13th annual IndyFringe Festival opens soon with late night additions and short runs for out-of-town artists
Thanks to a successful expansion of its home base, which enabled year-round scheduling, IndyFringe's annual theater festival rests on a firm foundation as it is poised to enter its 13th year this week.
Inspired by the Edinburgh, Scotland, Fringe and by so many subsequent staged bashes in North America, the well-established IndyFringe Live Theatre Festival runs from Thursday through Aug. 27 at eight sites in and around Massachusetts Avenue.
Two of them are at IndyFringe headquarters at 719 E. St. Clair St. Besides, there are two each at Phoenix Theatre, 749 N. Park Ave., and Theatre on the Square, 627 Mass Ave., and one each at ComedySportz, 721 Mass Ave., and Firefighters Union Hall, 748 Mass Ave. Seventy-four shows will have had more than 400 performances by the end of the 11-day festival.
Despite director Pauline Moffat's disappointment with increased obstacles to foreign performers getting access to the U.S. recently, she enters organizational crunch time buoyed up by several factors: the assistance of George Wallace as associate director under a two-year grant, the increase to eight theaters with the addition of the Firefighters hall, and the addition of two late-night shows during the festival's second week (see page 15 of the program book for complete information).
"The level of professionalism has increased," Moffat said, looking back over her tenure as director since the beginning (2005). "People have liked being out of their comfort zones....It's remarkable that it thrives in a city like ours, a city that's smaller. But this is a community-driven Fringe."
Both Wallace, a veteran of the Orlando Fringe Festival, and Moffat point with pride to a diversity of offerings that has simply sprung from the festival's first-come, first-served admissions process. For patrons, the usual rules apply: Doors are shut to each performance right at the listed performance time; shows run 45 minutes to 1 hour each. The buttons that used to provide access to all shows — once individual tickets were bought — are now available as souvenirs and as a kind of bonding ornament for attendees. Getting into a show no longer has a festival button as a prerequisite.
"There's no diversity lottery needed," Wallace said. "It's intrinsic," added Moffat, explaining: "DivaFest and OnyxFest have both helped promote diversity naturally." She was referring to two IndyFringe-sourced festivals of new plays — by women and African-Americans, respectively. Plays developed there, as well as others workshopped at the facility the rest of the year, have fed into the range of local options available to festival patrons for the past several years.
This year the balance between local and out-of-town shows at the festival is about 50-50. The festival has adjusted the usual six-show schedule to allow out-of-towners to perform just three times during the festival's second week to expedite their tours.
Among his other duties, Wallace advises presenters on the "warnings" the schedule includes. They variously advise on recommended minimum age and notifications about violence, strobe lights, gunshots, and other features meriting caution. There is frequent mention, which anyone who picks up a 2017 festival booklet will notice, of "adult content" and "adult language."
"I advise them to be true and realistic," Wallace explained, "about both their warnings and how they identify their genre. When they are having to make that decision, they can get sure of what they are."
With so much focus on national politics these days, and given that many in the arts community are wary of how the Trump administration seems to oppose their values and can directly or indirectly affect them, do Moffat and Wallace expect a lot more political content across the board? The answer: Not so much this year.
Wallace said he expects to see that influence more prominent in 2018. By the time entry applications for the 2017 festival started to come in nearly a year ago, the national election had yet to be decided. The result, stunning to many people, has had particular resonance among artists of all sorts across the nation and the world.
Politics has become enmeshed in everything we do. In the meantime, happy Fringing!
Inspired by the Edinburgh, Scotland, Fringe and by so many subsequent staged bashes in North America, the well-established IndyFringe Live Theatre Festival runs from Thursday through Aug. 27 at eight sites in and around Massachusetts Avenue.
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| The evening scene along Mass Ave. five years ago during the festival. |
Despite director Pauline Moffat's disappointment with increased obstacles to foreign performers getting access to the U.S. recently, she enters organizational crunch time buoyed up by several factors: the assistance of George Wallace as associate director under a two-year grant, the increase to eight theaters with the addition of the Firefighters hall, and the addition of two late-night shows during the festival's second week (see page 15 of the program book for complete information).
"The level of professionalism has increased," Moffat said, looking back over her tenure as director since the beginning (2005). "People have liked being out of their comfort zones....It's remarkable that it thrives in a city like ours, a city that's smaller. But this is a community-driven Fringe."
Both Wallace, a veteran of the Orlando Fringe Festival, and Moffat point with pride to a diversity of offerings that has simply sprung from the festival's first-come, first-served admissions process. For patrons, the usual rules apply: Doors are shut to each performance right at the listed performance time; shows run 45 minutes to 1 hour each. The buttons that used to provide access to all shows — once individual tickets were bought — are now available as souvenirs and as a kind of bonding ornament for attendees. Getting into a show no longer has a festival button as a prerequisite.
 |
| "One Man's Journey Through the Middle Ages" opens on the festival's opening night Thursday at the Indy Eleven Theatre, the IndyFringe building's second stage. |
"There's no diversity lottery needed," Wallace said. "It's intrinsic," added Moffat, explaining: "DivaFest and OnyxFest have both helped promote diversity naturally." She was referring to two IndyFringe-sourced festivals of new plays — by women and African-Americans, respectively. Plays developed there, as well as others workshopped at the facility the rest of the year, have fed into the range of local options available to festival patrons for the past several years.
This year the balance between local and out-of-town shows at the festival is about 50-50. The festival has adjusted the usual six-show schedule to allow out-of-towners to perform just three times during the festival's second week to expedite their tours.
Among his other duties, Wallace advises presenters on the "warnings" the schedule includes. They variously advise on recommended minimum age and notifications about violence, strobe lights, gunshots, and other features meriting caution. There is frequent mention, which anyone who picks up a 2017 festival booklet will notice, of "adult content" and "adult language."
"I advise them to be true and realistic," Wallace explained, "about both their warnings and how they identify their genre. When they are having to make that decision, they can get sure of what they are."
With so much focus on national politics these days, and given that many in the arts community are wary of how the Trump administration seems to oppose their values and can directly or indirectly affect them, do Moffat and Wallace expect a lot more political content across the board? The answer: Not so much this year.
Wallace said he expects to see that influence more prominent in 2018. By the time entry applications for the 2017 festival started to come in nearly a year ago, the national election had yet to be decided. The result, stunning to many people, has had particular resonance among artists of all sorts across the nation and the world.
Politics has become enmeshed in everything we do. In the meantime, happy Fringing!
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