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Buffalo Infringement Festival 2007 Survival Guide

Movement artist Aaron Piepszny will perform in a half dozen venues over the course of the festival—check the schedule to see where and when.

There was something missing in Buffalo’s otherwise jam-packed festival calendar. About midway between Gay Pride in early June and Curtain Up! in mid September, there was a hole—which for the past two years has been filled by the Buffalo Infringement Festival. This year, Buffalo Infringement Festival’s 11- day schedule runs from July 26 through August 5 and again focuses its doings along Allen Street and satellites at a handful of locations along Elmwood and downtown. Of course, the Buffalo Infringement Festival has more purpose than to take up space and to plug up a couple of unused summer weekends.

The Buffalo Infringement Festival is at that awkward age for Buffalo events. Typically at start-up, public response to new ventures is “Really? Sure! Let’s go.” In year two, it’s “Again? Sure! Let’s tell friends.” In year three, the public has a chance to compare the first two years and calculate if the venture is on an upswing or not. For year four, organizers have a chance to shore up their organizational plan. If an event can make it through year five…well, by gum, it is as repeatable in Buffalo as a Democrat incumbent in public office and is on the local map in perpetuity.

The strength of the Buffalo Infringement Festival programming is that, on all levels, it breaks down barriers between artist and audience. This is also one of its drawbacks, since at any cultural event, a single show or an 11-day festival, audiences and artists have varying needs.

The Buffalo Infringement Festival touts itself as a home to the experimental, the political, the bohemian and the avant garde. Given the current state of art, especially its abundance in Western New York, think of this festival’s program in its entirety (moreso than any individual events) as an experiment. Its policy of open curation, welcoming all comers to perform or to exhibit, is a satisfying, First Amendment-expansive, political statement in and of itself. On a case-by-case basis, experiment can yield success or failure. No one should be deterred by either and all outcomes deserve response.

As for bohemian and avant garde…well, considering that for the past 125 years each of the arts has relied significantly upon experiment, it is pretty darn hard for a bunch of recently graduated theater majors to be avant of anything.

Despite that, it is to the theater events where I will be headed. If theater brings back high school trauma of reading Death of a Salesman aloud, take your pick from rock music of all flavors, film, video, dance, a bunch of parties and a cunnilingus workshop. (Trust me on this. See “The Art of Ypsilform Dining” in the guide.)

Buffalo Infringement Festival’s theater programming will offer a lot of replication passing itself off as experiment. In that regard expect the following pitfalls practiced by veterans and novices:

■ Introductions explaining the show which last longer than the show itself.

The S. Vestas Flaming Circus will perform every evening, August 1-5, in Days Park.

■ Scene shifts which last longer than the introductions.

■ Ironic use of wigs.

■ Frequent employment of Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe action figures as gender icons.

■ Overheated statements delivered as climactic revelations—“war is bad,” “love is good”—that audiences are aware of before the show began.

■ The name of the current US president as a punchline (especially in the cunnilingus workshop).

Still, it is possible for even the most humble group of players to conjure the divine and change the course of your evening or your life. If you only discover an actor or director or playwright whose work you’d want to see again, the Buffalo Infringement Festival has proved its worth.

Satisfaction from the minimal expectations of putting on a show with Mickey-and-Judy fervor could prove fatal. Vital to its mission, if the Buffalo Infringement Festival wants to serve artists it must find a reliable means of sustaining itself. At this point in its early development, the festival might review its plan to serve audiences, and that means more than offering art in wholesale volume. It means how that stuff is offered up.

Serving audiences is more than a peripheral to the arts event, it is a means toward a goal of supporting artists. Artists, once successful in a festival, will move on to opportunities that are more visible and more lucrative. This year’s improv comedy group is next year’s cast of Friends. A well-served audience is an audience that will return, year after year ad infinitum.

The casual attendee might not notice or even care about the Buffalo Infringement Festival’s infrastructure. In fact just dropping into one of the bars, clubs, halls or studios where events are taking place can be a very happy thing. Strolling along Allen and coming upon a street show can be a memorable bit of urban whimsy. There has got to be certain joy in finding art at your doorstep and culture in your path.

