Expanding 'Fringe' Gives A Fresh Look To Old Works

The second annual Capital Fringe Festival, running through July 29, is all over the map stylistically, which is what you should expect from an event billing itself as "fringe" and proudly uncurated. Intriguingly, there is a subset of performances that feels like a continuation of the Shakespeare in Washington festival, albeit shaken, stirred, re-imagined and re-contextualized, part of what the festival's director, Julianne Brienza, describes as a challenge to create new works from old texts.

So, meet the new Bard, not the same as the old Bard, at Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's "The Farthest Earth From Thee: Remixed," exploring his sonnets through movement, video and theater at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Friday through Sunday; Infinite Stage's "Hamlet? That Is the Question," with clowns scrambling to escape that somber tragedy, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre's Melton Rehearsal Hall, Thursday through July 29; director Jennifer Crooks and actress Hilary Kacser's "Love and War: With the Bard's Broads and Dames" at Touchstone Gallery, Friday through July 28; the Rude Mechanicals' all-female cast in "Much Ado About Nothing" at Source Theatre, Thursday through July 29; and Theatreworks Repertory Company's "Romeo and Juliet: A Crime Scene Investigation," following Shakespeare's instruction to "search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes!" at the Warehouse main stage, Friday through July 29.

Shakespeare also shows up as one of five famous dead playwrights, miraculously resurrected, who are trying to pitch their scripts to movie stars and Hollywood executives in the Georgetown Theatre Company's "Night of the Living Theatre . . . by Dead Playwrights" at the Goethe-Institut Gallery, Friday through Tuesday. The quintet of short plays commissioned for the festival finds Shakespeare pitching "Hamlet" to Madonna, Christopher Marlowe offering "Dr. Faustus" to Mel Gibson (hey, it's bloody, violent and religious) and poor old (probably wishing he were still dead) Sophocles working on Michael Ovitz, who is trying to decide whether Joe Esterhaz or Aeschylus should be brought in for a little script-doctoring of "Oedipus Rex." Among the authors: Source Theatre Festival favorite Lisa Alapick and Theatre J founder-playwright Martin Blank.

The action at the Capital Fringe Festival will be plentiful, says Brienza, co-founder with Damian Sinclair. Last year Washington became the 76th city worldwide to initiate a fringe festival, a movement that dates back 60 years when a number of uninvited performance groups turned up at the exclusive Edinburgh International Festival to stage a series of renegade shows. (The Edinburgh festival is now the largest arts festival in the world.)

The basic concept: to connect exploratory performers -- in theater, dance, improv, puppetry, comedy or music -- with adventurous audiences. According to Brienza, the idea "really exploded. Our goal was to sell 15,000 tickets; we ended up selling 18,000. Our goal was to have 63 groups in the festival; we had 93! Last year was really huge for us, and I think it really cemented us as part of Washington."

This year there will be 116 groups over 11 days (only 33 of them repeaters from last year). Last year there were 408 performances; this year 510. "I'm trying to make us a District event, and it's actually happened," Brienza says. "We are 40 percent local in our participation this year, and we're in three neighborhoods."

Last year, Penn Quarter was the major staging point; it is joined now by H Street NE (with more than 100 performances at Atlas Performing Arts Center) and Shaw. "We're going to be the last group to have anything in the old Source before it's renovated," says Brienza, who runs Capital Fringe with the help of a small staff and many volunteers; Sinclair's focus is fundraising and marketing. Familiar venues include Flashpoint, Woolly Mammoth, the Goethe-Institut, Touchstone Gallery and the Warehouse arts complex. Like many fringe festivals, Capital Fringe is not curated and takes almost everyone who applies.

Capital Fringe has just opened a box office at 507 Seventh St. NW in a vacant storefront next to the District ChopHouse. The space includes a small stage, the Launch Pad, where artists can pitch their shows. The festival also has built its own theater at 709 D St. NW in the vacated Union Hardware store (the space was donated by Douglas Development). It is called "the Scientarium," Brienza says, "like a late 15th-century surgical laboratory, where you stand at the top and it has concentric circles coming down. We're trying to create unique space within what's already here."

This year, she says, "we wanted a little more music, because we are a performing arts festival, not a theater festival." So one can check out Venus Theatre's "Lysistration," a rock opera based on an Aristophanes comedy, at the Warehouse, Friday through July 28; "Reefer Madness: The Musical" ('nuff said) at Studio Theatre through Aug. 5; "Jesus Christ Superstar -- The Concert" at the Riot Act Comedy Club on Monday; Karma Mayet Johnson's "Indigo, a Blues Opera," described as a "multimedia choreo-drama of erotic passion and antebellum liberation struggle," at the Warehouse, Saturday through July 29; and Jonathan Padget's "The Blue Lagoon: A Musical," inspired by the cult movie classic, at Playbill Cafe, Saturday through July 29. (Padget is a copy editor at The Post.) And for those who want to brag that they saw a lot of performances, there's "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind," in which the Chicago-based Neo-Futurists attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Wednesday through July 29.

CAPITAL FRINGE FESTIVAL For this week's schedule, see Page 21. For a full festival guide, visithttp://www.capfringe.org(you can download it). Tickets can be purchased on the Web site, by phone at 866-811-4111 or at the venues. Most shows run about an hour; the average ticket price is $15.

Capital Fringe Festival Various venues 866-811-4111 Through July 29