by Tim Mooney, Joey Rinaldi, & Emil Amok Guillermo

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 3 more Rogue Performer Preview articles and we will be posting 3 more next week before Rogue starts! Don’t miss our article about Rogue 2024 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 Year that Everything Changed
By Tim Mooney

Hey Rogues! It’s Tim Mooney, coming back at you for a fifth time!

Looking back over my Rogue History, it seems I only make it out to Rogue in even-numbered years: quite possibly because my back can only endure the long drive after a year of down-time.

I’ve had a wonderful time, every time… Like my first year, when folks would request particular monologues from Lot o’ Shakespeare by tipping me with beers. (One night there were three tall Guinness Stouts lined up for me by the end of the show!)

Then there were those years of Breakneck Hamlet (2016), Man Cave (2020), and Breakneck Comedy of Errors (2022). (Okay, 2020 was the year that Covid hit right between the two festival weekends, but it sure did make Man Cave feel more profound that second weekend.)

Most Rogue (or “Fringe”) festivals find me barely scraping by, praying for a full house if only to cover gas money, ultimately putting it all on the credit card to be paid down at a later date. That’s more-or-less been my life for the last twenty years. Especially during those “Covid years” (which are really not over quite yet), I spent a lot of time not knowing where my next booking would come from.

At least I was spending a TON less money on gas and hotels…

But, back in 2015, a bit of lightning struck me that I have yet to quite pinch myself into believing.

I was performing Breakneck Hamlet for a late-evening show at the Indy Fringe Fest to an audience of MAYBE twelve people, walking around with a real chip on my shoulder, knowing that this festival would NOT clear any kind of a profit. The box office was rumoring about some local philanthropist in the audience, a fact that seemed meaningless at the time. (I may even have resented the notion that one audience member might be thought of as more important than any other… or at least I was fairly convinced that MY work would never be the target of “philanthropy.”) I went ahead and did my show for the tiny crowd, giving it everything I had (as I would like to think that I always do).

The next day came a call from the festival’s director, gushing that, “Christel DeHAAN was in the audience last night and she LOVED your show and wants to give you an AWARD.”

An “award?” Like a certificate or something?

I looked up Christel DeHaan on the internet and discovered that her foundation had given out many millions of dollars to arts organizations over the years… “OH! I guess I want to take that appointment!”

The award was a check for about double the amount I expected I might earn out of the entire two-week festival!

It was right about then that I decided it was finally time to go not-for-profit, which made me eligible for grants. Many grants came from the DeHaan foundation… not enough to pay my way, but to help me hold it together during the hard times… like Covid.

I made it a point to never miss another Indy Fringe festival.

Christel DeHaan passed away three years ago, just as the Covid slowdown was hitting us pretty hard. The annual support continued for two years…

…at which point the foundation informed me that I was eligible for a “Legacy Grant.” Of somewhere between $125K and $250K.

I couldn’t believe it… and certainly didn’t believe that I’d be at the upper end of that range. In fact, I believed that very soon they would discover their mistake and reassign me to some grant, say, in the $40-50K range…

But I started thinking about what might make an appropriate “Legacy.” Given Christel’s particular interest in my Shakespeare work, I was reminded of a project from the BBC back in the late 70s/early 80s. They took on doing Shakespeare’s entire catalogue. Their guiding star was the resolve that: “It was a grand project, no one else could do it, no one else would do it, but it ought to be done.”

What if I applied that formula to a series of “Breakneck Shakespeare?” I could do “breakneck” versions of all of Shakespeare’s thirty-eight-play catalogue. I had already completed a Breakneck Shakespeare Histories, covering all ten history plays, as well as Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Comedy of Errors.

Thirteen down and only twenty-five left to go…?

I drew up the proposal and word came back that we were being considered at the UPPER end (the $250K end) of that grant range…! I made some modifications to the proposal and some six months later found that the dissolution of the foundation’s assets amid a rising stock market had added some eighty thousand dollars to the grant. In fact, once the final paperwork had been resolved, the final calculation brought the entire grant up to $343,000!