The S. Vestas Flaming Circus

However, the core audience of dedicated patrons plans to see shows, coordinating dates, times, drinks and dinner with other showgoing friends. Sometimes this seems like more planning than Buffalo Infringement Festival undertakes. Visiting the Buffalo Infringement Festival Web site looking for information at this critical time (writing less than two weeks before the festival) finds its home page has not been updated since June 23. At 1:23pm, to be exact. Four days in advance of the festival and the entire calendar is not yet posted there. Look for the printed schedule at your favorite venue.

Buffalo Infringement Festival prides itself on being budgetless and free from constraints associated with sponsorship and grants. The upside of this is that the festival is mindfully affordable to all audiences.

Buffalo’s franchise on the Infringement Festival is a replication of a movement started in Montreal. Its initiation was a response to festivals, and by turn alternative festivals, becoming coopted and commercialized. This happens all the time. Sundance Film Festival, for example, once an indy showcase, is now a major Hollywood field trip. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, once a grassroots response to the city’s international theater festival, now charges artists about $500 to perform there.

In 2001, there was a to-do when a newspaper sponsoring events threatened to withdraw support until one of the acts, Car Stories, was removed from the Montreal Fringe Festival. (A member of the anti-authoritarian ensemble made playful attempt to charge the paper’s theater critic. Complications ensued. P.S. Car Stories will appear in this year’s festival in Buffalo. P.P.S. A couple of Buffalo artists have gone on to appear in Montreal’s Infringement Festival.)

It would not be against Infringement governance (now guiding festivals in a handful of cities) to establish order, only to have that order be hierarchical. It would not be against governance to raise funds or to seek sponsorship, but to let sponsors dictate to participating artists. Besides, money is not the root of evil; it is the want of money that prompts bad things.

Seeking material and financial support could benefit the participating artists (and the festival) and can be done without compromise. It is one thing for a festival to be so popular as to run out of creature comforts for the attendees (Woodstock, anyone?) but it is another not to plan for audience comfort. As it is, enforced poverty perpetuates artists as an underclass. It seems Infringement-contrary to further alienate artists from society. Paying artists? Now that’s radical.

Buffalo’s Infringement Festival’s success is in its scope, not its singularity. Yet sometimes the festival promotes itself as the only outlet of its kind. The Buffalo Infringement Festival claims to operate and sustain others who are “under the radar.” In theater, this year again, the festival will use some of Buffalo’s best, most relied upon talents. Puppeteer Michelle Costa is a Buffalo Infringement Festival staple, but her work at Studio Arena and elsewhere hardly place her below the radar.

Rather than following Infringement’s global intentions, Buffalo’s organizers might localize their mission, an additionally radical stance. If anything, the Buffalo Infringement Festival is the newest institution in a culture friendly to artistic newcomers. Buffalo Infringement could potentially be a force to bring together Buffalo—which has not yet bridged all its social gaps—through its cultural mission.

Undeniable is that the Buffalo Infringement Festival’s theater programming is part of a vital development along our rialto. The most exciting trend of the theater season just gone by, as reinforced by the awards honoring it, were an unprecedented number of works created by local writers and directors especially for the talents of local performers for the appreciation of local audiences. That these shows reflected hearfelt, uncynical vision and genuine passion for performance is also remarkable. An Artie citation to Buffalo Infringement Festival’s organizers in 2007—as well as recognition to current festival artists in previous Artie presentations—suggests more than blips on a screen.

The Buffalo Infringement Festival’s success has been in rallying local artists. It is fun to see a year’s volume of work being presented in one week. It is more fun to see works in progress at the festival that will be fully realized in other venues in coming years. Future success depends upon its organizers rallying support staff, whether paid or a cadre of volunteers, to support those artists more thoroughly. And serve audiences.

No matter what plan organizers (or critical journalists) have for any art work or arts program, it is posterity and the public that determines continuance and success. If the public wants to see the continuance of this Infringement Festival, they will respond when organizers ask for volunteers and “new blood.” The cyclical relationship between the Infringement Festival and its partisans is the wheel that will move its cultural mission forward.

Visit www.infringebuffalo.org to keep track of the schedule of events.