A few days ago I publicly pondered the mystery of the People Next Door Theatre Company's "Chronicles of Death," a Rogue show that was hard to get much information about. (All you really find out from the program is that it includes "bad language, suicide and even some nudity.") Well, I trooped out Wednesday night to see it. Mystery solved.

"Chronicles of Death" is an original play. The People Next Door Theatre Company is local. The main character is a blustery guy in a leather trenchcoat and thick black eye makeup named Grim D. Reaper. The format is vignette-style: We get to see a typical day in the life of Death.

It's Thursday and there's still plenty of Rogue to experience. Changes do get made at a festival like this, so it's best to verify the performance grid at the back of the program. Let's recap the updates, which can be found at the Rogue Festival site:

• The Rogue Map listings for Dianna's North on Friday 2/27 -- "Dream of Scheherazade," "That 80s Show" and "Spider Baby The Musical" -- are actually performing this Friday.


• "Cupid is a B*tch" has added a performance time -- tonight at 5:30 p.m. (Wow, that's early.)


• Baba Brinkman's show "The Rap Guide to Evolution" has added a performance at Dianna's South Saturday 3/7 at 4 p.m.

My favorite part of Tony Blanco's Rogue show came when the little girl he'd hauled up on stage for inclusion in his act got a look of wonderment on her face so vivid that I couldn't help but grin. The magician had transformed an ordinary handkerchief into something with handprints on it, or something like that, and the moment so charmed the little girl that she looked like she'd just been granted permission to eat an entire chocolate pie.

Blanco has a nice rapport with kids, no doubt about it. He doesn't treat them too sticky-sweet, but he's also not in any way curt or dismissive with them as he tries to inject a small dose of grown-up humor into the proceedings.

The quote of the Rogue comes from Andrew Corcostegui, who paused midway through his intriguing reading last weekend as part of the "Poetry and Prose from Fresno State" performance at Spectrum Gallery, looked up at the assembled listeners and wryly observed:

"No one's left yet."

There you go, Rogue artists. There's something to aspire to: Perform something that just might make you wonder if you're going to completely freak out and alienate your audience. Isn't that what a fringe festival is all about?

In the case of Corcostegui, the subject matter had to do with, well, bleaching a certain part of one's anatomy that would normally never be exposed to the sun. As part of an assignment to research a topic, the Fresno State MFA student took it upon himself to dive into a subject for which the literary possibilities were rich indeed. (It isn't often that you get to work in the words "high definition anus" into a manuscript.) It turns out that porn stars are among the procedure's most enthusiastic supporters.