The Start
The idea of taking a show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe all started with one of our faculty members, Chuck Richie. He travels to Scotland often and has many contacts there. As this past year was his last year teaching at Kent State University it made for a great gift to leave the school with. Chuck talked with Tim Welsh (who Co-Directed and collaborated with me on creating the original Grimm’s) and I about taking “A Collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales” to the Festival. As Tim had a full schedule for his last year at Kent he was willing to help but very busy. The opportunity came at a just the right time in my college career to give me some great direction for my future. So Chuck and I started to lay out the basics for all that we would need to do to make it to the Festival Fringe. He informed me that our newest faculty member, Amy Fritsche, had always wanted to take students to an international festival. In December we all met to discuss specifics and started building the budget. With flights alone, the budget sky rocketed. This made it clear that our 11 person cast had to be smaller. I did some work on the script so that we could do the show with only 7 actors rather than the original 11. The next step was casting. Since we didn’t have any funds to start with, it was not easy finding a cast that would be able to fill the financial needs of the trip as well as fitting the roles of our shows needs. With the help of some of the original cast and a few good friends, after a few months, we were able to put together our cast.
-Dan
Transforum To Fringe 