Fringe Fest Brings Together Arts at Colgate

Colgate’s student theater group, Masque and Triangle, hosted Colgate’s fourth annual Fringe Festival on Saturday, April 12. The event was comprised of several Colgate students performing arts, who gathered to showcase their talents and put on a variety of performances including dance, song, musical theater, acting and improvisational comedy at Parker Commons from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m..

The first piece, “The Darkest of Roasts,” was an acting performance, directed by sophomore Lee Tremblay and written by senior Mary Rose Devine of Masque and Triangle, about a coffee shop run by a stubborn owner who considers black coffee to be the only acceptable way to serve joe.

The second piece was a dance performance, choreographed and performed by juniors Dylan Crouse and Jenna Bryfonski of the Colgate Ballroom Dancers. The performance involved multiple styles of ballroom dance including Cha Cha, Waltz, Rumba, swing with the Charleston, Viennese Waltz and Tango, all of which entailed a series of lifts, dips, spins and transitions from one style to another.

The third piece was a skit, directed by junior Christopher Donnelly of Masque and Triangle, about two parents who decide that they need to tell their 16-year-old son about a secret – he is adopted. The father does not think that the son knows and is very nervous, so he instead jumps into the story of how he met the mother. The mother chides the father for neglecting to tell their son the secret, but as it turns out the son already knew, due to the fact that he is black and his parents are white.

The fourth piece, “Who’s Crazy? / My Psychopharmacologist and I,” was a musical theater performance, directed by juniors Lillian Laiks and Olivia Gamble of Masque and Triangle, based on the show “Next to Normal.” The show is about a patient with bipolar disorder and a psychopharmacologist who records the patient’s condition at various times and provides adjusted doses of pills over the course of treatment, during which the patient increasingly experiences side effects until she eventually wants to do nothing at all and is declared stable.

The fifth piece, “A Look into the Female Mind,” was a comedy skit, written and directed by sophomore Brittney Wittmer of Masque and Triangle, about girls over-analyzing the actions of their crush. The play’s intricate plot reaches a crescendo when the main actress gets asked out by her crush, at which point she reaches out to a friend to help craft a response. The encounter is underwhelming and the girls become distraught and disenchanted, yet they ultimately fall back into the same habits of daydreaming as from the start. 

The sixth piece was a series of songs performed a cappella by the Mantiphondrakes, which included the theme song to the show “Avatar: The Last Airbender” with some interpretive dance in the form of stances used to bend the elements in the show, a blend of “Blow” by Kesha and “Disturbia” by Rihanna and “I See Fire” by Ed Sheeran from the end credits of “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.”

The seventh piece was an improvisational comedy performance by senior Robert Wechsler, sophomore Zachary Abt and first-year Steven Nave of Charred Goosebeak, which featured two people eating cereal, with one asking if the other was going to ask for milk and the other saying that he was actually going to ask for sex. This was followed by absurdist scenes in which potato farmers in Pompeii interact right before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and potato farmers on the moon question why they are not growing blueberries instead.

The final piece was a set of two dance performances by FUSE Dance Company, the first of which was “Empathy Loop,” choreographed by senior Sebastian Sangervasi of FUSE and set to “Skyscrapers” by OK Go. The second piece was “Dawn,” choreographed by senior April Bailey of FUSE and set to “Orange Sky” by Alexi Murdoch. Masque and Triangle provided free food from the Hamilton Eatery and other local restaurants after the show and reminded all viewers of their upcoming production of the “Taming of the Shrew,” to be shown from April 17-19 at 6 p.m. each day on the Merrill House Lawn.”