San Diego International Fringe Festival returns for its 14th year to celebrate unburied, uncensored creativity from here and abroad. This year, it expands its footprint and prepares to welcome global leaders for the World Fringe Congress.
San Diego International Fringe embraces the weird and the wonderful, the unexpected and the profound. It’s wild, innovative and audacious.
Beth's Fringe recommendations
Must-see top picks
- "Just to Be Close to You" — this show should not work, but Cam Porter works some alchemy to deliver a brilliantly funny show about a lounge singer of dubious talent doing a single song.
- "Re:Re:Reincarnation" and "Are you lovin' it?" — just go see anything Theatre Group GUMBO does. It never makes any sense, but it is an absolute riot.
- "Simmer" - Kata Pierce-Morgan's shows are the epitome of avant-garde and fueled by a sense of social justice.
- "The Fairy Tale Monologues" — Riot Productions' Sarah Alida LeClair finds a way to blend her love for musicals with a feminist desire to create strong roles for women and examine stereotypes
- "Life's a Drag" — I caught this show at New Zealand Fringe, and Dean Misdale is on fire.
- "Ghost Train" — I caught this at Hollywood Fringe and appreciated its thoughtful and compassionate approach to a trans story.
- "An Audience With Robinson Crusoe" — I loved Tom Steward's "One Man Bond," and now he does something equally funny but with a more biting edge. Do not go if you are irony deficient.
- "Rhythm Delivered" — high energy dance and percussion that I got to see at WoW last month.
- "Alisha's Light" — Alisha Richard takes the audience on a journey through Alisha’s magical first year of living authentically following a bold decision on the eve of her 57th birthday. A perfect show to launch at Golden Corpse Theater.
Sight unseen, but here's why you should check these out
- "Serving Can't" — Marshall Lorenzo was the winner of the New Zealand Fringe San Diego Tour Award, so that is noteworthy.
- "Baldwin" with Kristin Joy Moran and "Oops" with Olivia Raine Atwood — unknown shows, but I loved these performers in different shows last year, so they are well worth checking out.
- "My Precious! The Cabaret" — I'm a sucker for "Lord of the Rings" riffs.
- "Poway Shakespeare’s Bards with Blades" — I will gamble on anything Shakespeare, especially if it involves fight choreography, plus a new venue and new company.
Remember, Fringe is all about being bold and adventurous. You could see the best theater of your life or the worst. It's a gamble, but that is part of the adventure.
On the fringes of the Fringe
For 10 years Kata Pierce-Morgan has been spearheading a vibrant fringe of the Fringe through her shows at Les Girls Theater and, more recently, by providing venues for other Fringe artists.
"We're here for our third year of the International Fringe Festival based at 49th and Logan Multicultural Complex," Pierce-Morgan said. "I can hardly wait to show you the third venue. It's called Golden Corpse Theater. Where there's art, there's hope."
No one embodies the Fringe spirit better than Pierce-Morgan.
To prove that point, she noted that there is one "dead" body in the theater — a reclining female figure that symbolizes the theater's name. That is typical of the quirkiness you find at Fringe.
Pierce-Morgan is not just an artist with a show, she is also the owner of a Lincoln Park property she rechristened the 49th and Logan Multicultural Complex to bring arts and culture to an underserved community and to help Fringe as it searched for new and affordable venues.
Shaun Davis is the producing director of San Diego Fringe. He has been focused on creating hubs for the festival where people can see multiple shows at a cluster of venues since that makes it more likely people will stay longer. And Pierce-Morgan makes her three-venue hub very inviting by offering free coffee, drinks and snacks.
"This is incredible," Davis said as he walked through Golden Corpse Theater, which months before was just a cluttered dance studio and storage space. "It's an incredible space, and I can't wait to be able to start using it and inaugurate it for the San Diego International Fringe Festival."
Golden Corpse Theater joins No Limits and New Destiny as 2026 Fringe venues. They are small, intimate spaces ideal for one-person shows. There is also gated parking for 60 cars.
At 78, Pierce-Morgan rarely stops moving. She has to finish Golden Corpse Theater for this week, has a new show for Fringe, plus multiple properties to manage. So it’s hard to get her to focus on one thing.
She did sit down for an interview about her new social justice show drawing on San Diego history — a history I chronicled in Stripper Energy: Fighting Back from the Fringes, which documented her decades-long battle against abuse, harassment and marginalization while working as a dancer at Les Girls Theater, which she now owns. Her new show tackles something she only alluded to in the video podcast series — the mob.
"I did bring a magic marker so that if I accidentally mention names, which I don't do, I'm ready. We will redact my words," Pierce-Morgan said.
Pierce-Morgan uses art to address past trauma through an entertaining lens.
She said: "My current show, also autobiographical, tracing back into San Diego's nefarious past, takes place in 1973, and I've called it 'Simmer: What's Cooking?'"
