City on the Edge: Capital Fringe Festival

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (3)

THE CAPITAL FRINGE FESTIVAL is back for its fourth year, and with it comes a new music series, an expanded menu at Fort Fringe and a more concentrated festival area.

"The big thing this year is that we are super-centralized," said Julianne Brienza, the executive director of the Fringe Festival. "We have about 11 venues in two blocks, and that's going to make a really tight festival scene. The last two years we've been spread out all over the city, which is fun, but also very challenging."

The festival is located between Penn Quarter and Mount Vernon Square, and Brienza said Fringe has built a lot of spaces this year.

"We built eight venues this year, when we usually do about two or three," she said. "But this year we wanted to make the festival centralized, so that people didn't have to think about traffic or the Metro."

Fringe has always included musicals in its lineup, but this year's inaugural music series is something edgier.

"It's called Fast, and it's basically local bands, and bands from up and down the East Coast," Brienza said. "There will be black metal, ambient noise and experimental music, and it's a fun new thing for us. We've been trying to do it since 2007 and finally got it going this year."

Tickets for the music performances are $10 and shows include AP Chemistry, a hip-hop night, on Saturday, and ambient and noise from Wham City!, featuring artists from the Baltimore musicians' collective of the same name, on July 23. Fast takes place at Fort Fringe, at 607 New York Ave. NW.

Also at Fort Fringe is the Baldacchino Gypsy Tent Bar, where you can order up six beers on tap and a half-dozen more in cans, while snacking on ginger-teriyaki turkey burgers, gazpacho or hummus with grilled pita from Busboys and Poets.
All shows cost only $15 each, and there are some passes available if you're planning to hit multiple shows or want to round up a group of friends. You also have to make a one-time purchase of a Fringe button, for $5.

"The button is good for the entire year, and there are discounts every month," Brienza said. "We have seven to 10 discounts for local theater shows, restaurants, museums. It's our way to keep people in the District venues."

This year's pin features the logo of teeth biting a yellow pill, part of the marketing campaign, whose theme is prescription drugs. "It means that you should see multiple shows, like you take a prescription multiple times," Brienza said.

Brienza expects this year's festival to draw the largest crowd yet.

"Last year we had about 10,000 individuals attend, and so far we've sold $30,000 worth of tickets, while at this time last year we had sold $23,000," she said. "So, I think it's going to be kind of crazy and we're going to have a lot of people."

The beauty of the Fringe Festival is that with so many performances in a short amount of time (627 performances over 18 days) and tickets so cheap, it's easy to see a lot of different shows.

"The Fringe Festival is about taking risks, staying in the moment and being open to new experiences," Scot McKenzie, the festival director, said at a preview for this year's event.

On any given day of the festival, it's possible to see performances of everything from "Headscarf and the Angry Bitch," a "folk-rock mock exploration of faith, love, sex and what it means to grow up Muslim in America," to a version of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," which is cut down to 90 minutes, sheds some characters and is performed with an all-female cast.

Other notable shows include "Irish Authors Held Hostage," a comedy in which Irish authors such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and William Butler Yeats are taken hostage by terrorists "of every stripe." There's also "A Tactile Dinner," which marks the 100th anniversary of Futurism and features "a tactile seven-course 'meal' of gastronomic revolution." It's part performance and part dinner.

On the musical side, Ravishing Rose Music puts on Let's Sing Gospel 101!, an interactive class that teaches the audience how to perform gospel music through call-and-response and clapping. "Please Listen: A Musical Chaos" rocks out, telling the story of two kids who kidnap a studio exec and make him listen to their concept album about robots from space.

There really is something for everyone at Fringe.

» Various locations and times; through July 26; $15; 866-811-4111; capfringe.org.

Written by Express contributor Amy Cavanaugh
Photo courtesy Ari Scott