussion…I’m making chicken tikka masala for dinner, and I used a carton of Greek-style yogurt that had been in the fridge for I don’t know how long. Pretty badly separated, with the white part on the bottom and watery fluid on top…but I used it anyway and I’m cooking the heck out of it. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow send help.

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  18. Anna, I’m blaming this on you and 2 glasses of wine. Somebody else could finish it:

    Be kind to your arts volunteer
    Or you may find your arts to be missing.
    Be kind even if they are slow
    You would probably be slow too….

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    1. Please don’t leave your Fringe button at home.
      Now how many times must we tell you?
      Your show ticket won’t get you in
      Unless you can show us that pin.

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    2. I will gladly accept blame…and be grateful that someone came up with more to the lyric ‘cuz my brain couldn’t get past the first phrase today.

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