Andrew J. Lederer

1. i overheard international fest director telling william burdett-coutts early in the festival that he kept trying to get in touch with the new fringe director but the guy never had time for him/was too busy seeing shows.

int'l director said fringe director doesn't ever have to see a show; he doesn't have responsibility for shows, he just runs a box office.

i liked that.

(for the record, the int'l director admitted he's heard the fringe head was a good guy.)

2. the scotsman's claire smith, warmly drunk, with extreme kindness in her eyes, said i was unfair to her poet friend anita in this blog. (i apologized.) claire said she liked the open me better than the mean me; preferred the andrew who facilitated connections between people out of pure, powerful goodness, seeking no personal gain.

her examples were my hooking her up with rain pryor and paul provenza.

but of course, i co-produced rain's show that year and this year hooked claire up with provenza as part of my work on behalf of the green room, so maybe i was looking for just a touch of personal gain.

3. told reg hunter i admired his delivery tremendously but pretentiously offered that i was looking for a comedy style freed from the limitations of a single, set style.

he said that was jazz and i said i'd been called a jazz comedian, which he didn't think sounded implausible. told me to wait right there, he would be right back, this was the best conversation he's had at the festival.

i waited a while then moved to other friends, so it's hard to say whether his return to that part of the bar was the promised coming back. (but i didn't feel dissed. we were just bar denizens in motion.)

4. kate copstick said i carry with me "a miasma of sadness" or something like that.

i asserted she had not seen me sad this entire fest; that i was now "zen".

she said if that was the case, the i had changed.

but maybe the truth is that i've been responding to changed circumstances.