This year’s Fringe Festival blurs lines between artists, audience

Good Lord, it’s massive.

And believe me, the organizers of the monthlong, 1,197-performance, 340-separate-show extravaganza that is September’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival struggle with it, too — shows in 96 locations, with a record 129 new dancers, clowns and actors in the mix.

How can they attract the audience before the Fringe gets so overwhelming that people throw up their hands, sink into their sofas and reach for the remote?

This year’s strategy seems to be building connections among audience members and artists. The idea: You’re not in it alone.

“We’re looking for places to build relationships,” said Nell Bang-Jensen, the festival’s new chief executive and producing director.

One place is a new offering — Tour De Fringe. On all four festival Saturdays (Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27), “you go around with a Fringe Festival staff member, have dinner, see three shows, and talk about them,” Bang-Jensen said.

“People need personal touchpoints. The meaning might not be clear. It might be open for interpretation. It might be experimental,” she said. “Having a group to travel with and walk you through it and talk about it makes it more accessible. It’s fun to travel with a group and it invites people to have different interpretations of the work.”

Tickets for three shows and dinner are $225 in advance, $275 after Aug. 25.

Something similar, but on a smaller scale, comes from the organizers of Cannonball, a subset of the Fringe Festival. Audience members can sign up for a platonic blind date, get tickets to a show, a drink voucher and a guide to help them talk about what they’ve seen.

Another new offering?

All eight headline artists in the curated portion of the Fringe will present a workshop centered on their crafts.

“I think it’s a missed opportunity for these phenomenal artists to just do their shows and leave,” Bang-Jensen said.

For example, Thaddeus McWhinnie Phillips will talk about magic and sleight-of-hand techniques he uses in his show “Around the World in 80 Toys,” inspired by the true story of Georges Méliès, the father of movies and special effects.

And the creators of “asses.masses,” a 7.5-hour amalgamation of theater and video game, will describe the nuts-and-bolts of turning video games into a theatrical event that is, by its very nature, participatory.   

Bang-Jensen said that this year’s festival includes a lot of immersive work — including “asses.masses” — shows where audiences participate in some way. It’s another way of connecting.

“A lot of the artists are playing with the audience,” she said. “Part of what people are looking at is blurring the lines between audience and artist. Who gets to be an artist? Who doesn’t? What is my relationship with the audience?”

In “Dambudzo,” for example, audiences can freely roam around a set constructed to evoke a Zimbabwean shabani, or an informal bar. They’ll move, at will, among musicians, revolutionaries and tricksters. The title signals the underlying theme — the word both means “trouble” and the radical ideas of African thinker Dambudzo Marechera.

Probably the most intense of all, “Spiritual Experience,” is a private performance in a secret location for just two people. One $200 ticket buys two seats. No audience participation is actually involved, but it becomes a uniquely intimate encounter.

But nothing connects like ending an evening with the Bearded Ladies Cabaret. Yes, life is a cabaret, old chum, and this year, Fringe festivities on Sept. 13, 20 and 27 will wrap at 9 p.m. with The Layaway, a late-night show and bar in the former Wanamaker’s building. Speaking of Wanamaker’s, catch singers, dancers and members of the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra and Chorus in Pipe Up, organized by Opera Philadelphia at 1 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7, in the Grand Court. (Free, but registration is required.)  

These days, the Fringe, which runs Sept. 4 through 28, embraces festivals within its orbit. Don’t get confused if you hear about various hubs — the Cannonball Festival, which begins Sept. 1; Circus Campus Presents; Studio 34; Sawubona Creativity Project; or Dumb Hub. These are sub-groups that organize artists at specific locations — known as hubs — but all the booking is done through the FringeArts website.

Fringe-picking tips

Here are some ideas on how to manage your search for the perfect Fringe performance for you.

Try a preview

On Mondays in August, stop by the Fringe building at Race Street and Columbus Boulevard for a sampler of shows. You’ll see some circus, some comedy, some dance, some theater. And there’s a bar.

Cannonball — the largest Fringe hub — has weekly previews designed to showcase what’s coming next. Stop by the Asian Arts Initiative’s Storefront at 8 p.m. on Sept. 1, 5, 12, 19 and 26 for On Deck.   

Decide by date

Pick a day that’s convenient for you and then choose among what’s available. Turn to phillyfringe.org/events and use the When button. Or, if you have the 56-page paper copy, turn to page 47 for a day-by-day listing.

On Saturday, Sept. 6, for example, there are 85 shows, but you can start as early as 10 a.m., heading to 828 N. 2d Street to watch visual artist Sokka in “The Sokka Experiment.” He’ll be building a sculpture out of trash, sometimes wearing a box over his head. Speaking of boxes, Selena Rook uses one in “Mon Carton/My Cardboard Box,” a completely nonverbal show that’s particularly designed to be accessible to the deaf and hard-of hearing community. That’s at 12:30 at the Louis Bluver Theatre at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks Street, in Center City.

At 2 p.m., you could head to the Fringe building for “Weathering,” 10 dancers moving on a revolving liferaft stage, or skip that and head instead to “Urinal,” involving an unlikely refuge for friends who want to smoke weed and make beats, at Plays & Players Theater off Rittenhouse Square.

You get the idea. Shows continue into the evening. Performances for most shows are offered on other days as well.

Decide by genre

Say this is the year you think about leaning into dance. You can sort the Fringe search function by genre — you’ll get 77 dance options. Then you can narrow it by date, by next clicking on the When button. For example, on Saturday, Sept. 13, 16 very varied dance choices emerge. How can anyone skip Kayt MacMaster’s show titled “hog ranch, hogwash, or putting lipstick on a pig,” which blends dance, theater and puppetry? It evokes both cowgirls and showgirls to unravel the American frontier myth. That’s at 6:30 p.m. at the Asian Arts Initiative Storefront. Beforehand, you could try the 3:30 performance of Dame La Receta (Give Me the Recipe) by Carne Viva Dance, a dance troupe from Philly and Miami, centering on the power of community, at the Icebox Project Space.

Pick by theme

Next year is the nation’s 250th birthday, so how about a history preview? Clicking on Historical in the dropdown box under Keywords will give you 53 options, but narrowing by date – again Saturday, Sept. 13, as an example – reduces the number to 17.

Who would want to miss the 9:30 p.m. “Ben Franklin Sex Party,” by Sarah Knittel at the Pig Iron Theatre Co? And what could be more appropriate than “Philadelphia Revolutions” at Carpenters’ Hall, which hosted the first Continental Congress in 1774? EgoPo Classic Theater will stage a reading of the first full-length play published and produced in America, Thomas Godrey’s “Prince of Parthia,” (1767). Showtime at 6 p.m. (2025).

Among the many other themes: Mental Health, Absurd/Surreal, Puppetry, Romance, Grief/Trauma, and Disabled Artist.

Rely on picks from the pros

Both the Fringe and Cannonball festivals include a roster of specially selected works. Many are international and/or favorites on global and national Fringe circuits. For the Fringe Arts picks, click Fringe Arts Presents under Hub. To get to Cannonball’s selections, go to Cannonballfestival.org, click on Cannonball 2025, browse all shows, and then, in the dropdown box that says CB Category, click on panel picks. You can further sort by date.

Have fun and do something weird

Just pick anything that is not what you’d usually choose. That’s the whole point.