Interview with Fringer Allegra Lingo
| By Stephanie Dickrell |
|
It’s the end of an era for Allegra Lingo or perhaps the beginning of a new one. On Friday, she will begin her fifth and final show as a solo performer for the Fringe Festival. She wants to make way for the new and emerging artists the Fringe is meant to promote.
Lingo’s solo performances at Fringe have been audience faves and have been featured in Fringe Encore events. She is also co-founder of local creative group Rockstar Storytellers and tours as a saxophone player with Buckets and Tap Shoes.
Now she’s heading in a different direction. “I’ve told all the stories I want to tell,” she says. “It’s time to collect more.” She’s leaning more towards the essay form, political in nature. “My pen wants to go there right now,” she says, “and I want to follow it.” She doesn’t really know the specifics, but already has a title: How to Lead a Dull Life. Most ironically, she says, because she’s decided her life has been anything but dull. At this point, it looks to include material from her solo shows and other short work as well as non-fiction essays.
But she’s still got one more Fringe show to go, which is already a departure from her normal storytelling. “I tend to live in the world of wit or anger or anger wit,” she says. “I wanted to try to push myself to write something a little different.”
She calls it “word choreography,” a way to converge and translate music and spoken word. Another visual? “Think of the movie Fantasia, but with words instead of dancing brooms and scary demons,” Lingo says. While music is often translated visually through art or into movment with dance, it rarely makes the leap to spoken word. In “Cresendo,” Lingo says, the music becomes another character.
It was the simplicity of Aaron Copland’s music (and the help of her Twitter and Facebook followers) that drew Lingo to it. Well, at least it seems simple. “He starts with a nugget of ideas and it just grows,” she says. It’s about the idea of creation, she adds—which complements her storyline perfectly.
Besides the unorthodox use of music, she also departs from her normal material in subject matter, by including the classic Greek myth of father and son, Daedalus and Icarus, in the vein of the more traditional oral storytelling. She then interweaves her stories of creation with the story of the creation and destruction of wings when Icarus flies too close to the sun. That tale interweaves with glimpses of Lingo’s life right now and how idea generation and creation works for a writer.
For a sample, here's a video of Lingo at last year's Fringe.
Rarig Center Arena, University of Minnesota
330 21st Ave. S., Mpls.
Friday, July 31, 7 p.m.
Saturday, August 1, 4 p.m.
Sunday, Aug. 2, 10 p.m.
Wednesday, Aug. 5, 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, Aug. 8, 7 p.m.
$4 Fringe button for admission, $5 - $12 for single tickets, multiple show passes available. Available online, over the phone at 866.811.4111 or in person at venue box offices or Fringe Central at the Bedlam Theatre, 1501 S 6th St., Mlps. See website for details.
Lingo’s solo performances at Fringe have been audience faves and have been featured in Fringe Encore events. She is also co-founder of local creative group Rockstar Storytellers and tours as a saxophone player with Buckets and Tap Shoes.
Now she’s heading in a different direction. “I’ve told all the stories I want to tell,” she says. “It’s time to collect more.” She’s leaning more towards the essay form, political in nature. “My pen wants to go there right now,” she says, “and I want to follow it.” She doesn’t really know the specifics, but already has a title: How to Lead a Dull Life. Most ironically, she says, because she’s decided her life has been anything but dull. At this point, it looks to include material from her solo shows and other short work as well as non-fiction essays.
But she’s still got one more Fringe show to go, which is already a departure from her normal storytelling. “I tend to live in the world of wit or anger or anger wit,” she says. “I wanted to try to push myself to write something a little different.”
She calls it “word choreography,” a way to converge and translate music and spoken word. Another visual? “Think of the movie Fantasia, but with words instead of dancing brooms and scary demons,” Lingo says. While music is often translated visually through art or into movment with dance, it rarely makes the leap to spoken word. In “Cresendo,” Lingo says, the music becomes another character.
It was the simplicity of Aaron Copland’s music (and the help of her Twitter and Facebook followers) that drew Lingo to it. Well, at least it seems simple. “He starts with a nugget of ideas and it just grows,” she says. It’s about the idea of creation, she adds—which complements her storyline perfectly.
Besides the unorthodox use of music, she also departs from her normal material in subject matter, by including the classic Greek myth of father and son, Daedalus and Icarus, in the vein of the more traditional oral storytelling. She then interweaves her stories of creation with the story of the creation and destruction of wings when Icarus flies too close to the sun. That tale interweaves with glimpses of Lingo’s life right now and how idea generation and creation works for a writer.
For a sample, here's a video of Lingo at last year's Fringe.
Rarig Center Arena, University of Minnesota
330 21st Ave. S., Mpls.
Friday, July 31, 7 p.m.
Saturday, August 1, 4 p.m.
Sunday, Aug. 2, 10 p.m.
Wednesday, Aug. 5, 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, Aug. 8, 7 p.m.
$4 Fringe button for admission, $5 - $12 for single tickets, multiple show passes available. Available online, over the phone at 866.811.4111 or in person at venue box offices or Fringe Central at the Bedlam Theatre, 1501 S 6th St., Mlps. See website for details.
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