the traveler's resource guide to festivals & films
a FestivalTravelNetwork.com site
part of Insider Media llc.
Other Festivals
The International Fringe Encore Series Brings Back the Best of Off-Broadway
- Details
- Parent Category: Other Festivals
- Category: Theater
- Published on Tuesday, 02 January 2024 15:23
- Written by Brad Balfour
Running at the Soho Playhouse (15 Vandam Street), The International Fringe Encore Series showcases extraordinary off-Broadway shows in NYC. Many of the previous productions featured in the series have gone on to extensive Off-Broadway runs and international success.
The slate of shows includes the new play Bacon, written by Sophie Swithinbank and directed by Matthew Iliffe. Bacon is an unflinching and unexpectedly humorous look at masculinity, sexuality and power, through the dizzying lens of youth. Following a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the multi-award-winning play comes to New York for 24 performances only.
It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure, from the disability led theater company FlawBored, is a look at assumptions and questions around disabilities. Usually disabled people just want to do the right thing. But what if they don’t? What if they were out to make as much money as possible from the guilt of non-disabled, anxious people (like you)?
Jekyll & Hyde reinvents Stevenson's classic science-horror story, with award-winning performer Heather-Rose Andrews in the titular role. Class, terror, and hypocrisy in Victorian London, as the search for self collides with the lure of the sensuous, taking its toll on all around Jekyll & Hyde. A new vision of terror from award-winning writer/director JD Henshaw.
Esther’s Revenge, produced by Tope Sanni, is an experiential play inspired by true life events of Esther who was reported to have murdered her white lover in 1953. The sentence is death by hanging. This very participatory play as devised, explores themes around race, colonization, sexual abuse, violence against women, and political and social injustice. Esther takes us on a journey through time into the events leading up to the death of Mark. The Jury is given the responsibility to vote in favor or against a stay of execution.
This is just a sampling of the performances taking place during The International Fringe Encore Series
To learn more, go to: https://fringeencoreseries.com/ & https://www.sohoplayhouse.com/
The International Fringe Encore Series
January 4 - February 11, 2024
Soho Playhouse
15 Vandam Street
New York, NY 10013
International Puppet Fringe Festival Brings Halloween to August
- Details
- Parent Category: Other Festivals
- Category: Theater
- Published on Thursday, 06 July 2023 14:26
- Written by Brad Balfour
A strange festival is coming to NYC with strings attached. The 3rd Annual International Puppet Fringe Festival runs from August 9 – 13, 2023, in the Lower East Side. A truly idiosyncratic festival, the IPFF is the only international festival dedicated to puppetry, and features performances by leading puppet makers and troupes from around the world. The theme for this year’s festival is "Halloween in August", honoring New York City’s most renowned puppet master and founder of the Village Halloween Parade, the late Ralph Lee.
A truly international festival, participating troupes include:
- Teatro SEA (USA)
- Yael Rasooly (Israel)
- Puppet Beings Theater (Taiwan)
- Maskhunt/Deborah Hunt (Puerto Rico/New Zealand)
- Scapegoat Carnivale (Canada)
- Lumiato Teatro de Formas Animades (Brazil)
- Treasure Chest Theatre (Hong Kong/USA)
- Fernán Cardama (Argentina)
- Tholpavakoothu & Puppet Centre (India)
- Junktown Duende (Puerto Rico/USA)
- Boxcutter Collective (USA)
- Wonderspark Puppets (USA)
- Swedish Cottage Theatre Mobile (USA)
- Nappy’s Puppets (Jim Napolitano) (USA)
There will also be presentations from Cuba, Colombia, Chile among others.
The festival kicks off on August 9th at the Clemente Soto Vélez Center in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (107 Suffolk Street, NYC) as puppeteers create their own mini version of the famous Halloween Parade. Also included are art exhibitions, films, cabaret nights, and Guerilla-style micro-theater performances in unorthodox venues.
The festival is organized by Teatro SEA, Grupo Morán (The Morán Group) and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Education Center.
To learn more, go to: https://puppetfringenyc.com/
International Puppet Fringe Festival
August 9 - 13, 2023
Various Venues in the Lower East Side
EstroGenius Festival: BAN(NED) TOGETHER Is Performance Art With a Mission
- Details
- Parent Category: Other Festivals
- Category: Theater
- Published on Monday, 06 February 2023 20:54
- Written by Brad Balfour
Running for 22 years, vis one of the longest running festivals for femme, trans, female and non-binary performing arts. The 2023 festival, 2023 EstroGenius Festival: BAN(NED) TOGETHER, looks to take a stand against the legislative and cultural wave of hate towards women and trans people. The festival runs from March 18th to April 2, with performances being held at The Kraine Theater (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003), UNDER St. Marks (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009), Arts On Site (12 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10003) and the Decatur Street Community Garden in Bushwick (1052 Decatur St, Brooklyn, NY 11207). For those that can’t attend live, most of the performances will also be streamed.
