By Joshua Tehee

Marcel Nunis vogues for the camera. Nunis is the creative force behind the Rogue Performance Festival. Photo: Ryan Weber.

Marcel Nunis can't wait to see the Rogue Festival self-destruct. That's odd logic from a man who spent the last five years building a following for the performance-arts festival, which takes place in the Tower District each March. It also totally makes sense. Get Out! sits down with the self-proclaimed artistic-entrpreneaur on the patio at Livingstones in the Tower District to talk about the end of the Rogue, the rebirth of American theater and how Fresno really is the final frontier. Oh, and Jaguar Bennet was there, too.

Let's start with the Weedwacker, because that's what I remember. The first times we met were there at the Weedwacker, in your backyard. Tell me about that.

Marcel: (Laughter) Well, you know, Weedwacker was basically started so I could, like, try out different things and get together with artist-friends of mine and performer-friends of mine and musician friends of mine. So, that went on once every two weeks on a Sunday over the summer for about seven years.

And that was sort of small scale, what's going on at Rogue, right?

Marcel: Well, you know, in a weird and interesting way. (Laughs.) After I stopped Weedwacker, people kept bugging me about Weedwacker. "Are you going to do Weedwacker this year?" And, you know, I went no. No. And after awhile itÂYeah, you could say that Weedwacker morphed into Rogue eventually. In fact, one of the shows -- I don't know if it was at Weedwacker, it was developed around the time of Weedwacker -- one of the shows that I wroteÂwe took up to the Fringe Festival in San Francisco in '95. And that was my first exposure to the fringe festival. So, in a round-about way, yeah, Weedwacker was kind of like the impetus for the Rogue Festival.

When I met you, you were doing theater.

Marcel: I have been actually very fortunate in that I have made my living for the last 20 years doing what I was trained to do, which was theater.

And where were you trained?

Marcel: At Fresno State.

Was that in acting, directing, writing?

Marcel: Acting, directing. I had to learn to produce on my own. And that was a steep learning curve. But, it's something that I think every theater major should do -- take a marketing class.

And learn how to sell what they're doing?

Marcel: Yeah. Because, I mean, the bottom line is, what you're creating is a product and you need to sell it. And if an audience does not see your product, it does not exist.

Right. And how does that translate over to something like ...

Marcel: The Rogue.

Yeah.

Marcel: One of the things that we actually do with the Rogue is we have several performing meetings. And one of the performer meetings is a workshop on marketing. It is a workshop on producing. It is a workshop on how to budget your show. You don't want to go into the crapper. You can have the best show in the world, but if it's over budget...

Or if no one's going to show up.

Marcel: Yeah.

And how long did it take you to figure that whole thing out?

Marcel: I'm still learning new things. There's new marketing possibilities and what have you. So, I don't think I've actually stopped learning.

Why are you in Fresno, as opposed to someplace else? If you say "I'm in theatre arts," most people aren't going to think Fresno.

Marcel: Fresno is the final frontier. It is the final frontier. Just from a practical standpoint, doing what I do, I should be in San Francisco. OK. There are about a hundred independent theater companies in San Francisco. Everything is on the clique system. OK. Fresno is wide open. It is wide open for the arts. It is wide open for industry. It is wide open for all sorts of wonderful things.

Obviously, with Rouge already where it's at.

Marcel: In 2002, we started and then we're in 2006, we're in year No. 5.

And you can see obviously, the amount of the potential?

Marcel: Yeah. Because, from the first year, just audience members, we had what, 1,200, I think. And then this year, we're shooting for 7,000. We started with 16 groups. We have close to 70 artisan groups now. The venues, for the most part, are in the Tower District and downtown.

How much of that was planned? How much of that was organic?

Marcel: (Laughing hard) It's all organic man, the Tower District being, right now, the main hub for the Rouge. Down the line, what we're looking at is creating a hub here, creating a hub down where the museums are, creating a hub further down where the galleries are. It would be great if, let's say two years from now, that the Rouge is really used as this huge arts explosion to set up the arts calendar year in Fresno. For instance, this year, some of the big guns are coming in. Arte Americas is coming in. African American Museum is coming in. Wouldn't it be great if all the arts organizations came in and there was this huge explosion of the arts that happened over 10 days?

Can you talk a little about fringe festivals in general, thier place in the art world and how you guys fit into all that?

Marcel: The fringe movement is actually an extremely essential movement now, because in the '80s and the '90s -- and I'm talking about it from a theater standpoint -- just from a theater standpoint everyone wanted a sure thing. You could not get a piece produced, for instance, unless it was produced before. A repertory company used to have a play reader and a dramaturge. That position does not exist anymore. So the only way to develop new shows is really festivals like the Fringe and the Rouge. The new works are really coming out of the fringe festivals. The new American theater voice is coming from the fringe festivals and the Rouge Festival.

Jaguar: And if I may say, that's another reason for the "why Fresno." Here you have freedom that you don't have in the established theater towns like New York, Chicago, San Francisco. Or if you do, it is very underground. Where you have an art establishment that is kind of locked down, that prevents new work from being created.

Marcel: And also we wanted to bring back rock 'n' roll to the theater. Jaguar: Also, this is where we are. One could go to New York, go to San Francisco, go to LA, try to bust down doors. It's very tough. But here we are and a lot of us want to do something for ourselves. And the Rouge is it. Marcel: Yeah. There is a selfish reason why the Rouge was started. I tell the team, every time we have a meeting, you need to find a selfish reason why you're doing this.

What was your selfish reason?

Marcel: I want to live in a community that is creatively vibrant. I've chosen Fresno as my home. I want it to be creatively vibrant. It has nothing to do with the community. It has everything to do with me (laughs).

But the community does seem to be responding. There seems to be a lot of acts coming out and a lot people trying things. What is that scene like?

Marcel: That scene is improving. There actually has been an underground renaissance that has been happening over the last five years. The Rouge is a reflection of that. It's bubbling to the surface and the Rouge is only a reflection of that. We do not claim to have started this renaissance. The renaissance is not something that is created by an individual or a group. It is a collective.

And that's across all the art scenes.

Marcel: Right across the arts. Look at the music scene now in Fresno. Fresno's always been known as a music town. In the '80s, there was a huge music thing and in the '90s, it kind ofÂyou know. And then when the new millennium began, it started to rise again. The Rouge is only a reflection of that.

Are you surprised by the types of people that are coming to see the shows?

Marcel: One of the things that I'm proudest of with the Rouge is over the last four years, I'd say about 30 percent of our audience, this has been their first exposure to live performance.

Is it true that after this year, you're going to be retiring from working on the Rogue?

Marcel: Yes, I am.

Will you not be working at all then?

Marcel: No, I'll still be involved...One, it's time for new blood. Two, we're expanding the concept of the Rogue to "Rouge year round," to where the event of the performance festival is really a celebration of what's been happening year round. To where we can help independent performers and artists get gigs, help them with lighting. So, we want to try to get into that kind of thing. We might even get our own venue to where you can do things, experimental things on a very affordable level. The cool thing about this is with me stepping out of producing the Rouge, I can actually kick up my theater company again and actually start producing again.

And that's something you'll be doing year round.

Marcel: Yeah. We'll do like three to four productions a year. What's really cool is that other independent theater companies have started, like PRP has started. Epic Theatre Company has started. My goal for the Rogue is for it to be obsolete, where there is so much stuff going on in town, we won't need the Rogue.