San Diego International Fringe Festival returns for its fourth year and continues to expand out from its home base in downtown San Diego. KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando previews this year’s festival. Taking its cue from the more than half century old Edinburgh Festival Fringe, San Diego Fringe assaults the senses with a wildly diverse array of work. This year prepare for a puppet Macbeth, the opening of Pandora’s box, Ozombie Bin Laden as well as rebels and Stormtroopers singing together onstage. CLIP The Phantom of the empire is here, reserve your seat. This year, San Diego Fringe expands to more than a 100 shows over eleven days and even crossing the international border. Founder and director Kevin Charles Patterson says one of the most important things Fringe does is to nurture new works. KEVIN CHARLES PATTERSON: We are filling a void that we’ve had for awhile in our city with platforms for alternative arts. Now all of a sudden with the Fringe festival we’ve got this platform for a full range of art that might not be otherwise be seen... one of the biggest things with the Fringe festival is that we provide this new platform in a major city that enables artists to have their own voice with their own works and no one on our team will be able to choose what is good and what is not. That’s because Fringe is designed to address the inequity felt by artists who feel excluded from the mainstream. Fringe programming is unjuried and uncensored. That means anything is fair game from international dictators to current politics. CLIP Press conference Year of the Woman is one of the many satires showcased at Fringe during this election year. This year also brings artists from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Ireland, Wales, England, Italy, and Japan as well as from around the U.S. Returning to Fringe this year is Jennifer Curry Wingrove who fuses ballet, cirque nouveau, and theater arts into a new way of storytelling. Last year she presented “Save Our Soul.” JENNIFER CURRY WINGROVE: That was our first time out and we happen to walk home with the best of Fringe award so this year we’re trying to up our game. Mythos -- Opening Pandora’s Box is an eclectic blend of Greek Mythology and characters and making an original story of Pandora’s box and putting in a few interesting twists and turns. Putting twist, turns as well as flips and acrobatics is the Circus Collective of San Diego. Jacqueline DeWitt says being a part of Fringe is bringing attention to circus as a new kind of theater. JACQUELINE WITT: I think for sure people who had never heard of Circus Collective are coming to our shows mainly because of the Fringe festival itself and just us interacting with other people who are there widens our fan base on top of that so yeah it has opened a lot of doors. Fringe is also opening doors to new venues such as Diversionary Theater and Rosewood Five says Patterson. KEVIN CHARLES PATTERSON: Rosewood Five which is a film soundstage was a BYOV, which is a bring your own venue. This year instead of being a Bring Your Own Venue we said let’s bring it on as a Fringe managed venue and the difference is we will manage everything so artists don’t have to worry. We’ll provide the box office staff, the ushers, technicians, all which can be cost prohibitive if artists are doing it on their own as opposed to the BYOV where they are responsible for everything. With so much to choose from managing director Candice Caufield suggests your first stop should be their website. CANDICE: There you can look at different shows and different artists and you can get an idea to what gets your interest… once you get to box office grab a program it has a spreadsheet of the time and try and plan your schedule out early. You will also need to purchase a Fringe tag. CANDICE: Fringe tag is a one time only $5 purchase it is essentially admission to the festival and what the fringe tag does is it gives the festival money to keep on going every year where the ticket sales goes 100 perent to the artists so we have to have something for our hard costs our marketing costs and tech costs that you can hear in background. But the main thing she says you need to bring to Fringe is a sense of adventure. CANDICE CAUFIELD: Take a risk. See something new, see something different I was at Orlando fringe a couple weeks and I saw a girl do a show in a bathtub and it was pretty incredible. So try something new. The 2016 San Diego International Fringe Festival provides sensory overload with more than 500 performances of shows that cost a mere ten bucks a pop. And honestly, where else can you find a singing wookiee. Beth Accomando, KPBS News.
Fringe recommendations
Theatre Dojo, "Killing Buddha"
"Ozombie Bin Laden in 3D"
Sanctuary Stage, "I Got Guns"
Lighthouse Circus Theatre, "Embers"
somebodies dance theatre, "Silo"
Tymisha Harris, "Josephine"
Le Moana, "1918"
Sanctuary Stage, "I Got Guns"
Royal Kung Foolery, "Cocooned in Kazan"
Astraeus Aerial Dance Theatre, "Mythos — Opening Pandora's Box"
Windy Wynazz, "Rich and Famous"
Hully Gully Entertainers, "Year of the Woman"
Turning Tydes, "The Phantom of the Empire"
Jake Lukeman, "King of SoHo"
Lance Belville, "Qaddafi's Cook"
Compulsion Dance and Theatre, "Bedrooms and Boyfriends"
Theatre Group GUMBO, "Will You Swear Your True Love"
Animal Cracker Conspiracy, "Paper Cities"
Flying Bridge, “A Regular Little Houdini”
The Circus Collective of San Diego, "Circustantial Evidence: The Crimson Canary"
Mysterium Productions, "Mysterium — A Magic Show"
A Little Bit Off, "Bela Culpa"
UPDATE: 9:45 a.m., July 2, 2016
It's is now the final weekend of Fringe and I have seen 28 shows of the hundred plus available and am trying to cram in about a half dozen more before the awards show on Sunday night.
