25 years of Orlando Fringe Festival memories: 1995, the 4th festival
Remembering 25 years of the Orlando Fringe Festival: A look at 1994
by Matthew J. Palm
The Artistic Type
March 24, 2016, 1:06 pm
The 1995 Fringe Festival brought amusing titles such as “Self-Indulgent Crap” and “Misery Loves Chachi.” (Remember the old “Happy Days” spin-off?)
It also brought about 70,000 people downtown, which was a big increase over 1994. About 25,000 more people attended the fourth festival than had taken in the previous one; the third festival had suffered with rainy weather — a factor even more important back in the day than now, as the venues were scattered across downtown.
Among the special attractions in 1995: A book fair and a bungee-bouncer attraction.
About 7,500 people bought more than 15,000 tickets to Fringe plays, said producer Terry Olson, and tens of thousands of other festivalgoers took part in free Fringe offerings out-of-doors.
Many performances were sellouts, Olson told the Orlando Sentinel, especially performances of the comedy “All in the Timing,” put on by a group of Orlando-area professional actors, and those of “The Brady Bunch (Uncensored),” produced by Orlando’s Manhattan South Studio Theatre.
The festival broke even, but producers Orlando Theatre Project still owed about $5,000 on the rain-soaked previous year.
“Misery Loves Chachi” was a collection of comic songs and monologues by Bob Larkin, a streetmosphere performer at Disney-MGM Studios. He described it to the Sentinel’s Elizabeth Maupin as “your standard entertainment fare” – “a tribute to North Dakota, a musical romp about Sally Struthers and Dionne Warwick, a catchy tune about Orlando, a speech they’d never air on an Oscar telecast, a heart-wrenching song about talk shows and an homage to O.J.”
The a capella singing group Return to Zero joined Larkin at some performances. Also known as Four for a Dollar, the group was widely known for its theme-park performances.
Remembering 25 years of the Orlando Fringe Festival: A look at 1994
by Matthew J. Palm
The Artistic Type
March 24, 2016, 1:06 pm
The 1995 Fringe Festival brought amusing titles such as “Self-Indulgent Crap” and “Misery Loves Chachi.” (Remember the old “Happy Days” spin-off?)
It also brought about 70,000 people downtown, which was a big increase over 1994. About 25,000 more people attended the fourth festival than had taken in the previous one; the third festival had suffered with rainy weather — a factor even more important back in the day than now, as the venues were scattered across downtown.
Among the special attractions in 1995: A book fair and a bungee-bouncer attraction.
About 7,500 people bought more than 15,000 tickets to Fringe plays, said producer Terry Olson, and tens of thousands of other festivalgoers took part in free Fringe offerings out-of-doors.
Many performances were sellouts, Olson told the Orlando Sentinel, especially performances of the comedy “All in the Timing,” put on by a group of Orlando-area professional actors, and those of “The Brady Bunch (Uncensored),” produced by Orlando’s Manhattan South Studio Theatre.
The festival broke even, but producers Orlando Theatre Project still owed about $5,000 on the rain-soaked previous year.
“Misery Loves Chachi” was a collection of comic songs and monologues by Bob Larkin, a streetmosphere performer at Disney-MGM Studios. He described it to the Sentinel’s Elizabeth Maupin as “your standard entertainment fare” – “a tribute to North Dakota, a musical romp about Sally Struthers and Dionne Warwick, a catchy tune about Orlando, a speech they’d never air on an Oscar telecast, a heart-wrenching song about talk shows and an homage to O.J.”
The a capella singing group Return to Zero joined Larkin at some performances. Also known as Four for a Dollar, the group was widely known for its theme-park performances.
Copyright © 2016, Orlando Sentinel (original article)