Fringe Benefits At Theater's Edge
Festival Lineup of Bare-Bones Productions Brims With Potential

By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 16, 2006

To get a sense of the serendipitous breadth of Washington's newest -- and with any luck, brashest -- arts extravaganza, the Capital Fringe Festival, just spend a bit of time talking to Charlie Ross and Kristin Cantwell.

Ross, who lives in a small British Columbia town, is chief cook and helmet-washer for the "One Man 'Star Wars' Trilogy," which is, as advertised, a one-man reenactment of the "Star Wars" movies of the 1970s and '80s. Cantwell, who hails from Fairfax County, is the author and headliner of "Confessions of an Invisible Woman," a show about living the overweight life.

Ross has toured widely with his " 'Star Wars' Trilogy": His gigs have included a five-month off-Broadway run and an appearance before 3,500 "Star Wars" fans at a convention in Indianapolis. Cantwell, meanwhile, is essentially stepping out for the first time with "Invisible Woman," a piece she wrote as a theater major at the University of Mary Washington.

Their shows are among the nearly 100 theater and dance productions-on-a-shoestring that will fill more than a dozen spaces in a walkable swath of downtown Washington starting Friday -- and represent the diverse flavors and entrepreneurial spirit of the Fringe. Born in Edinburgh more than a half-century ago, the independent-minded theater movement has caught on in a growing number of U.S. cities and now makes a debut here, in a town that can stand to loosen a few artistic buttons in the swelter of a swampy summer.

The Capital Fringe Festival is the brainchild of a guy who worked in marketing for Woolly Mammoth Theatre, and prior to that was involved in theater in Philadelphia. The event is designed as a showcase for homegrown talent and as a magnet for audacious types from elsewhere eager to take their inspiration on the road. Over the festival's 10 performance days, theatergoers will have a chance to sample from a wild smorgasbord of works that are by turns primitive, outrageous, contemplative and -- if the theater-and-dance stars are in alignment -- brimming with imaginative potential.

"Very few of the shows coming have been done before," says Damian Sinclair, the festival's executive director, late of Woolly. "A lot are brand-spanking new. It's so exhilarating to create something like this, to be there at the beginning."

Working from a single desk in a G Street building shared by a host of arts groups, Sinclair and his associate, festival director Julianne Brienza, have spent a year cajoling donors, recruiting volunteers, securing spaces and plotting schedules for the hundreds of hours of performances for the $250,000 festival.

The groups that have agreed to open their doors to performance reflect both the character of the city and the free-form esprit of Fringe. In addition to more traditional theater venues that include Woolly Mammoth and the Warehouse, such unlikely hosts as the Embassy of Canada, Pepco, the National Building Museum, the Goethe-Institut and Calvary Baptist Church have offered their buildings as stages.

Another downtown institution, the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, will turn itself into a playhouse. Judith Levy, the temple's executive director, says that she came away months ago from a presentation by Sinclair intrigued by the project.

A few guidelines had to be set at the synagogue: no shows during the sundown-Friday-to-sundown-Saturday hours of the Sabbath. "And we have a policy that only kosher food can be brought in," Levy says. This meant a musical titled "Lunch" -- set in a middle-school cafeteria -- was not an ideal candidate for Sixth & I.

But "Cordelia's Fool," a 45-minute re-spinning of "King Lear" from the point of view of his youngest daughter, was deemed a good fit. So for a mere $15 -- generally the festival ticket price -- you'll be able to stroll into the temple during any of the five performances and get a short stack of Shakespeare. (The festival is offering a range of ticket packages, up to a $300 all-access pass. For information, visit http://www.capfringe.org/ .)

It's impossible to say which of the myriad offerings will be worth your time. Not even Sinclair has a clue. Like most fringe festivals, Capital Fringe is non-juried, which means groups or individuals can participate if they meet the basic requirements: They must pay a $400 entry free, and their shows must be in the 60-to-75-minute range and be capable of a rapid setup and striking of sets. One of the pleasures of Fringe is discovering something wonderful (or hideous) on your own. You can rely on instinct and, as the event unfolds, word-of-mouth to map out your own personal journey. It's theater tailored to the iPod era.

Perhaps you'll be smitten with Ross's compression of "Star Wars," an attention-grabber if there ever was one. "Fringe," he says, "is about getting a good concept, because finding an audience can be cutthroat."