Last night, Fringe artists got together to put on Secret Fringe, an impromptu fundraiser for the Fringe Festival (which makes no money from individual ticket sales for shows, one hundred percent of that goes to the artists). I don't know how much money was raised but from the perspective of someone in the audience just watching the Secret Fringe, it was a rich experience. Tymisha Harris of "Josephine" stole the show with her funny, sexy strip tease, but everyone was great. People were instructed to bring flashlights and flashlights were what was used to light the show. I hope this becomes an annual Fringe thing!
The only sour note so far at the festival is that Horton Plaza parking has changed their policy twice during Fringe, and has made parking more expensive and problematic. The parking policy will make it difficult for anyone to use the shops or businesses at Horton and that's a shame. I will certainly think twice before heading down there and facing difficult parking.
On the positive side, I have two more shows to recommend: Theatre Dojo's "Killing Buddha" and "Ozombie Bin Laden in 3D," which does not seem to have a name for the artists presenting it unless it is [Company Name Here], which is what is listed in the program.
"Killing Buddha," as with "A Regular Little Houdini," is all about the art of storytelling. The pyrotechnics are all in the actors ability to hold you rapt with nothing more than words. And it is riveting and wonderful. "Killing Buddha" also has amazing music made with an array of musical instruments, some of which are just found objects.
"Ozombie Bin Laden in 3D," like "Scenes from Mars One: Now with 68% Less Gravity" last year, may be the show that most embodies the Fringe spirit. It feels a bit just thrown together and haphazard, has DIY props, and a massive amount of creative energy and fun. It's just plain goofy, ridiculous, and politically incorrect. It's also hilarious and captures the WTF did I just see quality of Fringe that you just can't get anywhere else. This show and Windy Wynazz's equally hilarious "Rich and Famous" are having trouble filling the house at the new Fringe Venue of Diversionary Theatre so please make every effort to check out their final shows this weekend.
Reminder that you can find new videos each day on the KPBS YouTube Channel with the Must-See Sand Diego Fringe Shows 2016 playlist. There are clips from more than a dozen shows to help you decide what to see in these final to days of eyeball busting madness.
UPDATE: 10:45 a.m., June 29, 2016
Seven days into Fringe and I can add Lighthouse Circus Theatre's "Embers" and somebodies dance theatre's "Silo" to the list of recommended shows. "Embers" features some powerful aerial and acrobatic work in a story about coping with mental illness. The satisfying thing about the circus/aerial arts shows at Fringe is that each is different in terms of style and tone. "Mythos" serves up the whole gorgeous package with dance, aerial work, lighting, costumes, and music all blending into one seamless production that takes your breath away. "Embers, on the other hand, serves up raw power and emotions to deliver some stunning young work. And then "Circustantial Evidence" emphasizes humor in their challenging physical work.
"Silo" has moments of sheer brilliance that make it worth seeing. Especially noteworthy are the dances employing hoop skirts made of plastic bags.
Sanctuary Stage's "I Got Guns" relies on the tropes and tradition of Italy's broad commedia dell'arte to deliver a political message about guns in America. The acting comedy displays boundless energy and crisp comic timing as well as some clever writing.
You can find clips of recommended shows on the Must-See San Diego Fringe Shows 2016 playlist on the KPBS YouTube Channel. New videos are going up daily.
UPDATE: 8:45 a.m., June 25, 2016
After attending two days of Fringe, I have updated my recommendations to include two shows that were not available for preview: Tymisha Harris' one-woman show "Josephine," about the legendary and fabulous Josephine Baker, and Le Moana's "1918," a theatrical dance response to the 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic that killed almost a third of the total population of Sāmoa and became a catalyst for Sāmoa’s resistance against the New Zealand colonial government.
Fringe always starts slowly as people seem a little hesitant to dip their toe in the uncharted waters. But word of mouth is already spreading about strong shows like "The Phantom of the Empire," "Cocooned in Kazan," Bella Culpa," "I Got Guns," and "Will You Swear Your True Love." So head on down early before lines start to grow and tickets for the top shows are harder to get.
Original story:
San Diego International Fringe Festival serves up 11 days of what it calls “eyeball bursting shows” Thursday night through July 3.
Taking its cue from the more than half-century-old Edinburgh Festival Fringe, San Diego Fringe assaults the senses with a wildly diverse array of work. This year prepare for a puppet Macbeth, the opening of Pandora’s box, Ozombie Bin Laden, as well as rebels and Stormtroopers singing together onstage for "The Phantom of the Empire."
