by Kirby Lindsay Laney, posted 24 March 2015
From March 19th – April 12th, Moisture Festival celebrates its twelfth year, with 55 shows/presentations scheduled at a variety of times over four weeks, featuring 175 very diverse performers. It takes over 200 volunteers, plus dedicated Board Members, Producers and one Director of Smooth Operations, to organize and support all those performers at all those shows, in three venues – Hale’s Palladium, Broadway Performance Hall and Teatro ZinZanni (plus, one workshop at West of Lenin.)
Thousands of audience members will flock to the exquisite, and unique, varieté (and burlesque) shows that Moisture has built a world-wide reputation upon. They will fill the seats, gasp at the sights, and shout with laughter at the antics. Tickets will sell-out, not to every show and not always in advance, but they will sell-out.
Still, some people don’t get it. Jennifer Wensrich started (“I think it was 2006,”) with Moisture Fest as a volunteer, taking tickets and handing out programs. When asked how she explains to people what has become her home every spring, she said, “I usually describe the show as a place, an event, where all these art forms can come together that will leave you grinning from ear to ear!”
Getting people to try Moisture is challenging to many, but Wensrich has a simple solution – “I make them come. You can talk about it until the cows come home, but if you bring them, even if you have to drag them, they are laughing in their seats. It’s transformative.”
The Board & The Producers
Wensrich has risen through the not-so-rough but always tumbling 501(c)3 organization of Moisture Festival to become Director of Smooth Operations. This title means she oversees, well, nearly everything, while remaining nearly invisible to everyone not intimately involved.
Wensrich works closely with the MF Board of Directors. The Festival started in 2004 with a small group of artists, most of whom still actively work in the day-to-day production of this showcase of varieté and burlesque. Today, some of the show’s producers still serve on the Board, but as Wensrich explained, “We try to have an active board, with members that aren’t all producers.”
After all, the four-week showcase in early Spring is the centerpiece of the organization, but it also takes year ‘round fundraising, community building and educational events to support Moisture. Board members help with these ‘satellite events,’ as Wensrich described them, which include thank you parties for donors and/or volunteers, an auctions and a New Year’s Eve Extravaganza at Hale’s.
Wensrich also supports the Producers who create the four-week program of two-hour varieté and burlesque shows, and keep in check any overreaching. As Wensrich observed, “to get much larger would require funding we don’t have, and an effort we can’t manage right now.”
“It would be great to have more venues,” Wensrich allowed, “but we want to be able to support those venues and put on a killer show.” They do put on some really ‘killer’ shows, with the buzz over this year’s acts outpacing last years, and those of the year before. “We have ramped up the caliber,” Wensrich observed, “trying to get a really broad spectrum,” of acts, both local and international, “and that means mixing it up each year.”
“Tim [Furst] and Randy [Minkler] get a mix of talents,” Wensrich explained about curation of the shows, “the idea is an inclusive atmosphere of artists of this genre.”
“There is not really an outlet for this kind of thing,” Wensrich observed, “There are lots of places for these performers to perform,” she clarified, “but not a lot where they can come together.” Moisture Festival has created a unique place where performers cross-collaborate. “Performers come together, they can try out new material,” Wensrich explained, “It can be very impromptu art.”
The Nature of Varieté
As is the nature of varieté, and burlesque, “You are always going to get one act that you feel ‘meh’ about,” Wensrich said, “but wait 8 to 10 minutes and there will be something amazing!” She knows, having spent her early days at MF in the audience, as a volunteer ‘door babe,’ and then spending many more years roaming the Palladium as the ever-present, always dependable House Manager.
Wensrich has heard from performers that, ‘Your audiences are the best ever!’ and she agrees. “We do have a savvy audience,” she praised, “willing to come into a warehouse [the Palladium] and see anything and be okay with it.”
Wensrich got started with Moisture when “somebody said, ‘you should come do this fun thing I do…’” She took to it instantly, enjoying the opportunity to put to use her previous theater experience. “I started working with Katherine Bragdon,” Wensrich related, “and we just meshed.” Then a Producer, and House Manager, Bragdon trained Wensrich, and then encouraged her to dive in deeper.
Wensrich shared the duties of House Manager with Megan Riggs, then, and she shares it now with Alison Snyder (“She’s been my other brain for years,” Wensrich said of Snyder.) The duties of House Manager are tremendous, and require a steady but stealthy touch. “It’s about delivering the audience experience,” Wensrich explained. It’s about keeping the auditorium, where the audience sits, comfortable and well-run for everyone including V.I.P.s, guests with special needs, and the producers/performers. “We tech on the fly here,” Wensrich said, (no pun intended,) about pre-show planning. It means that the House Manager may learn, shortly before a performance, that chairs in the auditorium need to be moved, or removed, or that performers intend to roll out over the crowd in huge plastic bubbles…
Basically, the job of House Manager includes a lot of fire-fighting (hopefully NOT literally,) and problem solving and, if done well, the audience never know a problem ever existed.
‘So Much Alchemy’
As Director of Smooth Operations, Wensrich now transfers her skills at problem solving onto the bigger, overall picture of Moisture. She works year-round, as the one full-time employee of the non-profit.
“We’ve been flying by the seat of our pants for many years,” Wensrich said of the organization, “at some point that becomes untenable. Operating that way was not going to lead to a long future.” Before they reached the point of no-return, the Board reorganized, and now meets more regularly (“without a squawk,” according to her,) to create redundancies in volunteering, and to provide new volunteers opportunities to train with experienced ones. They work at creating more paths to problem resolutions, and more structure.
“In our volunteer pool,” Wensrich explained, people return over and over to help, “they rearrange their work schedules and vacation schedules around this. They are not here for the money, they are here to participate.”
“The magic that Moisture Festival makes is huge,” Wensrich said, “there is so much alchemy to it.” Wensrich wants to be sure the organization can be responsive, and that channels exist for resolving conflicts, whether interpersonal or systemic, or simply when “things are crunchy.”
Hopefully you will take a walk inside a Moisture Festival show this season, and laugh in your seat. Enjoy the entertainment, and think about supporting this amazing festival, and the smooth operations that make it all possible!
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