There’ll be over a 150 plays and shows to choose from. Here’s a look at a few we thought might be interesting. Making choices at the Fringe is not always a rational process of course, but here goes. Sometimes the titles and descriptions are worth the ride.
DATELINE: MACBETH (Quattro Gatti Theatre Company) and MACBETH; THE INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS (The Rude Mechanicals). Two very different takes on the Scottish play. “Dateline” takes place in a tropical setting, with this hook: “As funny as it is macabre, it goes TV mysteries one better.”
ANTIGONE (The Wandering Theatre Company) and BITCH: A PLAY ABOUT ANTIGONE (Naked Theatre Company). When’s the last time you had a chance to see not one but two plays about Sophocles’ ancient Greece heroine who defies her father and pays for it. Not ever, except at the Fringe.
THE FEVER (Patrick O’Brien, director). O’Brien’s “Underneath the Lintel” was a big hit at last year’s Fringe, and now the director brings Wallace Shawn’s horrific and provoking play to the Fringe.
WISTARIA (The Wistaria Project). “A traveling meeting that questions our historical past and present through a hallucinatory amalgam of U.S. texts, traditional song and actions mysterious and banal.” We like it because we have no idea what this meant but it sounds interesting.
THE OLD MAN NEVER LET IT GO (Hector J. Reynoso). A visual adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea,” with music and dance, starring Reynoso. Hemingway lives!
CABARET XXX: EVERYBODY FCKING DIES (Pinky Swear Producitos). The life and death of Femme Fatales and other matters. Great title.
REPORT TO AN ACADEMY (Scena Theatre). An ape named Red Peter presents a thesis on his life in captivity to a scientific academy. From Robert McNamara’s Scena Theatre.
DISTRICTLAND (Bucharest Inside the Beltway). For the Millennial in your life, a satire and play about starting your career in the District. “Spoiler: You are Not Your LinkedIn Profile”
CONTRAFACT OF FREEDOM (Hunger and Thirst Theatre Collective). We are always interested in anything to do with Francis Scott Key. The Star-Spangled Banner: American history’s most unlikely origin story. By Alex Pappas.
DRACULA: A LOVE STORY (Wry Press). Written by DC Theatre Scene critic Tim Treanor, an intensely romantic take on the all-knowing, ever present vampire of our times. Directed by Christopher Henley with Lee Ordeman.
CHESAPEAKE (The Edge of the University Players 2). This magical realist fable is by Lee Blessing, one of America’s best and most evocative playwrights. A tale about a New York performance artist, a firebrand conservative Southern politician and a Chesapeake Bay Labrador retriever.
MEDEA’S GOT SOME ISSUES (No Rules Theatre Company and Spain arts & culture). Classy Babe turned ancient Greek temptress tells all. Featuring Lisa Hodsoll.
FEISTY OLD JEW (Charlie Varon). A one-man show about Bernie, 83, who hates yoga studios, S6 coffee, young tech millionaires and what they’re doing to San Francisco.
THE MONSTER SONGS (Dr. Dour & Peach) Dr. Dour sings and plays 10-string guitar. Peach plays cello and banjo and they sing and tell the personal stories of lovesick mummies, giant lizards and bargain-hunting zombies. Featuring Toby Mulford (composer) and Rachel Spicknall Mulford.
It’s back.
The theater festival that anticipates changing times and has become a hot bed for everything new in performance art, the Capital Fringe Festival, returns for 18 days of “uninhibited and creative performances” at over 15 venues round the city, July 10-27.
Tickets are already on sale at the Fort Fringe Box Office at 607 New York Ave., near the Washington Convention Center.
This festival will mark the last year Capital Fringe will be headquartered at this location. The good news is that it will move into a new space at 1358 Florida Avenue currently occupied by the Connersmith Gallery.
This year’s venues include a variety of locations in the continually changing downtown world. Performances will be held at several spaces at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, located in the new and hot H Street Corridor area; Caos on F; the Bedroom at Fort Fringe; the Baldacchino Tent Bar; the Dupont Circle Q Street Exit; DC Reynolds Bar; The Shop at Fort Fringe; Gearbox on 7th Street; the Gallery and Main Stage at the Goethe Institut; Hillyer Art Space; Jet Hair Designs; the Martin Luther King Library; Mountain at Mount Vernon United Methodist Church; Plush Beauty Box; the Fridge; The Source Theater; Union Stylus; the Warehouse; and the Capitol Reflecting Pool.
Fringe, under the leadership of founder, president and chief executive Julieanne Brienza, has continually expanded the boundaries of theater and performing arts. The Capital Fringe Festival is one of many around the world, a tradition of cutting edge theater that began in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Today, you’re likely to run across a mixture of drama and dance, classical plays and vaudeville acts, stand up comedians, puppets, opera and drama, shows that include Twitter and Facebook, straight forward dramas and not so straight forward plays, musical acts, site-specific plays, one-man and one-woman shows and much more. This is a festival for every generation.
