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| From
September 1-16, the Philadelphia
Fringe Festival will feature some of the most sought after performing
arts events in the Philadelphia region. Productions range from
theater and dance to music, poetry, and puppetry, all the while
expanding the boundaries of their respective art forms. Local,
national, and international performers come to the Fringe to present
their new visions and their thought provoking work. The Philadelphia
Fringe Festival makes the avant-garde accessible, filling every
available venue of Old City Philadelphia with exploding creative
vision. |
Facts
About The Festival
Mission: The Philadelphia
Fringe makes the avant-garde accessible, providing a friendly
and affordable context in which artists and audiences can explore
new work that takes big creative risks.
Fringe-ness: Fringe work blurs the boundaries between traditional
performance disciplines. By bringing performances to unconventional
venues, the Fringe challenges the assumption that art is best
experienced in the confines of a theater, gallery or concert hall.
The Philadelphia Fringe, in particular, encourages the intermingling
of impulses from the lively and the visual arts.
Inspiration:The original Fringe was a do-it-yourself project.
Begun in 1947 as a Salon des Réfusés by a small number of artists
who, excluded from the illustrious Edinburgh International Festival,
staged performances of their own on the fringes of the main event,
the Edinburgh Festival Fringe grew in popularity to become the
largest performance festival in the world.
A Heady History: Fringe fever hit Philadelphia in 1997,
when the inaugural Philadelphia Fringe Festival presented nearly
100 Artists in 37 Old City venues over five days, drawing an estimated
17,000 people to some 180 performances. The Philadelphia Fringe
Festival incorporated as a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization in
December 1997. In its second year, the Philly Fringe more than
doubled in size and added a new component, the Visual Fringe.
Presenting approximately 160 artists in more than 500 performances
at over 50 venues and sites, the 1999 Fringe attracted an audience
of 27,000.
Artists: An artist-centered organization, the Philadelphia
Fringe Festival strives to provide opportunities for creative
exchanges. The Festival is a point of convergence for international,
national and locally based artists who together bring to the Fringe
a vast range of professional experience and a diversity of outlooks.
The Philly Fringe welcomes artists at every stage of their career.
Performers have included Griftheater from the Netherlands, Producciones
Imperdibles from Spain, Doug Elkins and Danny Hoch from New York
and One Yellow Rabbit and Da Da Kamera from Canada. |
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Components
of The Festival
With roughly 220 artists participating in three
designated categories, this festival is the largest to date.
The three categories are as follows:
BYOV (Bring Your Own Venue)- Unfiltered work, self-produced
for presentation at the festival.
Curated- Work invited as a co-production with the Philadelphia
Fringe.
Adjudicated- Work chosen by Philadelphia Fringe Festival
panels from submissions.
Music
Performers experiment with all genres of music, often mixing
and matching for interesting results. This year there are approximately
44 musical performances to enjoy.
Dance
Always a huge part of the Fringe, we are presenting several
long runs this year to allow for audience enthusiasm. This year
there are approximately 28 dance performances to enjoy.
Theater
Anything from site specific performance and new plays to new
twists on an old theme. Theater is a cornerstone of the festival.
This year there are approximately 69 theater performances to
enjoy.
Poetry and Spoken Word
This means different things to different people. We have always
had an impressive array of spoken word artists who manage to
make poetry and spoken word a lively art. This year there are
approximately 8 spoken word performances to enjoy.
Film
Something new for us. This year we will present two programs
of short experimental film and video. This year there are 2
film programs to enjoy.
Visual
Painting, sculpture and site specific installation in and around
Old City. This year there are approximately 24 visual artworks
to enjoy.
Interdisciplinary
Though some of the work naturally falls into one discipline
or another, just as much alludes easy classification. By employing
elements from different mediums, a hybrid is created. This nearly
limitless practice, though not entirely new, is constantly being
honed, reinvented and brought to new levels of sophistication
by visual and performing artists on the fringe. This year there
are approximately 46 interdisciplinary works to enjoy.
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