Philly Fringe & Live Arts Festival

Details

Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Theater

Published on Tuesday, 30 August 2011 05:00

Written by Lynne Shannon

The 15th annual Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe is being held September 2 - 17, 2011 at the Prince Music Theater, Independence Black Box, The Rotunda, and numerous other venues in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe supports artists in a wide array of projects, performances and presentations in a something-for-everyone event.

The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival is "a curated festival of the world’s most cutting-edge, high-quality performing arts groups," with more than 13 Live Arts shows being presented.

The Philly Fringe is "an unfiltered festival, where a platform is provided for new and established artists to present their work free of a selection process. For some it’s a once-a-year, or once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a show; for professional companies, it can be an opportunity to try something new."

The event encourages artists to "give expression to and develop their talents and artistic visions in total artistic freedom without any curatorial barriers in bringing that work to an audience; to help artists become successful independent producers; and ensure the growth and continued health of the local and regional performing arts community." More than 200 shows are expected to perform.

This Event promises a lot, and definitely delivers. The range of unusual, off-beat and downright groundbreaking performance pieces is staggering.

The Live Arts Shows include:

• A collaborative new work that "captures the wonder of the ineffable" by choreographer/director John Jasperse and company
• A play in 3 acts, with Act 1 online, Act 2 as part of a free walking tour, which reveals the secret location of Act 3
• a lecture performed entirely in dance
• a play combining dance theater, art installation, silent films, vintage Donkey Kong, and Mars
• a trio of illusionists in collaboration

The Fringe productions include such innovations as

• the one-night mini-festival that is the Alternative Theatre Festival
• theatre meets therapy as Angry People encourages the audience say what makes them angry and then channels that rage into improv
• a treasure hunt with teams of 4-6 audience members
• an audio podcast with live stage show
• 5-minute plays
• black light theatre, a popular, innovative Czech style rarely performed in the States

In addition to a wealth of new and original material are works by such established playwrights as:

• Shakespeare (Coriolanus and Henry IV)
• Edgar Allan Poe
• H.P. Lovecraft
• Bram Stoker
• James Baldwin
• Sam Shepard
• Neil LaBute

there are performances of such tried and true offerings as:

• The Bacchae
• The Dutchman
• Woyzeck
• Ubu Roi
• Debbie Does Dallas, the Musical
• Eurydice
• The Scarlet Letter
• Lord of the Flies
• Max Frisch’s The Arsonists (The Firebugs)
• Kathryn Watterson‛s Not By the Sword rendered as opera, Slaying the Dragon
• Georges Rodenbach‛s 1892 novella Bruges-la-Morte
• Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters
• another rendering of Jason and the Argonauts
• the only surviving play from Eugene O’Neill’s Obit Cycle, which O’Neill said was meant to be read, not performed
• oh, yes -- and The Bible

Other events include

• Gender Reel, the East Coast’s first and only multi-media festival
• Symposium: Conversations on Cross Cultural Identity in 21st Century Performance – A discussion of inter-border influences and collaborations with dancers and artists Ralph Lemon, Nora Chipaumire, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Shantala Shivalingappa, Jayachandran Palazhy
• a Dance Flash Mob

The dazzling -- one could say exhausting -- array of performances cover so many mash-ups: dance with film, music with art, theater with acrobatics, tap dancing to heavy metal, and so many more. Two weeks is not enough.

For more information, go to www.livearts-fringe.org.

Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe
September 2 - 17, 2011

Prince Music Theater
Independence Black Box
1412 Chestnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19110
215-413-1318

The Wilma Theater
265 S. Broad St.
Philadelphia, PA 1910

Plays and Players Theater
1714 Delancey Place
Philadelphia, PA 19103-6715

Live Arts Studio
919 N. 5th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19123

Arts Bank at the University of the Arts
601 S. Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147-1811

Emerald Street Park
2317 Emerald Street
Philadelphia, PA 19125

Philadelphia Museum of Art, east staircase
26th & Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19101

The Shubin Theatre
407 Bainbridge Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

Columbus Memorial
South Columbus Boulevard at Dock Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

William Way Community Center
1315 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107-5601

The Rotunda
4014 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-3514

Walnut Street Theatre-Studio 5
825 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 1910

plus other venues in and around Philadelphia

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