“We do all of this through a gorgeous variety of dance, music, theatre and comedic artists crossing our stages, building community, performing their hearts and stories out to our fab audiences,” said Melissa Riker, Executive Producer of EstroGenius Festival. “We are so grateful to our producing partners at FRIGID New York, Arts on Site and 721 Decatur Community Garden, for co-creating Estro 2023! ”
EstroGenius exists to present the voices of dance-makers, playwrights, experimental performers, teens, musicians, burlesque performers, noise artists, filmmakers, dj’s and anyone else looking to break molds and crack gender codes to the stage, street and forefront of public attention.
Performances include:
- PROPHECY FOR 22ND CENTURY INSTEAD OF MANIFESTOCreated & Performed by Petra Zanki
Sat March 18 & 25 at 1pm @ 721 Decatur Community Garden, Brooklyn
Find and play with something that is common to us all, that we do not know the meaning of quite well, a mystery, a ritual, a game, as simple and intricate as friendship, a cat’s cradle, an ancient game, that does not colonize, a vessel, a starting point, and a basis, thought the sense of ecofeminism, and use alternative theories (rather than white androtheories) that include BIPOC+ and LGBTQIA stand points towards adductive and alternative epistemologies that always include various contexts, towards the ecology of mind and denouement of double bind, to heal and enjoy. A dance piece for six humans, in a community garden, for the future.
- A.K.A. Ka Inoa (excerpt) by Pele Bauch
A.K.A. Ka Inoa weaves together supple movement, vivid characters, and personal story with 300 ft of rope. This dance-theater work mines Bauch’s experience as a multiracial New Yorker and Native Hawaiian who carries the weight of being named after Hawaii’s most significant and beloved deity, the goddess of volcanoes, Pele.
- The Tale Of An-NoorWritten and performed by Marina Celander
Sun March 19 & 26 at 11am @ The Kraine Theater
The Tale of An-Noor is the tale of a magic bird who flies great distances to visit her friends the Old Tree and the Old River. An-Noor listens to her friends and they share tales of epic migrations, sorrows and loss, of overcoming huge odds, and feeling joy in everyday life at the edge of the river. Told through dance, puppetry and light An-Noor lets children know that there is magic all around us as long as we keep on dreaming and following the stars.
- Solo Voce | Ban(ned): Together
March 23-26 @ UNDER St Marks
A stellar line up of solo artists breaking boundaries, telling stories and bursting assumptions.
Full line up to be announced later this month.
- all in between|a 3rd space to beby sj swilley
March 25 & 26 at 5pm @ the Kraine Theater
all in between|a 3rd spaceto be is a storytelling and abstract narration of the space in between wholeness and withdrawal, humanity and spirit. It is a reckoning with an ever shifting gender performance, and a spiritual investigation of queerness as a portal to existing as something "other". The artist invites audiences to be in conversation after the show.
To learn more, go to: https://www.frigid.nyc/festivals/estrogenius/
2023 EstroGenius Festival: BAN(NED) TOGETHER
March 18 - April 2, 2023
Various venues in New York
1st Irish Festival: Marriage, Monsters & More On The Stage
- Details
- Parent Category: Other Festivals
- Category: Theater
- Published on Tuesday, 03 January 2023 20:26
- Written by Brad Balfour
Now in its 15th installment and returniong to in person for the first time since the start of the pandemic, the Origin Theatre’s 1st Irish festival returns in 2023. Running three weeks from Monday January 9 to Tuesday January 31 at venues across the citincluding the 59E59 Theaters, the Irish Repertory Theatre, the Irish Arts Center,The Cell, and Symphony Space in Manhattan; the NY Irish Center in Queens, and An Beal Bocht in The Bronx. The 1st Irish Festival features productions, readings, workshops, and more from Ireland and the United States.
The Festival opens officially with the US premiere of “Heaven” produced by Dublin’s Olivier Award-winning Fishamble theatre company. Written by Eugene O’Brien (winner of the Rooney Prize for Literature for “Eden”), and directed by Jim Culleton (Irish Times Best Director Award winner 2019), “Heaven,” Set in County Offaly, Ireland during the weekend of a local wedding, guests Mairead and Mal are struggling to keep their marriage together. Perhaps attending a wedding will help, or it might raise questions that are difficult to answer. “Heaven” examines family bonds, life decisions, and the search for happiness in contemporary Ireland.
“Frankenstein's Monster Is Drunk And The Sheep Have All Jumped The Fences” follows the titular creature, dejected at the end of his career in Hollywood, he goes off in search of love in a remote village.
“Endgame” tells the story of Hamm (John Douglas Thompson) who is reduced to living in one room, in which he sits chair bound, blind and bored. His only deliverance from this interminable monotony is the company of his aging, legless parents (Joe Grifasi and Patrice Johnson), who live in garbage bins and his limping servant, Clov (Bill Irwin), who is at his beck and call, and who like a dog comes when whistled for. The only thing left for Hamm is to wait for the inevitable end.
Among the Festival highlights: a mini festival-within-the-festival at the cell -- “Femme First” – featuring workshop productions of three new plays by local women playwrights. Seen in rep at the cell the series includes “Great White American Teeth” written and performed by Fiona Walsh; “The Funny Thing About Death,” written and performed by Kim Kalish, and “It’s in the Play,” written by Orlagh Cassidy and Kate Lardner and performed by Cassidy.
To learn more, go to: https://www.origintheatre.org/
1st Irish Festival
January 9 - 31, 2023
Various Venues Throughout New York