Suddenly, I no longer had to worry about where my next meal was coming from. I might well go to the Rogue Festival, totally strike out on ticket sales, and STILL wake up the next morning with enthusiasm for the next adventure.

So… my thesis? Hard work pays off? Sometimes we just get lucky?

Or, maybe, life does not HAVE to be some recurring myth of Sisyphus.

Maybe my cynicism no longer enables me to carry around that self-satisfied mantle of the righteous “artiste” who nobody understands or values.

Did I value my work before? Well, yeah… But I never imagined that anyone ELSE would attach a number to that value such that… okay… now, I guess, my next meal is no longer an issue.

So… what happens now…?

Potty Training
By Joey Rinaldi

Warning: I apologize in advance if anything you’re about to read is too crass. Everything below is unfortunately true, yet necessary for understanding my upcoming Rogue Show titled “Potty Training with Joey Rinaldi.” Yes, I’m Joey Rinaldi, and I’m a comedian. Here’s my story—I hope you enjoy it!

Have you ever heard of a deadly penis injury? Neither did I until one fateful afternoon in the middle of April 2010, at the tender age of 14. What began innocently enough as some roughhousing with friends at school ended with me waking up in the hospital, facing a diagnosis straight out of one of those Saw movies. Yes, you guessed it—I was told I had suffered a “deadly penis injury.”

Now, over a decade later, thank goodness I’m standing here as a stand-up comedian, not only alive but thriving. I spent my teenage years trying to convince everyone that it wasn’t my penis but rather my bladder that was broken, but nobody seemed to buy it. Here I am, grateful for a full recovery and ready to share the tale in my solo show, Potty Training, making its debut at the Rogue Festival here in Fresno.

A little about myself: I’m a New York City-based, award-winning stand-up comedian, known for my long-form storytelling. I know, it sounds like something I’d say on a first date to try to impress a girl before completely striking out. But it’s true—I am a comedian, I do live in New York, and yes, I have won awards. Do awards mean anything? Probably not, since I didn’t even know about most of them until I received them myself. But hey, I’m trying to impress you, so please act impressed if we ever meet. (Please mention how cool it is that I’ve won awards.)

When I say I’m known for my long-form storytelling, what I really mean is that I don’t speak concisely. Anytime I tell a story, it goes on for way too long. How long is too long, you ask? Well, it normally takes me 45 minutes to an hour to tell the one story I’ll be sharing with you during my solo show at the Rogue Festival.

This newest version of Potty Training isn’t just a big money theater venture for me to become filthy rich (though if you have any suggestions on how I could do that, please let me know). It’s the culmination of years of storytelling and self-growth. This show has been a labor of love, honed over several years of performances and refined through experiences that range from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to winning Best Comedy at the 2021 International Canadian Film Festival.

This show might sound like an excuse for me to tell all my favorite penis jokes, but that’s not exactly what it is. In actuality, it’s a coming-of-age story of how a near-death experience allowed me to learn to appreciate every second of life, become closer with my family, change my whole religion around (after I got banned from my local Catholic church—true story), and most importantly, learn to love myself. And who knows, maybe watching this show will help you learn to love yourself—or hate me. Who’s to say? Just for the love of god buy a ticket!

While the core of the show has remained the same, recent revisions have injected fresh insights and anecdotes, inspired by some truly bizarre encounters. These include nearly landing a gig on a TV show with Channing Tatum and even finding myself in the hot seat on Judge Jerry Springer. Both of these TV experiences involved Potty Training, and it’s safe to say I learned that Hollywood actors and reality TV hosts are much grosser than anything I joke about in my shows.

Through Potty Training, I invite you to join me on a rollercoaster ride of storytelling and self-discovery, where we’ll laugh, probably cry, and emerge with a newfound appreciation for life’s messy, unpredictable plan.

So, why Potty Training, you ask? Besides the obvious comedic appeal of the title, it serves as a metaphor for the chaos and absurdity of growing up. Just like learning to use the toilet, life throws unexpected challenges our way, but it’s how we navigate those challenges that defines us. And trust me when I say, you won’t want to miss this celebration of the human experience, flaws and all.

