Fringe Festival brings 24 shows to area

EVENT PREVIEW

Atlanta Fringe Festival

June 5-9. Tickets are $10 at the door, a transferable and shareable six-show pass is $40, a 10-show pass is $60, and an all-access pass is $99. Festivalgoers must make a one-time purchase of a $3 festival button. Various Atlanta venues with festival headquarters at 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 1-800-838-3006, http://atlantafringe.org/.

If it’s theater that’s wild, weird or underground, you’ll find it at the Atlanta Fringe Festival, which will bring 24 shows and 120 performances to venues in Little Five Points and downtown Atlanta June 5-9.

The event, now in its second year, promises to deliver wonderfully offbeat plays, dance, comedy, music and circus acts that audiences won’t easily find elsewhere.

“It’s so important to have a fringe festival in Atlanta now,” says Executive Director Diana Brown, who helped start it last year with the not-for-profit Twinhead Theatre company. “It just galvanizes artists to have an environment where they’re empowered to self-produce their own plays. Instead of having to wait for someone else to pick it up, they can do it on their own.”

Empowering independent artists has been the motivating force behind fringe festivals around the world. The first one took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1947 as a way for independent theater artists to present their work to new audiences. The annual festival became a success, developing a huge international draw and inspiring similar events around the world.

Like many, the Atlanta Fringe Festival selected its acts at random by drawing proposals out of a hat.

Shows include “Krog!” from Sob Songs for the Gilded Age, which tells the 100-year history of the Krog Tunnel in music and poetry; the clowning, juggling and acrobatic antics of Thimblerig Circus; “Hip-Hop Is Alive Today,” a play that examines the influence of hip-hop lyrics on everyday life; “#Innerology,” an interactive theatrical experience from Twinhead Theatre, which lets audience members experience the meeting of an imaginary cult; and “Jett Backpack and the Battle at the End of the Universe,” which follows the intergalactic adventures of the intrepid space hero Jett Backpack.

“I really loved the idea,” says Funda Yilmaz of Montgomery, Ala., whose Fringe show “A Woman: Five Feminine Powers Unveiled” will be an exploration of the culture of belly-dancing. She became acquainted with the festival by attending a show at last year’s event.

“It’s a great opportunity for people who want to put on a show but don’t necessarily have the means to do that on their own,” she said.

Organizers say the best way to choose the ones you want to see is to check out the free preview event followed by a party at 7 Stages on June 5, the first night of the festival.

“I can’t imagine a better way to get to know the festival,” Brown says. “You get to see three minutes of everything, and then you get to meet the performers. Part of fringe culture is that you can meet the artists, and they can meet you.”

The 7 Stages Theater in Little Five Points will be the headquarters for the festival, housing two venues. Nearby is another festival site, Horizons School on DeKalb Avenue. Shows also will be presented downtown at Theatrical Outfit on Luckie Street and the Village Theatre on Decatur Street.

Tickets are $10 at the door, a transferable and shareable six-show pass is $40, a 10-show pass is $60, and an all-access pass is $99. Festivalgoers must make a one-time purchase of a $3 festival button, which gets the wearer discounts at some restaurants, cafes and businesses.

The emphasis is edgy, organizers say, but some shows are geared to kids. The event's program and website rate each show on its appropriateness for children. Concurrent with the festival is Radio Fringe, which brings a separate series of world premiere audio plays to the Internet. The 25 radio shows can be heard on the Fringe website through June.

“My hope for the festival is to see how the audience responds to the material,” says Atlanta-based artist and first-time participant Haj Cheneira-Pinnock, whose multimedia interactive one-woman comedy show “Funnelcake Flowers and the Urban Chameleons” examines the transitions that people of color often have to make between their professional and personal lives.