by Kurt Fitzpatrick & Martin Dockery

It is almost time for the Rogue Festival again–it will be taking place March 1-9 in the Tower District of Fresno. Here are 2 more of several Rogue Performer Preview articles we will be posting between now and then and there is a more general Rogue Festival article up this week as well! We will also be posting several show reviews once the festival begins!

You will be able to see ALL of our Rogue Festival coverage in our special Rogue category and you can find more Rogue Festival information on our Rogue event page over on KRL News! There you will find press releases and extra info! You can also go to the Rogue Festival website for more info and to purchase tickets.

The Jester of All Maladies
By Kurt Fitzpatrick

I’m glad to be coming back to Fresno for my eleventh Rogue festival! A lot has changed since 2009 when I first was here performing Hooray for Speech Therapy. At the end of 2019, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a form of cancer that attacks the lymph nodes. Which brings me to my current show, The Jester of All Maladies, which is the story about my cancer journey from diagnosis to remission.

I understand that cancer may not seem like a prime subject for a comedy show, but I found that I needed to laugh to get through it. So I figured there must be laughs to be had in telling the story, and there are. I put this show together in 2022 with a help of a dramaturge (which is basically a playwriting editor) named Megan Philips, and played it in one festival that year: Philadelphia. Last year I performed it twice at Rogue and I was able to do a short run in Indianapolis.

Rather than tell the story that I tell in my show, I’d like to mention some things I learned over the course of my journey that might be helpful to others.

My advice to people is to get checked out by a doctor if something is amiss. I waited a long time to see a doctor, but if I had waited any longer, who knows where I’d be now. I was having kidney issues and weird pains in my stomach and finally my swollen left leg got me in to see a doctor. It never crossed my mind that I might have cancer. Then, once things were confirmed, I reached out to everyone I knew on social media and started to share my journey. I don’t think everyone necessarily needs to go to that extent, but it’s good to have some kind of community supporting you. And it’s important to get help. I was lucky to get support through the organizations Cancer Care and the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, giving me access to counselors and mentors. Now that I’m healthy, I’ve been able to return the favor by becoming a mentor to cancer patients myself.

And if you get non-Hodgkins lymphoma, do not, under any circumstances, watch the Netflix documentary series on Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker Serial Killer. Don’t do it. You’ll get to the end of the series and (spoiler alert!) learn that he died in prison of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. That will ruin a potentially good night of escapism.

The Jester of All Maladies plays at Spectrum Art Gallery, 608 E. Olive Ave, Fresno, Friday March 1 at 7 p.m., Saturday March 2 at 2 p.m., Sunday March 3 at 5 p.m.

TRUTH
by Martin Dockery

Performing a personal story on stage and making it universal, that’s the job in a nutshell. I’ve been doing it full-time since 2009, creating new shows each year and touring them across North America and beyond––something that’s only possible because of scrappy, independent theater festivals like Fresno’s Rogue. Rogue, in particular, is an amazing hotpot of theatrical creativity. It’s an all-volunteer-run festival, which means the entire nine days are infused with a wonderful communal vibe among the performers, the audience, the technicians, and the front of house.

This is my 9th time making the trip out from Brooklyn, New York, to be a part of the anything-goes roster of performances. And this year, I’ll be debuting a brand-new show called TRUTH. It’ll be comedic. It’ll be autobiographical. And hopefully, there’ll be some deeper truth to it. Beyond that, one can expect, well… I’m still making the show right now. In fact, I’ll be creating the show right up to the moment I walk on stage and perform it for the first time on Day One of the fest.

Every other time I’ve performed at Rogue, it’s been with a show I’d already been touring for a long time. As such, they’ve all been known quantities. But this year, my run will have a palpable undercurrent of the unknown, an excitement that comes with stepping into the void, beyond which lies… failure? Success? Uncertainty? Comedy? Heartache? What I can say for sure is that it’ll be electric.

There are never any written scripts for my solo shows. I create them orally over the course of two to three weeks. I go for long walks, or if I’m feeling athletic, runs, during which I mumble to myself. Or I pace my apartment when no one’s home, and I see what bubbles up, what story wants to be told. I don’t write down a single word, not even an outline. My approach is that if I can remember what I’ve mumbled, then it must be important, it must mean something. And so I mumble it further, refining the mumble into words which only get spoken at volume when I’m finally on stage in front of an audience. And then the show gets made and remade again and again with each performance and every festival.

Audiences are amazingly open, receptive, and participatory at Rogue. It’ll be a great place to debut a new story. If you’d like to see the most consequential stage in a show’s creation, then come along for the inaugural run of TRUTH. I’ll be performing it for the rest of the summer (and beyond), but it’s in Fresno where I’ll really find out what the show is all about. Add your energy to its creation!

Thanks, and see you there.

Martin Dockery: TRUTH
Venue: The LAByrinth Art Collective
1470 N. Van Ness Ave
Fri, Mar 1 @ 7:00
Sat, Mar 2 @ 3:30
Sun, Mar 3 @ 12:30
Thu, Mar 7 @ 5:30
Sat, Mar 9 @ 8:00
Tix: fresnoroguefestival.org/performance/martin-dockery-truth/2024-03-01
For more on Martin, visit MartinDockery.com

If you love theatre, be sure to check out Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast, which features mysteries read by local actors. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, and also on podbean.

Check out more theatre reviews & other local entertainment articles in our Arts & Entertainment section. You can also find more theatre coming up on KRL’s Local Theatre event page.