Or will Cantwell's theater-de-avoirdupois be in the more confessional vein that appeals to you? "I don't know who my audience is going to be: That's the scary part," says the young actress, who portrays more than 20 characters in a play built around the cultural bias suggesting that "the bigger you are, the more invisible you become."

On the basis of their titles, some productions arrive with a high curiosity quotient: "Jay Allen Zimmerman's Incredibly Deaf Musical"; "Naked Cabaret"; "Frida Vice-Versa"; "The Play About the Hurricane"; "Bushwa: A Modern Ubu."

And in "Mamas, Don't Let Your Cowboys Grow Up to Be Actors," James Beard, an actor seeking to raise his profile in Washington, recounts a trajectory that began with his upbringing, roping cattle on the family ranch in California.

"I started writing it when I was on the road with Shenandoah Shakespeare," Beard says, referring to the touring branch of the classical company based in Staunton, Va. "And it really got developed in people's living rooms across the country. A lot of times on the road, you'd get invited to parties after the show. I would tell the host that I had 10 minutes or so of material and ask if they minded if I gathered people around. By the end, I had enough for workshop performances."

Fringe has become such a dynamic niche that some shows travel the circuit of festivals. Canada has its own governing association of Fringes; festivals across this country are beginning to organize in the same way. The events, however, are not uniformly successful. New York and Minneapolis-St. Paul sponsor the largest Fringes each summer, but festivals have failed to survive in some cities, including Seattle, says Leach Cooper, executive director of 13-year-old Minnesota Fringe and an organizer of the nascent U.S. Association of Fringe Festivals.

When the festivals flourish, however, they can have a significant impact on a theater town. Surveys of attendees at the Minnesota Fringe -- which will showcase 168 shows Aug. 3-13 -- reveal that 15 percent had never been to the theater before. "And of them," Cooper says, "99 percent said they would go again."

"The art you're seeing, because it's done bare-bones, is very accessible for audiences," she adds, explaining that Fringe often appeals to people who identify themselves as outside the mainstream. "It's really good for newcomer artists because they learn hands-on. And for veteran artists, it lets them grow on the business end as well as the artistic."

And what of the art itself? The garage-band aspect of putting on this level of show does not necessarily lead to "Cats"-level ubiquity. Still, lightning has been known to strike. After having a premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival, the musical "Urinetown" moved to an off-Broadway house and later went to Broadway, where it had a profitable run and won Tony Awards.

"It absolutely put us on the map," says Elena K. Holy, producing artistic director of the New York Fringe. (Reflecting the on-the-fly nature of the Fringe, though: A decade after the festival's founding, Holy is its only full-time staff member.)

The runaway success of "Urinetown" was an anomaly, and as far as the Fringe faithful is concerned, that's a good thing. Big paydays have never been the point. Fringe loses its significance as an alternative when it becomes preoccupied with making money.

"Each city defines its own Fringe Festival," Holy says. What that means for Washington will become clearer in the coming weeks, as Capital Fringe lays out its wares.

One distinguishing aspect of Washington's Fringe is the large number of dance companies signing on. Performers from the Liz Lerman Dance Company Exchange, for instance, will participate with "Bring Us On Home." And choreographer Michelle Ava will be represented with "Slightly Uncomfortable," a dance-theater piece using electronic music and spoken word to "deliver a message about peace."

For David Keltz, a Baltimore actor who has been performing one-man shows about Edgar Allan Poe for 15 years, the festival will provide him a stage for his new piece, "Poe at the Willard." (The work will be staged at the Willard Hotel -- one of several supplementary sites for Fringe productions. Teresa Herold, Keltz's producing partner, says that it so happens that in 1843, the poet stayed in the hotel that was the Willard's precursor on the site.)

"Poe at the Willard" features Keltz as a platform speaker, reciting such obscure pieces as "The Spectacles" and such timeless ones as "The Raven." Few offerings at this Fringe, though, will have that level of literary ambition.

At the other end of cultural dial, there will be "The Eddie Lounge Show," featuring the song stylings of Ed Spitzberg, development director of Arena Stage by day and crooning lead of the fictitious Eddie and the Cosmos by night.

The show -- half play and half lounge act -- came together in hurry. The performers -- who include his brother, colleagues at Arena, guys from his Yale singing group, the Alley Cats -- were not even involved when he signed the contract with the Fringe. "Within 24 hours," he says, "I had this ideal cast."

How very Fringe of him.