And what’s cooking is a story about Lolo and the mob. Lolo opens the show by addressing the women in the audience and saying, "Let’s join the ranks of being made, not just laid." Her slogan is that she is "the bust you can trust."
Pierce-Morgan added: "In 1973, the streets of San Diego downtown were run by the mob. And of course, being a dancer at that time, you know, that was part of my life history. Remember, it was the Hells Angels, the bikers, the mob, the vice. I mean, it was a pretty colorful environment for us."
And it is a perfect backdrop for a story about women pushing against stereotypes.
"Sometimes the show's hard to understand," Pierce-Morgan confessed. "But you know, it really doesn't matter. It's about the breath that you take as you're watching it, you know, how you change in what you're seeing or your perspective. It comes just from a guttural sense or instinctive sense.
That’s because she's a poet, and her shows are unabashedly avant-garde and blissfully defiant of theater conventions. If she inherits some marionettes from a late friend, she’ll find a way to add them to the show. If current events anger her, she’ll find a way to satirize them — look for Trump and the pope — and if, after months of rehearsal, she crosses paths with an interesting artist, she’ll rewrite the show for them.
When asked about the aerialist in her show, Pierce-Morgan said, "That was an accident. It wasn't like I woke up and said, 'I need to have an aerialist in my show.'"
But now she does. Danielle Cohen plays HiYa Power, who performs on both silks and the lyra.
"Here comes Hiya Power coming down on the silks to the live pianist," Pierce-Morgan explained. "And so she is the one who will resolve the unresolvable, and perhaps she can save the day."
Pierce-Morgan also insists on using older dancers.
"I just love them to pieces because they have so much to offer, and I like to use experienced dancers who maybe are considered past their prime," Pierce-Morgan added. "So I love the whole idea of having multigenerational. I think that it promotes the storytelling that is part of the show."
Storytelling that uses art to heal and offer hope. Pierce-Morgan's shows and venues feel like part of the rejuvenation of San Diego Fringe.
Fringe expansion
San Diego International Fringe has faced obstacles over the years. Its earlier home base, the Spreckels Theater, was sold, so it had to relocate. Then COVID forced a hiatus and reboot. But this year is about growth and expansion.
In addition to welcoming a new venue at 49th and Logan Multicultural Complex, Davis is also excited about returning to San Diego State University to add venues. Last year, Fringe had a film event at SDSU, and this year it will feature live shows.
"They are partnering with us," Davis said. "So we've got three venues there. We're doing the SDSU Main Stage, formerly the Don Powell, the Prebys Theater and the Experimental there."
Fringe is also extending the reach of its BYOV, or Bring Your Own Venue, north to Poway and south to Ensenada, where San Diego Fringe founder and CEO Kevin Charles Patterso now lives.
"It seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to add a venue down in this expat community I live in," Patterson said. "And we're just looking at it as a pilot to try it out."
This year, San Diego Fringe is proud to host the World Fringe Congress. Holly Lombardo is the managing director of the international organization, which turns 20 next year.
"And what we set out to do is connect Fringe festival directors and producers all over the world together and support them with creating new festivals and to share knowledge between festivals," Lombardo said. "And now we support 300 Fringe festivals all over the world, all in different shapes and sizes from the Edinburgh Fringe, which is the longest-standing and largest in the world, to some of the smaller ones, you know, with 10, 15 events."
Attending an early World Fringe Congress was life-changing for Patterson.
"It was so inspirational that from that time and that visit, I said, 'This is what I want to do,'" Patterson said. "But what it brings to San Diego and what makes it special for us having it in San Diego is it puts us in this global arts and culture spotlight."
But it’s doing so at a challenging time, with the festival facing potentially severe budget cuts and artists facing obstacles to travel.
"We had one of our groups from Italy, not only were they denied a visa, they were told that they couldn't reapply for 10 years. So that was kind of shocking," Davis said.
Davis also had to contend with the new paid parking policies in Balboa Park, and that impacted how he schedules shows.
"I did not do daytime shows in Balboa Park this year," Davis said. "I've got one group that's doing some early shows only because they can only be here for one day. But for all the other shows, we don't start Balboa Park until 6 p.m. so that we can avoid having our audiences have to pay for parking."
Being able to creatively pivot is just one reason Lombardo loves Fringe and calls herself a Fringe-aholic.
"What excites me about them is the innovation and the forward thinking and the generosity of spirit that comes with the people that run them and the artists that take part in them and the venues that support them," Lombardo said. "It's lively, it's invigorating, the tickets are not expensive. It is a very exciting place to be, and the more you immerse yourself into it, the more you will get out of it, basically. And that goes for everybody — artists, festival directors and audiences."
As a certified Fringe-aholic myself, I encourage everyone to at least dip a toe into Fringe and sample one show or spend an evening at one hub to experience the uncensored, audacious spirit that is uniquely Fringe.
San Diego Fringe launches tomorrow with a free preview night at Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theater and continues through May 24 at multiple locations.
