Festival ventures ‘Outside the Frame’ for monthlong performance series

A monthlong series of mostly solo performances springing from wide range of backgrounds, begins this week.

“Outside the Frame” opens Tuesday with “Valiant,” a documentary theater piece based on recorded interviews with women who have survived war. That will be the only ensemble performance. The Adrienne Theater near Rittenhouse Square also will feature personal monologues about being Latino, Gay, Palestinian, Iranian, African, and even young.

 

The subject matter is a wide net, meant to catch audiences that don’t normally come to the theater and broaden the ones that do.

“To test interest from different communities, and hopefully expose regular theater-goers to a range of new stories and characters and ideas,” said organizer Seth Rozin, the director of Interact Theater, in describing the series’ aim. “We’re trying to do both things — expand our own core to see more things, and to reach new audiences with it, hopefully convert them to coming to see more Interact productions.”

The festival also will feature a weeklong performance workshop by Tim Miller, a gay artist who was recently barred from teaching at Villanova University. He was the first person Rozin asked to be in the festival, well before Villanova revoked its invitation.