OK. Now we get to the REALLY FUN part: the shows have closed, the Fest is over. Now come...

The Official t2k Fringe-Dweller Fringest of the Fringe Awards!

These aren't just any awards. No, no, no nonononononononono. As lifelong, blood oath-sworn, seriously committed (or should be) theater fringe-dwellers, our Fringest of the Fringe Awards celebrate the random, the obscure, the undeniably brilliant, the inexcusably wretched, the truly, down-home weird.

t2k weird, that is.

And, because we saw what amounted to about 10% of the full 200+ show Fringe program, they have absolutely no significance!

Nevertheless -- in no particular order other than the one that is springing forth from our eagerly nimble digits at this very moment -- let the homage begin --

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-- Fringest Theater Space: Under St. Marks. Down the stairs off the street, down more stairs past the ticket table, through a narrow tunnel of a hallway and into an underground space that had to be a speakeasy in at least one past life. Plus it's not under just any old place. Oh, no. It's under the Fun City Tattoo Parlor! How fringe is that!

-- Fringest Performance By An Actor: Even though it ostensibly took place in the Philippines, they called it, "Call It Peace: Meditations From North America" and it spewed forth so many ideas, ideologies, pop culture tidbits and recent current events that I truly began to think somebody was going to drag a kitchen sink onstage before this thing was done. Through it all and throughout everything, a lot of it spent writhing about on the floor, Richard Scudney sustained a level of intensity that was exhausting to just sit and watch.

-- Fringest Super-Supportive Performer's Friend In The Audience: We've all seen them. We've all heard them. We've all had them sitting near us, guffawing and stamping their feet. You all know who I'm talking about. Yeah. The Performer's Friend. That special, dedicated person who claps, laughs, hoots, hollers and/or whistles really really loud and really really often, regardless of whether what's going on up there onstage actually warrants it. The PF at Manifest: The Battle of Intergalactic Farces edges out the sobbing close second from "Belly" due to her full-package approach: the early-80s punker look fully accessorized with the little dog in a shoulder bag. Nice safety pins, babe.

-- Fringest Performance By An Actress: An erupting volcano in striped tights, "Carrot and Stick"'s Bina Chauhan lit up the Kraine stage with an intensity that began at a level most folks end at. And then she kept going. And going. And going...

-- Fringest Magic Fingers Theater: The Greenwich Street. Perched atop what I'm guessing is the 1/2/3/9 subway line, audience members and performers alike receive a relaxing, rejuvenating massage from trains hurtling past beneath about a half-dozen times a performance.

-- Fringest Ensemble Acting: How To Act Around Cops: Andrew Breving, Matthew Benjamin, Chris Kipiniak, Susan O'Connor, Josh Carpenter, Marc Webster, Veronica Welch. In a darkly twisted, off-kilter world, this excellent ensemble maintained a uniformly cool facade over the constant uneasiness underneath that foreshadowed something really bad and really violent happening at any moment.

-- Fringest All-White Discussion Panel: The topic: "Political and Social Issues and Their Place in Theatre". The panel: a baker's dozen's worth of producers, directors, playwrights, actors and other creative personnel on the Fringe Fest scene. The color: 100% white. For a brief yet terrifying moment, I thought I was having a flashback to Orange County, CA. The 10% of the Fringe I saw was remarkably diverse politically, socially, and, yes, ethnically. Perhaps next year, whomever put this chummy little white liberal bourgeois West Village brownstone cocktail party soiree together will take a look around and see the multi-ethnic, multicultural depth and breadth of their actual festival. Or is it only a bunch of white folks who can be sittin' around, talkin' about "political and social issues"?

-- Fringest Director: How To Act Around Cops: Jon Schumacher. From the moment the eerie dashlights bump up on a couple of sketchy losers driving fast down a dark road with the cops behind them, Schumacher hit and held just the right balance of sinister foreboding and sly humor, never losing his grip. Viva the Northwestern Mafia.

-- Fringest Men's Room: Teatro La Tea. Here's how I saw it in Binge 3: "...where the toilet stalls are duct-taped off, the sink is a converted piss trough and the room next door has "Slop Sink" stenciled on it." Plus it smelled a lot like the 50th Street "C" train subway station. Mm-mm good.

-- Fringest Writing: Two so very different plays, both so very well done: Logan Brown's How To Act Around Cops, which began on a flat, open linear highway only to quickly twist into a convoluted labyrinth of switchbacks, never spinning out; Caitlin Condy's Little Wing, which took flight into a poetic stratosphere all its own, while staying true to its unique world.

-- Fringest Fringe Person Who Looked Like She Really Wanted To Be Somewhere Else: The House Manager at KGB. I was there about a half dozen times. She was there each time I was. And so was her vibe that said, "If only all these theater people would just go away I could get out of here and find out what Kyan said tonight -- "

-- Fringest Show: Dharma Road Productions' re.

-- Fringest Single Moment: Bad-Ass Clown's David Matthew Engel was right there with his schizo, pantomimed portrayal of Johnny Cash duking it out with a rebellious backup singer. But when I saw the video segment of re, where diminutive dancer Sakura Shimada goes sprinting after a garbage truck down the pre-dawn darkness of a Chinatown street wearing some weird Susie Wong-type dress and trailing an eight-foot train of strung-together found items from the trash flailing behind her like some bag dragonlady's tail (pause to inhale), well, um...we...uh...we just didn't experience another moment quite like this one in the entire Fest.

-- Fringest Place To Get A Slice: Two Boots, where Greenwich Ave. and W. 11th St. converge at 7th Ave. South. Rivoli's on Hudson at Christopher is good -- they're fast. But only Two Boots hosts The Scowl! Film Series curated by Richard Hell, that includes the stone weird Kiss Me Deadly and the little-known, lesser-seen Nightmare Alley. So there.

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