This year, San Diego Fringe expands to more than a 100 registered artists performing over 11 days and even across the international border — making it the first binational Fringe Festival in the world. Founder and director Kevin Charles Patterson said one of the most important things Fringe does is to nurture new works.
"We are filling a void that we’ve had for awhile in our city with platforms for alternative arts," Patterson said. "Now, all of a sudden with the Fringe Festival we’ve got this platform for a full range of art that might not be otherwise seen. One of the biggest things with the Fringe Festival is that we provide this new platform in our major city that enables artists to have their own voice with their own works and no one on our team will be able to choose what is good and what is not."
That’s because Fringe is designed to address the inequity felt by artists who feel excluded from the mainstream. Fringe programming is unjuried and uncensored. That means anything is fair game from international dictators to current politics.
"Year of the Woman" and "Secret Life of the American Candidate" are just two of the many satires showcased at Fringe during this election year. This year also brings artists from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Ireland, Wales, England, Italy and Japan, as well as from around the United States.
San Diego artists
Returning to Fringe this year is Jennifer Curry Wingrove who fuses ballet, cirque nouveau and theater arts into a new way of storytelling with her Astraeus Aerial Dance Theatre. Last year she presented “Save Our Soul.”
"That was our first time out and we happen to walk home with the Best of Fringe award," Curry Wingrove said. "So this year we’re trying to up our game. 'Mythos — Opening Pandora’s Box' is an eclectic blend of Greek Mythology and characters and making an original story of Pandora’s box and putting in a few interesting twists and turns."
Putting twist, turns, as well as flips and acrobatics is the Circus Collective of San Diego. Jacqueline Witt explained that being a part of Fringe brings attention to circus as a new kind of theater.
"I think people who had never heard of Circus Collective are coming to our shows mainly because they are there for the Fringe Festival itself," Witt stated. "Just us interacting with other people who are there widens our fan base and we actually have a couple of performers from our show that we met last year at Fringe that are now in our show, so yeah it has opened a lot of doors."
New venues
Fringe is also opening doors to new venues such as Diversionary Theater and Rosewood Five Studios.
"Rosewood Five which is a film soundstage was a BYOV, which is a Bring Your Own Venue," Patterson said. "This year instead of being a Bring Your Own Venue, we said let’s bring it on as a Fringe-managed venue and the difference is we will manage everything so artists don’t have to worry. We’ll provide the box office staff, the ushers, technicians — all which can be cost prohibitive if artists are doing it on their own as opposed to the BYOV where they are responsible for everything."
How to successfully Fringe
With so much to choose from managing director Candice Caufield suggests your first stop should be their website.
"There you can look at different shows and different artists and you can get an idea to what gets your interest," Caufield said. "Then once you get to our box office grab a program, it has a spreadsheet of the times and locations, and try and plan your schedule out early."
You will also need to purchase a Fringe tag.
"Fringe tag is a one time only $5 purchase. It is essentially admission to the festival," Caufield explained. "What the Fringe tag does is it gives the festival money to keep on going every year where the ticket sales goes 100 percent to the artists so we have to have something for our hard costs our marketing costs and tech costs that you can hear in background."
But the main thing she said you need to bring to Fringe is a sense of adventure.
"The thing that’s fun for me is to be adventurous," Patterson said. "Some of the artists I have seen the descriptions of their shows and I may be fairly familiar with them and you see the show and and wow, what a little treasure. And it’s the adventure along the way of the Fringe, just bumping into something so magical and fantastic."
Caulfield agreed.
"Take a risk," she said. "See something new, see something different. I was at Orlando Fringe a couple weeks ago and I saw a girl do a show in a bathtub and it was pretty incredible. So try something new."
The 2016 San Diego International Fringe Festival provides sensory overload with more than 500 performances of shows that cost a mere $10 a pop. And honestly, where else can you find a singing wookiee.
Survival guide
Having been to the past three Fringe Festivals here is a quick rundown of how to survive.
- Get a program with the spreadsheet. This is the easiest way to see what is playing when and where and to map out a plan.
- Read through the program or the online listings to determine what you most would like to see, then make a strategic plan. With the festival being more spread out, you will likely need to pick a day to venture out from the downtown home base to catch shows at Diversionary or Rosewood.
- Talk to people. With 100 shows and 500 performances in 11 days you can't see everything and you don't want to miss that one great show. So talk to artists and Fringe goers and ask what they have seen that's good and what's bad.
- Know your environment. Figure out where the venues are, where to park, and where there is food (and where you can get quick food if you are running from one show to another),
- Pack a survival kit. Bring snacks, bottled water, and a jacket or sweater if you are staring in the morning and going till late at night. Wear comfy shoes in case you have to run between shows.
- As the organizers said, be adventuresome and take risks. Throw all expectations out the window and open yourself up to new experiences.
- Get your tickets and Fringe tag early.
