While a bit of time has passed, the new year is still fresh, and few artistic endeavors are fresher than the FronteraFest Short Fringe, which each year offers a novel dose of the now with new works, or at least new performances, from the abundant talent that calls Central Texas home. While in the past each evening of the Short Fringe offered five different works to savor, the recent spate of wet and frigid weather that forced the cancellation of the first two nights of this year's fest meant six pieces were offered to the packed Hyde Park Theatre on Friday, Jan. 19. If you're lucky, you might get an extra one on the evening you attend.

       The first offering was Noel Gaulin in Anton Chekhov's "The Dangers of Tobacco." Ostensibly a lecture on the insidious weed, Gaulin spent much of his time amusingly setting up a microphone and then proceeding to twitch and strain and complain, mostly about his wife, accompanied by the more often than not raucous laughter of the assembled crowd. . . .

-Barry Pineo