My boyfriend and I both really like plays and musicals but we hardly ever get the chance to attend anything. However, July 17th – July 27th The Hamilton Fringe Fest was going on and we both took this opportunity to attend a play. We did some research together of the shows and we noticed we were both free on the Saturday near the end of the festival and looked at the plays for that day/night. We both like to stay up late so we picked the play that was at 11PM. The play we saw is called The Kalamazoo Diaries. I’m a bit of a history nerd and my boyfriend likes things that are funny (we both do, really) and the description seemed to fuel our interests. The description was a bit vague, but essentially it mentioned how the play was about an editor who is forced to go to the REAL Kalamazoo medieval convention to represent the company she works for, but while there, she realizes an even deeper realization about her own life and history. The description did mention how it was suppose to be a comedy, so we thought, ‘why not!?’. We walked over to the McNab to the theatre Hamilton Theatre Inc. and waited outside for it to start. Just a random note, I really love summer, even when you have a car, it’s SO nice to be able to walk places around your city, it’s very enjoyable.
To our surprise, it was a bit busy, but we were still able to get a decent seat by ourselves. (I don’t overly like sitting beside random people). It was mainly the typical 30ish-40ish theatre folk, but we didn’t care. We had a cute little table for some refreshments if we wanted and then the play promptly began. I will say, it was actually really funny! There was some mature language which of course neither of us minded, I felt it added to the main character’s personality. The story was actually about a real event the writer had happen to her. She made herself the main character in the play. The main character, Natalie Fingerhut, has a bit of an issue with medieval and ancient history because she felt as if there aren’t really any certain answers about history that is that old. While at the convention she kind of makes a joke of it and makes everyone out to be nerds. However, while at the convention, she has visions of her friend who died and they reminisce about living together in NYC and all that. She accuses him of committing suicide because no one knows how he died; he was just found in a random guys apartment with no obvious signs of how he died. As the convention comes to a close and Fingerhut has many conversations with history professors and experts, she comes to the realization that sometimes you just “don’t know” and nothing is certain but you have to believe. This realization also makes her come to terms about how her friend died. She doesn’t want to settle on the idea that he killed himself but that maybe he forgot his insulin or something like that. She understands that like with some historical periods you just “don’t know” and can’t always prove everything.
I thought the acting performances were pretty good and I thought the story was interesting. My boyfriend had the same thoughts overall as well. We walked home and enjoyed the nice warm walk through downtown back to his house.
Girl and The Steel City 