By Jonathan Padget
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Washington is getting a new fixture on the cultural scene: the Capital Fringe Festival.
The 10-day event, planned for July 2006, will showcase experimental performers -- local and visiting -- who work in theater, dance, music and other disciplines.
Like other fringe festivals throughout the world, the District's newest arts festival can trace its heritage to Scotland's Edinburgh Festival Fringe -- a 58-year-old alternative, open to all performers, to the Edinburgh International Festival. U.S. cities with fringe festivals include New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, San Francisco as well as Orlando, Cincinnati, Boulder, Colo., and Des Moines.
According to festival founder Damian Sinclair, Capital Fringe will be concentrated downtown along the Seventh Street corridor, offering multiple events in 20 venues, ranging from traditional theaters to alternative spaces such as galleries, lobbies, vacant storefronts and outdoor areas.
Sinclair, 27, is leading a small group of volunteer organizers and establishing a nonprofit organization to produce Capital Fringe annually.
Scheduling about five events per day in each venue, Sinclair projects, could offer 1,000 performances by the end of the festival, which would boost a traditionally slow period in Washington's arts calendar.
Tickets will average $10 per event to encourage attendees to take in several productions in the same outing.
Sinclair, director of marketing for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, moved to Washington in 2002 from Philadelphia, where he was managing director of the experimental Pig Iron Theatre Company, whose growth was fostered by involvement in that city's fringe festival. He says he started thinking about launching a festival in Washington "the second I came down here."
"I was surprised there wasn't one here already," Sinclair says. "The time is ripe.
"We could see lots of physical theater, experimental dance, site-specific performances (in a garden, a pool, a parked car), street performers. Stuff that brings an energy to the town.
"But I'm not an artistic director with a vision of what I want to see happen. I'm much more concerned about having outlets for the art to happen. I want to see where the artists take it."
Sinclair estimates it will cost $100,000 to $200,000 to cover Capital Fringe's venue, marketing and box-office costs. He will host a "town hall" meeting for interested performers June 27 at the Warehouse Theater. Additional information about the festival is available online at http://www.capfringe.org/ .
Shirley Serotsky, 29, a freelance theater director, was "completely psyched" when she heard about Capital Fringe.
"It's a long time coming for D.C.," says Serotsky, who directed a rock-driven Shakespearean update, "Titus! The Musical," at Source Theatre in 2003. She hopes Capital Fringe will encourage artists to explore more nontraditional musical theater and politically riskier themes than Washington typically supports. (The unusual Broadway hit musical "Urinetown" is noted for its New York International Fringe Festival roots.)
"The festival is a buffet," she says. "If you don't like it, there are seven other things to try. At least you got to taste it."
Improvisational dancer-choreographer Daniel Burkholder, 36, says he is excited by Capital Fringe's potential to unify local performers outside the cultural mainstream.
"A lot of times we get separated out because there is no central place for us to be like P.S. 122 or the Kitchen in Manhattan," says Burkholder. "It feels like we're a little isolated, and that's why artists leave. But if we recognize each other, maybe that won't happen. . . . Having a festival will allow us to do that really well."
Leaders of the Capital Fringe Festival's closest neighbors, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and the New York International Fringe Festival, are happy to hear about the Washington event.
Elena K. Holy, co-founder and producing artistic director of the nine-year-old New York festival, says the timing of next year's fringe festivals -- Washington's in July, New York's in August and Philadelphia's in September -- will help draw more international artists to them.
"The more the merrier," says Nick Stuccio, co-founder and producing director of Philadelphia's eight-year-old festival. "It's only good -- it will only stimulate more interest. We need a Baltimore Fringe. Bring it on."