It's never too early to start planning for the Rogue Festival, right? I've stumbled upon an idea I feel will make the festival a real barn burner this year. Ready?
Naked Brunch.
The Melbourne Fringe Festival puts on a naked brunch where festival participants strip down, eat, and chat about being creative and stuff, and I'm willing to bet that this is one of the biggest attention-getters in the whole festival. What does every festival need? Festival-goers. And what brings people to festivals in droves? Promotion. And what's the best way to promote something? Bare asses.
We may not be the prettiest city, or the smartest city, but what we have in spades is good weather. I read somewhere that Rogue is taking place in March this year. Do you see where I'm going with this?
Naked brunch, Fresno-style. Boom. Most successful event ever.
I'm not a promoter, or an expert in planning things, so I'll leave the deets up to you, the professionals. And you can just thank me in the program or whatever.
Heather,
First speaking for myself, although I'm pretty sure I can speak with some comfort that my fellow Rogue planners will agree: We like the way you think. And especially that you are thinking of Rogue! Just to let you know, Rogue Festival Planning never stops, usually the next day after the most recent (and taking notes during), we meet to debrief and start planning for the next year's festival. And yes, we're going back to a March schedule which is usually the case, but we had a couple of years thrown off by leap year and the bike rallys.
On the Naked Brunch idea: not sure if we can "pull this off" here, but we're definitely all for publicity ideas. We have already been known to have some naked and close to naked moments in the shows during the festival . . . hmmmmm . . . it's a thinker.
Some would say the success of a Naked Brunch might depend on who gets Naked.
Oh, and by the way, if you and anyone else out there would like to be a part of the 2010 Rogue Festival and participate in any Naked activities we may have - the Applications are up online for you to fill out RIGHT NOW! www.roguefestival.com
Heather, I think it is a brilliant idea! One minor challenge... until the Rogue as an entity owns it's own space I doubt the kind of adventure you are suggesting could bloom into fruition. (pun intended)
I didnt get too far into the comments. All this talk about naked brunch and then Aileen said they meet to "debrief" and now someone owes me a keyboard and monitor. LOL
Yes, I really am 11 years old.
John you make me laugh!
Picking up the thread from elsewhere: I mentioned it was my café the brunch was held at and Heather said "Are you a part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival? Did they approach you, or was the Naked Brunch your idea? Did you have to get some kind of special permission for the event? Were there a ton of gawkers outside your windows? Who had to wipe up the chairs afterward? And finally, is it totally awesome to live in Australia? Because it seems like it would be."
Yes Australia is pretty awesome (Melbourne particularly). Strange but awesome.
My place is called Bebida Bar & Café. It's a kind of quirky, bohemian, friendly, day and night place. We have independant musos performing live most of the time and sometimes do other things like short film screenings, comedy, salon style discussion nights. And for the first time - a Naked Brunch!
One of our regulars - Natalie Bak - approached us with the idea and we were up for it. She's not a nudist, she's an artist and was keen to challenge herself and do something different. The Fringe Festival is open to any ideas, it's not curated. So she registered it with them with the idea of targeting it at the performers and creatives in the Festival rather than the general public. Bebida is normally closed on that day anyway so we just hung curtains in the windows and stuck newspaper over the door to screen out the gawpers. We didn't ask permission from anyone cause it was a closed, ticketed event. Our chef was fully dressed in the kitchen. The front of house staff had aprons on. I was "door bitch" (do you have that expression over there?) so I was fetchingly and demurely attired in a kimono so I could deal with people on the street if necessary. That was my excuse but really I'm a chicken and NOT prepared for my staff to see me naked. Nat had talked a bunch of performers into doing the entertainment and they were all great. In the end we had about 30 people there. About half were brave creative types NOT accustomed to public nudity and about half were actual naturists who had seen an article about it in a leading newspaper the day before. Hankies were provided for people to sit on! Was actually a lot of fun and the nudity felt very normal very quickly.
Thanks for replying back, Liana. Sounds like it was a fun and successful event. Props to you for being so accommodating to artists in your area!
While Fresno has some great businesses that are super supportive of our own fringe festival, the Rogue Festival, I think a few more years are going to have to pass before we have anything like a Naked Brunch come our way.
Ok... I had to come out of my semi retirement of blog commenting to speak on this....
I think instead of having a Naked brunch I'm all for a Nekkid Brunch, an off-shoot on the Half Nekkid Thursday that is so popular on the blog-o-sphere. The idea behind getting nekkid?? There's no nudity involved but it's an expression of how you can shed those outter walls and show the real you. I'd challenge all Rogue volunteers (myself included) to try to find an outfit that screams Nekkid!!!!
Whadda ya think??