Britain gave up control of Hong Kong. Scientists cloned Dolly the sheep. But most important: Lunatic Fringe started to make people laugh!!! In 1997 Deb Maclean, Jerry Lazar and Paul Murphy were invited to do some improv at Luna Stage. We made each other laugh so much that we decided to form a group and make other people laugh. So we started a group and named it Lunatic Fringe. The first few show
s had no piano player, so we played the kazoo and harmonica between scenes. And we had no one to run lights, so cast members ran back and forth up and down a ladder to the lighting board. Then came Jan, the laughing lighting guy, and we were always lit and always had at least one laugh. A woman named Allison Field wrote an opening number, we found a keyboard player, and began to do regular shows. One night the keyboard player didn’t show up, so Deb went into the audience and asked if there was a pianist who could play and go get a keyboard. And Eric Heilner has played piano with us ever since. For a while a clown was involved. A professional clown. Al Calienes. You can Google him. Years passed, we kept doing shows and people kept laughing. Some wonderful cast members came and went and some other wonderful ones came and stayed, like the ingenious Harvey Chipkin and the brilliant Sean Day (on hiatus in London), who both joined in 2000. From the class of 2008 we have the incomparable Brooke Hoover and the delightful Beth Nickmann (also on hiatus.) And our newest cast member is the stellar David Groveman. After five years at Luna Stage, Lunatic Fringe moved to 12 Miles West Theatre. Then both theatres left town and the group moved to Pianos in Bloomfield, where we made people laugh for five years. Last year Lunatic Fringe found a new home at the Glen Ridge Train Station, with occasional shows at Tierney’s. So come and laugh. Just laugh. It's not deep, it's rarely thought-provoking. It's just funny!
