I took all this time to write about the show, even though I saw it the first night, because I wanted to write something deep about it.
There has been science fiction at the Fringe before. In 1998, Anthony DP Mann did a show based on Dr. Who, but it was low budget and campy. It was fun, but it was not that different from most Fringe shows. (DP Mann was interesting, he sounded and looked old, but was only 21 that year. About a month after the Fringe, I saw some dinner theatre put on by him at a church hall, spaghetti while an original story based on Sherlock Holmes was performed.) In 2004, ASM did "The Martian Chronicles" and it was slick, but didn't really feel like anything.
Last year Black Box theatre did "Shades of Grey". About three old time type science fiction short stories presented in the form that was seen on "The Twilight Zone". You could feel those old stories, you could feel the connection to science fiction before it came to mean movies. But they were limited by the form.
This year they are back with "Arthur C. Clarke's How We Went to Mars" and I think they've done an even better job. They aren't stuck with a predefined form. It is a lecture (and no, I didn't talk to Liz last year about how lectures could be a form for Fringe shows) and while going to Mars is the theme, the lecturer has a distinct style that is entertaining. You need a dynamic artist to show off the static slides.
Science fiction is "fringe". It's over there somewhere. People do things because it interests them, the true definition of "amateur". Yet bring it to the Fringe, and suddenly that gets to show off. Someone who would spend so much time building a model, because he likes to build models, now gets to show it off, as part of the background to the lecture. The care put into the detail may be much finer than many Fringe shows, because putting on a show isn't the key component. The Fringe becomes a vehicle to put on the show, and like all kinds of art that is out there but which might not consider performing at the Fringe,
it may be better than some of the self defined artists who then lack experience or life to say something important.
Sorry Liz. in trying to do so much thise week, I don't convey this properly.
