American Squatter
American Squatter
By Barry Smith
Yellow Venue, Orlando International Theater Fringe Festival, Orlando, FL</strong>
I worry about the Fringe story tellers that mine their own life experiences for material. No matter how interesting you may be, at some point you will run out of useable stories. Mr. Smith captivated us last year with the scary and funny “Jesus in Montana” and now we visit his tortured teen years of skateboarding, taking acid, and learning the ins and outs of squatting in a London hovel. The filth and squalor somehow made up for his father’s obsessive-compulsive cleaning fetish, but then his student visa ran out and he realized that on some abstract level, he was just like his dad.
Along with his gift for gab, Mr. Smith makes better use of Power Point than anyone I know. His collection of faded family photos coupled with the built-in Microsoft Office dissolves expands his monolog into a short film, and there’s nothing like photographic evidence to sell a tale. I wonder what he’ll do next year…
For more information on Barry Smith, please visit http://www.barrysmith.comThis show is presented as part of the 17th Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival. Information on times, tickets, and venue location my be found at http://OrlandoFringe.org/
</em>