Join me at Hart’s Haven in Fresno for an unforgettable evening, where I’ll be trauma-dumping all my unresolved middle school angst in the hopes of making you beautiful Fresnons giggle for an hour. My goal for the show is to reveal my most embarrassing, shameful, and cringey stories from my life, so no matter how bad you may be feeling about your own life, you’ll at least walk out saying, “Thank god I’m not that jerk!” Or asking for your money back! (Not really, but that would be cool—Imagine getting a refund).

Catch me performing Potty Training at the following dates and times:

Thursday, March 7th at 8:30 p.m.
Friday, March 8th at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 9th at 2:00 p.m.

WHERE: Hart’s Haven – 950 N Van Ness Ave, Fresno, CA 93728
HOW MUCH: 10 Dollars All tickets
RUNNING TIME: 50 minutes

See you there!

P.S. Feel free to bring tomatoes to throw at me. My only request is that if you actually throw tomatoes, please film it so we can go viral on the internet together.

Emil Amok Guillermo: Why I Am Going Amok at the Rogue Festival 2024
By Emil Amok Guillermo

How many times do you see a Filipino American–a direct descendant of the first Filipinos to come to the U.S. in the 1920s as colonized Americans– stand up and tell you exactly what happened to his people?
That’s what you get when you see my show Emil Amok, Lost NPR Host; Married to PETA and other untold tales from an American Filipino Life.

Because it’s so tragic, it’s conversely funny. And absurd. It’s one hour of narrative storytelling, with some standup that is like John Leguizamo’s Latin History for Dummies, only uniquely Filipino. It’s a history few people know or care about, even if you’re Filipino.

As the title implies, I was an NPR host in 1989 in Washington, DC, when I was a senior host of All Things Considered. As the first Filipino to be the regular host of a national news show in the U.S., I made history. And of course, I told every Filipino story I could.

But then I got lost. The stories I left out or couldn’t get to are in this show.

I also tell the story of growing up in San Francisco in the 1970s, and how I went into media. I discover how Filipino history explains what happened to my life.

But wait. I grew up in the 1970s and my father arrived in the 1920s. How did that happen?

You’ll have to see the show. I explain how Filipinos were treated when they first came to California in large numbers. My father was one of 30,000 Filipinos who had arrived by 1930. They were here to work in the fields and were discouraged from starting families. That was easy to do. Few Filipino women were allowed to come to America. That forced Filipinos to seek out white women, which did not sit well with white men.

I also tell personal stories about being a vegan Filipino, my marriage to an animal rights executive at PETA, affirmative action, and Harvard. I was in the same class as Steve Ballmer. He owns the LA Clippers. I have more black hair.

Put it all together in an hour and you have Emil Amok, Lost NPR Host; Married to PETA and other untold tales from an American Filipino Life.

It’s history and tragedy mixed with a little humor. I will also explain the “amok” part.

I have performed my Amok Monologues at fringe festivals around the country, including New York, Orlando, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, San Diego, and San Francisco since 2017. I have studied solo performance and storytelling with Mike Daisey, David Ford, Charlie Varon, Mark Kenward, and Seth Barish.
When I’m not performing, I write columns on race, politics and media for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and other publications around the country. I also host The PETA Podcast.

But mostly, I love to perform my American Filipino show, which I describe as “Spalding Gray meets Ferdinand Marcos.”

Please come see it. I like to say the show is written in molten lava and each performance is shaped for the audience in front of me.

Here’s what critics have said about the experience:
“Enjoy trying to keep pace with Guillermo’s brilliant mind. Funny, poignant.”—The Orlando Weekly.
“Exposes America’s ugly colonization of the Philippines, along with other comical and often profound observations…Must see for anyone who cares about human rights and social justice.” –Manhattan Digest
“Excellent…Emil Guillermo knows how to tell a story, and that ability sets his “Amok Monologues” above other solo shows.” — San Diego Story

Have an opinion of your own. Please come see the show at the Lotus Room on Olive St. And tell all your friends!

Saturday, March 2, 2 p.m.
Saturday, March 2, 9:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 3, 2 p.m.
Thursday, March 7, 5:30 p.m.
Saurday, March 9, 5 p. m.
Tickets $15;
60 minutes.

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.