<Previous Season 2008-2009
SAK Comedy Lab
Absent Minded Improv Orlando GLBT Theatre Festival Coming Out Party, a cabaret Florida Presbyterian Cursillo #1 Show (JCC) A Gift of Christmas Joy (AOL) |
Christmas Caroling (JCPC)
Gospel Hymn Sing (HPD) Stuart Little, The Musical (FCRT) Florida Presbyterian Cursillo #2 A Day to Remember (OIFTF) Camp E.D.G.E. (JCPC) Mark Baratelli's Improv Cabaret |
Season Breakdown (most recent first) - please click title to see show page
One extremely talented actor letting his mind take him where it will, combining outrageous creativity with the finely-honed craft of telling a complete, compelling and hilarious story. -NYtheatre.com
One of the festival's best performances...Like a two-person Baby wants Candy... -Charleston City Paper Had the audience captivated from the moment Mark hit the stage. -Executive Producer of the Dirty South Improv Festival Baratelli has an impressively showy singing voice and a nicely warped imagination. -Orlando Sentinel '06 The stories are about as good as Garrison Keillor, but more fantastic...The songs were good, the singing was very good and the storytelling was fantastic. -Orlando Sentinel '07 Mark is a star in his own right...Practically seamless. -Bloggingfringe.com Wonderful! -Artistic Director of San Francisco Improv Festival |
![]() A Day to Remember
May 2009 Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival Loch Have Park, Florida MaestroTimothy returns for a fourth year to the Orlando International Fringe Festival - the oldest fringe festival in the United States. In this show, Absent Minded Improv presents stories told by local luminaries inspire wildly comic improvisations: fond, freaky, frightening memories of New Year's, Valentine's, Earth Day, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Different theme and guest every show. For tickets and more information, CLICK HERE. ![]() in the BLUE VENUE
5/14 THU 8:20 pm, Valentine's Day, Andrew Connor 5/15 FRI 5:00 pm, Earth Day, Mark Baratelli 5/17 SUN 11:45 am, Independence Day, Brian Feldman 5/18 MON 10:00 pm, Halloween, Beth Marshall 5/21 THU 6:40 pm, Thanksgiving Day, Rob Ward as Pepe 5/22 FRI 6:40 pm, Christmas Day, Bob Kodzis 5/23 SAT 1:40 pm, New Year's Day, Charles Frierman "They use what they get (from the audience)....ingeniously" "You never know which way they’ll turn." "I may have been the only one who laughed really loud....But, hey, that’s improv. Wish hard enough, and the Absents will surely craft a joke just for you." - Elizabeth Maupin, Orlando Sentinel Voted BEST IMPROV, 2009 Fringe Patron Awards |
Best Improv Show | A Day to Remember |
![]() Orlando GLBT Theatre Festival
Maestro Timothy was a member of the Board of Directors September - October 2008 CANCELLED September 17, 2008|By Elizabeth Maupin, Sentinel Staff Writer Plans for a new gay-and-lesbian theater festival in Orlando have run aground because of accusations that chief organizer Matthew MacDermid took money from a January fundraiser for people with AIDS. MacDermid, 27, resigned suddenly as the festival's artistic director late last week. Most of the Orlando GLBT Theatre Festival, originally planned to open in late August and run through early October, has been canceled or postponed indefinitely, first because of insufficient funding, and then because MacDermid quit his post. The resignation followed allegations that he did not turn in receipts from a musical fundraiser called Boys Night Out, held to raise money for the national charity Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. T. Robert Pigott, an actor who appeared in the January fundraiser, phoned Broadway Cares to make sure it had received the $1,122 in proceeds. When a Broadway Cares staffer said the group had no record of the donation, Pigott asked MacDermid for proof he had sent the money. MacDermid eventually furnished Pigott with a letter of acknowledgment, written on paper with a Broadway Cares logo at the top. But R. Keith Bullock, a finance associate at the New York-based charity, said that the letter, which Pigott faxed to him, "does not match" the organization's standard donation acknowledgment. "We have not received any funds from Mr. MacDermid," Bullock said. Because the fundraiser was advertised as a Broadway Cares event, the charity is "looking into options" to pursue the matter, Bullock said. MacDermid insisted he did send the proceeds to the charity. "I maintain that I sent the money," he said in an e-mail this week. "It was received by someone, as someone sent me a letter thanking me for the donation." He declined a phone interview. MacDermid was scheduled to perform at Boys Night Out, which he organized, but he was in jail that night for allegedly violating his probation from an earlier incident in Volusia County. Audiences were told he had a "family emergency." In 2005 he was arrested and charged with grand theft, a felony, after being accused of having taken more than $35,000 from Norwood's Restaurant & Wine Shop between May 2003 and March 2005, when he was fired. MacDermid had been a clerk in Norwood's wine shop. He pleaded no contest to the charges in 2006, was placed on 15 years' probation and was ordered to repay $35,863.25 at a rate of $500 a month. The GLBT theater festival, originally planned to include three plays, a series of new-play readings and the presentation of awards honoring two deceased gay and lesbian theater artists, has been scaled back to only two evenings of readings, which will wind up Sunday night. Festival board members said they would focus on fundraising and work toward a successful festival in the future. |