New Orleans Fringe Kicks Off Discussions With Christopher McElroen, 11/14

This year, we kick-off the 2011 New Orleans Fringe Festival with a rare and special opportunity - a candid artist-to-artist discussion with accomplished director Christopher McElroen, who will accompany his discussion with excerpts of archival footage from his 2007 presentation of Waiting for Godot in New Orleans. In Fall 2007, Christopher directed Waiting for Godot on a desolate street corner in the Lower Ninth Ward and at a gutted house in Gentilly, breaking ground on new performance and community fronts in New Orleans. The productions brought forth a relevant and classic text in a high-quality, accessible format. Waiting for Godot is a great piece of theater. Sure. Still, Waiting for Godot, in the middle of the desolation of a once-vibrant neighborhood, with a bowl of jambalaya to warm you, shoulder-to-shoulder with the diversity that is our city - that is a community event.

For many in New Orleans, the community event is the highest form of theater, of performance, of immersion.

Since Godot, we have seen several new and established ensemble theater companies mount catalytic site-specific productions. This year, the New Orleans Fringe Festival is hosting 45 performance groups who are choosing to self-produce, many doing so because they want to site-specify their work. In a town of only 300,000 folks, the desire to infiltrate performance into the community is perhaps stronger than ever right here, right now.

New Orleans Fringe, in association with the Graduate Program in Arts Administration of the University of New Orleans, is pleased to host this candid artist-to-artist discussion with Christopher McElroen, who will approach some of the intricacies of site-specific work and community engagement through several starting points:

How can one engage a community through site-specific performance? When is it best for the work to develop independently, without the community? Can "quality" negotiate the two?

Just a bit of a get-together, between New Orleans artists and community members and an established, resourceful, exciting, contemporary director. To kick off this year's New Orleans Fringe Fest.

Monday, November 14, 8-10pm with casual hang-out to follow. Doors open at 7:30, free admission, complimentary wine and beer served at the delightful new venue Cafe' Istanbul, 2372 St. Claude Avenue.

For further information, please see www.nofringe.org, www.christophermcelroen.com , www.uno.edu/artsadmin.