Philly Fringe Fest hits the big 3-0 this fall and will feature 330 performances

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The Philadelphia Fringe Festival of theater, dance and performance art returns in September for its 30th season.

With 330 shows on its schedule, this year’s festival is on track to match last year’s record year that started with 331. CEO and Producing Director Nell Bang-Jensen said those numbers can be fluid.

“Last year, by the end, we had 353,” Bang-Jenson said. “I would be shocked if the artists of Philadelphia do not add at least 23 late performances to the line up between now and September.”

Whereas last year the festival created partnerships to present works in theaters across the city, this year, Bang-Jensen said Fringe is returning to its earlier ethos of presenting performances in unusual spaces, such as the Athenaeum historic library, a community action organization in Kensington and a marching performance through the streets of Center City.

“We’re really back to nontraditional spaces and public art,” she said. “We’re really trying to be in new places and unexpected places as much as possible this year.”

The Athenaeum will host “Handle with Care” by Ontroerend Goed. It starts with a cardboard shipping box in the library that, when opened, will reveal instructions for the audience to follow and create the performance themselves.

Impact Service Corporation, which normally supports Kensington residents with jobs and housing, will host a dance theater piece “Holy Fool” by Philadelphia’s Ninth Planet theater company.

The performers in “Blank Placards” will march through Philadelphia from the Village of Arts and Industry, formerly the University of the Arts, through Chinatown to Cherry Street Pier holding blank white protest signs. Conceived by Anna Halprin in 1970, “Blank Placards” strips protest messaging out of the protest, revealing the logistics and machinations of street demonstrations.

“The deep humanity of it. It’s sweaty. There’s traffic. You have to negotiate with people on the sidewalk,” Bang-Jensen said. “As artists, it’s on us to bring out those more humanistic elements of anything. We’re bringing those out of a public protest and looking at the artistry behind it.”

Another unusual location will be a makeshift airport within a large commercial property at 444 N. Third Street. The Bearded Ladies Cabaret will build a so-called “Hairport,” filled with luggage that contain theater props from its 16 years of original performances.

Company founder Rose Jarboe said the interactive performance will ask audience members to dig through the Bearded Ladies’ material history to consider the longevity of queer theater.

“This company has been a secret frog pond, where a bunch of queerdos and weirdos and misfits have actually been using art to become who they are,” Jarboe said, “and to make a space for other people to become who they are.”

The festival will begin with a production featuring a blast from the past.

In 1993, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, faced off against playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer during a live C-SPAN television broadcast debating the U.S. government’s approach to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The verbatim transcript of that hourlong televised debate is the script for “Fauci/Kramer,” Daniel Fish’s surreal play about health care, politics and the nature of disagreements. While Fauci and Kramer were committed to finding a way to manage the AIDS crisis, they vehemently disagreed on how to do it.

“Many callers, and we hear this all the time, would say, ‘Gee, if only the government did this we would get the answer,’” Fauci said during the 1993 TV call-in show. “It isn’t as simple and straightforward as that. If it were, don’t you think it would have been done?”

“I do,” Kramer interrupted. “I’m going to break in right here and say: Tony, all of that is bureaucratic bull– and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Nell-Jensen said the historic debate is notable because, despite vulgarities and deeply entrenched opposition, Fauci and Kramer continued to engage with each other’s ideas on and off camera.

“There’s something quite radical about people disagreeing and staying in conversation with each other,” she said. “I think we are quick to write people off who we don’t agree with these days. This piece, even though at times it’s hard to watch because they’re being cruel to each other in moments, it’s a beautiful demonstration of them always coming back together because they both care so deeply about the topic.”

The 30th Philadelphia Fringe Festival runs Sept. 8-27.