Name: Douglas Williams

Type of Artist: Playwright, producer

Companies: Orbiter 3, Apocalypse Club.

Fringe shows I’ve participated in:
Holly’s Dead Soldiers, 2013 – playwright
Safe Space, 2014 – playwright
@AstroJennie, 2015 – playwright

First Fringe I attended: In 2009 I was a senior at Temple University and had to see a Fringe show for a class. I decided to go to Pig Iron’s Welcome to Yuba City, which feels really lucky since I knew nothing about the show or the company. The whole thing blew my mind.

First Fringe I participated in: Holly’s Dead Soldiers was the first Fringe show I was involved in. Most memorable moment was probably Chris Davis scrambling to learn his four page monologue two days before we opened.

First show I produced/created at the Fringe: Holly’s again. In creating it I guess I would say the most memorable moment was bouncing around Bruce Walsh’s house trying to figure out how to use every room, every space, and how much dialogue could be heard when delivered from the basement . . .

The Fringiest show, venue, action, or moment I ever experienced: There was something really beautiful about seeing Go Long Big Softie in a building that was going to be torn down after the run had ended. Filling that place with art and people before it went away forever seemed like a good way to say goodbye.

Apocalypse Club (Emma Goidel, Maura Krause, Douglas Williams, Emily Acker), Image by Lindsay Ladd

A Fringe show that influenced me as an artist: Oh man so many . . .  Yuba City, Pay Up, the Adults, Underground Railroad Game. The Object Lesson is still one of the most incredible theater experiences I’ve ever had. The environment that show existed in was just so welcoming and communal.

An artist I have met or was exposed to in the Fringe who I went on to collaborate with: Well the best example I could ever come up with is my partner Martha Stuckey, who I saw in Pig Iron’s Pay Up back in 2013—I didn’t meet her in person until the following year when I saw her in Red 40 & the Last Groovement also at FringeArts, so one could say Fringe is actually responsible for us meeting in the first place (thanks by the way).

The craziest idea for a Fringe show I wish I had done or to one day do: I want to make a show that takes place in the future inside a caved-in tunnel. I have a friend who has a tunnel in her basement that leads off somewhere underground—maybe next year we’ll try that one.