Thinking about Projects on the go...

Lots of thinking the past few days. I have been unfocused in conversations because of the personal things that are going on, because my mind in times of stress tends to go overboard instead of shutting down. So it has been flitting around why I have been dissatisfied, perhaps unfairly, with some of the shows I have seen. This week I saw two shows that were actually pretty well-done, but I left them feeling annoyed. I think a big part was expectations based on who was putting the shows on. Probably not very fair because if some more inexperienced people were doing the shows I would have been kinder. Expectations play a part both bad and good in our theatre experiences. There was also a feeling with these shows that they were assembled quickly and at the last minute. How do I know this? I don't - not really. I just had a feeling they were. There was a certain looseness which was not apologized for that seemed to say 'heck, this is Fringe, no need to put a lot of time into it to refine and polish the piece'. I also knew one show was still in rehearsal the morning of their opening because the director shared that in a conversation with a kind of laugh. As well, both pieces were uneven, leaving me to believe that they lacked time to make the weaker sections as good as the stronger sections. Anyhow, this has left me grumpy with collectives (both were forms of collectives) and then I realized what was else was bothering me about that - Double, Double. Are we going to just create another collective in the mix of Fringe Collectives? What will we bring to it that will make me happy and justified in producing it? I didn't feel this way last year when I saw 25 Plays about... Love. It was a collective but I thought it was rehearsed and even and clean and funny and sad and not just thrown together. It felt like they had worked it enough that they had culled out sections that didn't make the cut so that it was a good solid piece through and through. I guess that is the standard we will have to hold ourselves to if we are lucky to get in next year (or the year after). It was after seeing it that I thought Double, Double would. This year set me back. Each year at the Fringe there is an uneven distribution of what's out there based on the lottery. I want it to be plays, but I know there has to be a mix. I also need to be more discriminating when I select what I see. I know I don't like certain things.