Shuttered Wanamaker Building will host Philly Fringe this fall

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The 29th Philly Fringe Festival of alternative and underground theater will utilize the former Macy’s, which vacated the downtown Wanamaker Building in March.

Festival regular the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, which has staged the popular Late Night Snacks program in the past, will stage a trimmed-down version called “The Layaway,” featuring a rotating lineup of queer-centric cabaret and performance artists for three consecutive weekends, Sept. 13 to 28.

“It is such a gift to be able to play here,” said Sally Ollove, the Bearded Ladies’ associate artistic director, in a statement. “We hope audiences come ready to put their feet up and wrap themselves in queer joy and gorgeous performance.”

When the Fringe Festival lineup was announced last month, it did not include the Bearded Ladies or Late Night Snacks. The Bearded Ladies produced Late Night Snacks in 2019, 2022 and 2023. They skipped it last year, instead popping up as a run of “Late Night Snacks: Leftovers” at the FringeArts building in January 2025.

FringeArts CEO and producing director Nell Bang-Jensen said she had been working to revive Late Night Snacks at the festival this year, utilizing the Bearded Ladies’ own stage built onto the back of a truck, the Beardmobile. But those plans were thwarted when the truck was stolen last April.

“I’ll be honest, we were looking at a wide variety of locations,” Bang-Jensen said. “None of them felt like the right fit.”

The right location fell into their laps a few weeks ago when Opera Philadelphia struck a deal with the developers of the Wanamaker Building, TF Cornerstone, to program the empty department store with performances and art events from September through December.

“The Layaway,” whose title reveals a retail theme in its lineup of original performances, will be staged in Greek Hall, a wood-paneled auditorium on the third floor that was previously used for special events in the Wanamaker Building. It has not been publicly accessible for many years.

Greek Hall has its own, built-in pipe organ, dutifully maintained alongside the main Wanamaker organ by the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ.

“It’s an amazing experience to wander through and feel like you’re part of Philadelphia history,” Bang-Jensen said. “We get to do what Fringe does best, which is take a space that people might think they know and reveal an underbelly, and the power of Philly artists within it.”

The Bearded Ladies said “The Layaway” is not a continuation of the Late Night Snacks concept, but rather a queer haven of performance and installation for “someone who needs a soft place to land for a moment or a place to let your hair down.”

“The Layaway” will be performed on weekends from Sept. 13 to 28, featuring a Saturday night show at 9 p.m. followed by a family-friendly matinee show at 3 p.m. Sundays.