Brittani’s Team Pick:
Do you like theater, music, film, spoken word, and dance? Do you also like weird shit? Well guess what. The Fringe Festival takes those things and mashes them together like a really artsy and probably less delicious Cold Stone Creamery. The Fringe Festival focuses on original performance arts pieces. For those of you that haven’t had too many brushes with independent performance art, it usually makes you go WTF in a WTF way but sometimes it makes you go WTF in an awesome way. There are Fringe Fests all over the world. They began in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival. The festivals aren’t nationally incorporated so their operations vary from city to city but the structure is reliant on providing an “open forum of expression that minimizes the financial risks for both artists and audiences.” That means it’s fairly easy to register as a performer and pretty cheap to see shows.
Recently I caught a couple of shows at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Maybe next year when I have a car (please sweet baby Jesus) and am generally less lazy (a girl can dream), I will go to more of them. However this is not the future and the two shows I saw were 30 Minute Musicals and How to Do Thangz with Words. Both of which I enjoyed immensely. Both shows I can’t imagine having seen anywhere else except maybe on a college campus because people aren’t given this kind of freedom when there’s money on the line. When there are other people to please and executives with expectations or theaters to keep afloat, creativity is at times stifled or cut down and stripped until it becomes “marketable.” I might be in the minority but at this point in my life, I’d never pay 15 bucks to see a blockbuster movie but I’d pay it to see a dude sing “Hold on to your butts.”
30 MINUTE MUSICALS debuts their first Double Feature at Fringe! 30MM’s hilarious musical theatre adaptations of SHOWGIRLS and JURASSIC PARK will leave you on the edge of your seat. These two fast and furious romps, featuring original songs and choreography, clock in at a breathtaking 30 minutes each.
Licki Ucroj “knowz” how to do thangz with wordz. Originally inspired by hip-hop icon Nicki Minaj, the rapper believes in the transformative power of language. She sings, speaks, and proselytizes: propagating a faith in words and their power to heal broken hearts. Wounds were made for licking.
The Hollywood run is over but there are upcoming festivals in New York, San Francisco, Boulder, Seattle, D.C., Chicago, Minnesota, Toronto, Calgary, New Orleans, and other cities all over the world. The Dublin, Vancouver, and Brighton city guides all mention their respective Fringes so it seems like they’re a great place to find the lady queers.
