Tickets are on sale for the citywide, 21st annual Philly Fringe Festival, September 7-24
New to the city and looking to dive head first into Philly’s art scene? Then check out the citywide, 21st annual Fringe Festival happening September 7-24! This 17-day celebration of art-making offers an unparalleled opportunity to see a cross-section of the world’s greatest arts experimenters at one time, in one city, from West Philly to Old City and everywhere in between. The Festival attracts tens of thousands of attendees each year, hungry for artistic experiences that break the mold, push boundaries, and advance the international conversation surrounding performance.
The artists in this year’s Curated Festival contemplate community and interconnectedness through their work in vastly different ways.
In HOME, long-time Festival contributor Geoff Sobelle creates a house onstage that goes up with the speed of time-lapse photography. This piece is a glorious meditation on the transitory nature of dwelling, the constraints of time and money, the impossible structural demands of a house, the absurdity—and at times the impossibility—of making a home.
Alternatively, Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project present Declassified Memory Fragment, a work of dance, live concert, and theater created as an open letter on African society: its lifestyles, cultures, beauty, complexities, and politics.
In Ghost Rings, creator/director Tina Satter of Half Straddle tells a tale of friendship and the intricacies of family-making, offering a tender and harrowingly funny visual and sonic experience that traverses the multiple and messy layers of romance from childhood through adolescence to adulthood.
In 17c, Big Dance Theater mines the theatricality of the diary of Samuel Pepys, whose obsessive journaling serves as a startling precursor to our social media culture. Even in the Pig Iron Theatre Company show.
A Period of Animate Existence, children, elders, and machines contemplate the future in a time of dire predictions and rapid technological change in this work of symphonic theater.
The Festival goes beyond just the curated works FringeArts presents. Over 180 different shows in a variety of different genres are being produced by independent artists, including 25 shows that are free/PWYW, so there’s something for everybody! Can’t make it off campus? No worries! You can check out Digital Fringe, pieces created by digital artists and accessible online anytime during the Festival. Works include podcasts, social media compilations, video games and more.
La Peg, FringeArts’ partner in food and art, welcomes Festival audiences and artists back to its waterfront headquarters every night of the Festival. They offer a late night happy hour for Festival audiences 21 and over – show a ticket and get a drink for as little as $3. Make sure to come out on the weekends for events like the explosive Festival kick-off party on Sept. 8th with a performance from the hip-hop/rock band Ill Doots and on Sept. 16th for a therapeutic free-wheeling dance party led by local theater artist Rachel Camp dubbed Dance Explosion. All late night entertainment is free and 21+ in Haas Biergarten.
Students receive $5 off tickets to all shows priced above $10 and pay $15 for tickets to FringeArts Curated shows. Groups of 10+ save 25%.
A full schedule of additional Festival events, performance dates, times and locations is available at FringeArts.com. Follow FringeArts on Facebook and Twitter for the latest in Festival updates.
