Performers run riot, lottery ensues

Tuesday might have been just another day for you and me, but at the Minnesota Fringe office they were dealing with almost a hundred last-minute applications for slots in this year's festival. In all, 283 shows will have to be pared down for 150 available slots--an unenviable task and one, for the second year, that will be left to the (sometimes cruel) hand of fate. Next Monday the Fringe will hold a lottery at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage at 7 p.m., and guests and audience members will pluck numbered ping-pong balls from a spinning bingo cage. The total of 283 performance applications falls just shy of the Fringe's record of 287 in 2004.