WHITE RABBIT, RED RABBIT (Nassim Soleimanpour, performed by Mary Lee Bednarek): Fringe Review 31

Each night, a new actor opens a manila envelope and reads the script for the first time. The spontaneity of the performance allows the author to engage with the audience from miles away and years ago.

View More WHITE RABBIT, RED RABBIT (Nassim Soleimanpour, performed by Mary Lee Bednarek): Fringe Review 31
Melissa Dunphy stars in iHAMLET at The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre (Photo credit: Kendall Whitehouse) 

iHAMLET (Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre): Fringe Review 28

Robin Malan’s iHAMLET, a stripped-down contemporary one-man adaptation of Hamlet, is performed in The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre’s Fringe production by one impressive woman. Actor/musician/composer Melissa Dunphy displays a remarkable command of the non-linear script, not once misspeaking a word of her 55-minute solo performance.

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TWENTY LOOKS OR PARIS IS BURNING AT THE JUDSON CHURCH (XS) (Trajal Harrell): Fringe Review 25

Trajal Harrell’s TWENTY LOOKS comes in a selection of lengths and sizes, and although the Presented Fringe version of his solo show runs extra small, at a mere 25 minutes to a 25-person audience (hence the XS in the extended title), you will be reminded that good things come in small packages.

View More TWENTY LOOKS OR PARIS IS BURNING AT THE JUDSON CHURCH (XS) (Trajal Harrell): Fringe Review 25
Visitor tagging art at UNTITLED. Photo by Osenlund.

UNTITLED: WHAT YOU SEE OR WHAT DO YOU SEE (KrieArt): 2014 Fringe Review 19

This entry in the Visual Art category is an art exhibit based on the association between the person looking at the art and the meaning ascribed to the art itself. The artist, Krie Alden, who spoke to me at the event, is excited to be a part of FringeArts, and she loves the idea of “the Fringe being on the fringe, where they support the unexpected.”

View More UNTITLED: WHAT YOU SEE OR WHAT DO YOU SEE (KrieArt): 2014 Fringe Review 19
What I Learned About Outer Space (Pennsylvania Ballet and Curtis Institute of Music

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT OUTER SPACE (Pennsylvania Ballet, Curtis Institute of Music, FringeArts): Fringe Review 14

If dance is a language, it is spoken in a variety of accents. With WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT OUTER SPACE, FringeArts commissioning three contemporary choreographers—Zoe Scofield, Georg Reischl, and Itamar Serussi—to create pieces on PA Ballet dancers.

View More WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT OUTER SPACE (Pennsylvania Ballet, Curtis Institute of Music, FringeArts): Fringe Review 14
Found Theater Company’s DEEP BLUE SLEEP (Photo credit: Harish Pathak)

DEEP BLUE SLEEP (Found Theater Company): Fringe Review 13

This year’s Fringe offering by one of Philadelphia’s most consistently impressive young collectives transports us through a maritime dreamscape of sailors and pirates, shipwrecks and skeletons, sea shanties and sea creatures, as two children drift into a fitful sleep filled with the imagery of bedtime stories and seafaring tales

View More DEEP BLUE SLEEP (Found Theater Company): Fringe Review 13
Ethan Lipkin stars as Bérenger in the IRC’s RHINOCEROS (Photo credit: Johanna Austin @ AustinArt.org)

RHINOCEROS (Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium): 2014 Fringe Review 5

Director Tina Brock brings spot-on casting, lightning-quick pacing, and non-stop hysteria (of both the panicked and hilarious varieties) to Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s FringeArts production of Eugène Ionesco’s RHINOCEROS. The devastating consequences of mindless conformity, social apathy, and turning a blind eye to a growing threat are the important themes of the darkly comic Theater of the Absurd masterpiece.

View More RHINOCEROS (Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium): 2014 Fringe Review 5
Jennifer Childs and Tony Lawton star as Celia and Toby Teasdale in 1812 Productions’ INTIMATE EXCHANGES (Photo credit: Mark Garvin)

Intimate Exchanges (1812 Productions): 2014 Fringe Review 1.2

What makes film different from theater is that film is fixed forever, performances and lines repeating endlessly year after year, while theater has the ability to surprise us. And what makes theater different from life is that theater is scripted and life is random, unexpected, not planned out ahead of time. And what makes Philadelphia’s FringeArts Festival fun is that it delights in performances that confound expectations.

View More Intimate Exchanges (1812 Productions): 2014 Fringe Review 1.2
Teddy Fatscher is featured in the VIP locker-room pre-show for SUSPENDED by Brian Sanders’ JUNK (Photo credit: Courtesy of Brian Sanders’ JUNK)

SUSPENDED (Brian Sanders’ JUNK): Fringe Review 2

Have you ever been caught between two conflicting emotions at the same time? Have those ambivalent feelings left you hanging, unable to decide what to think or how to act? Have you turned to your most primal impulses to figure out who you are and where you’re going? Baring body and soul, Brian Sanders’ JUNK explores the psychology and physicality of uncertainty and transition in SUSPENDED.

View More SUSPENDED (Brian Sanders’ JUNK): Fringe Review 2
Jennifer Childs as Sylvie Bell and Tony Lawton as Lionel Hepplewick in 1812’s INTIMATE EXCHANGES (Photo credit: Mark Garvin)

INTIMATE EXCHANGES (1812 Productions): Fringe Review 1.1

Alan Ayckbourn’s inventive rom-com about failing and budding mid-life relationships in suburban London is that the play (or more accurately, the first volume of the playwright’s original two-volume work that is performed here) offers sixteen plot options and eight different endings. And for the first time in its production history, 1812 shines the spotlight on random members of the audience to decide spontaneously which path the characters should take as they reach a series of crossroads in their lives.

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REMIX FESTIVAL: DANCE REIMAGINED

What happens when you combine Philadelphia choreographers with dance makers from across the country, give them less than 10 hours to remix and recreate each other’s works, and ask them to show their creations? We’re about to find out.

The Remix Festival, curated by Annie Wilson and Susan Rethorst, is inspired by Susan’s choreographic technique of wrecking­—basically radically taking apart a finished work and reconstituting into a new form—and The Wrecking Project.

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Buckminster Fuller before his geode dome at Montreal's World Fair.

THE LOVE SONG OF R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER (FringeArts): Fringe’s First First Friday

Among the first presentations in this exciting space, THE LOVE SONG OF R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER, shows First Friday, April 4th, at 7 and 9pm. This part theater, part musical, part film is dubbed a “live documentary.” Acclaimed filmmaker Sam Green narrates, accompanied by an original score played by Yo La Tengo. Together they create the movie experience in front of the audience in real time. Nick Stuccio, president and Producing Artistic Director of FringeArts, sat down to chat about this unique offering, as well as the developments with the new space and Fringe Festival.

View More THE LOVE SONG OF R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER (FringeArts): Fringe’s First First Friday