Philly's own Fringe Fest has a surprising global reach

The Philadelphia Fringe Festival (Sept. 5-24) is, of course, Philly.

"It has so much diversity, all ages and backgrounds, a feeling very different from festivals at European cities," says Sonya Aronowitz, who is producing #cocktail plays at Fringe (Sept. 18-20). She's a veteran of the august Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland, as is Leila Ghaznavi, who's doing The Turn of the Screw (Sept. 20-24) and two other shows. "Despite all the different kinds of plays and venues and artists, they manage to make it a whole, a festival with a personality."

But Philly Fringe is also world Fringe, with unsuspected connections across the globe. Local productions go abroad after premiering here; artists from abroad come to Philly and keep returning.

Nick Stuccio helped cofound the Fringe Festival in 1996-97 and is president and producing director at FringeArts. He called last week from the Theater Spektakel in Zürich, Switzerland, where he's helping Brussels artist Kate McIntosh set up Worktable, an interactive installation that gives you goggles and tools and tells you to get to work. It's at Philly Fringe from Sept. 15-18.

"In a way, we're returning to the days when we first started planning Fringe," Stuccio says. Several of the artists who performed in that first baby 1997 Fringe are presenting "curated" shows this time — larger, grant-supported productions that get a special spotlight.

Pig Iron Theatre, the most international of Philly troupes, wields the mighty "symphonic theater" piece A Period of Animate Existence (Sept. 22-24). Pig Iron guy Geoff Sobelle ("who's now famous internationally," says Stuccio), premieres HOME (Sept. 13-16). And Thaddeus Phillips, a Colombian Fringe devotee, collaborates with installation artist Steven Dufala for A Billion Nights on Earth (Sept. 14-17).

Stuccio says Philly Fringe "was modeled on Edinburgh Fringe," which just precedes it. Little wonder so many artists performing here were just at Edinburgh. That includes Chris Davis, "my fourth year in a row," he says. He and the ubiquitous Mary Tuomanen will perform their show Alchemist at One Shot Cafe (Sept. 13-16 and 23-24). "Edinburgh is like this unique monster," Davis says. "There's nothing like it." Philly Fringe has its own local flavor: It "really reflects and benefits from the DIY theater scene," he says. He looks forward to coffee shop theater. "I like being on the same level as people. Theater as a whole is moving toward that, making a magical space out of anywhere you happen to be."

Michaela Shuchman is one of two women in Charlotte Jones' Airswimming (Sept. 8-10, 12-17, and 19-24). Last year, Shuchman went to Edinburgh Fringe to perform the one-woman show Scarlet Letters. "It played to about 10 people — total — but I loved Edinburgh," Shuchman says. "It was incredibly, overwhelmingly awesome. Then I came back here, and it was great to play to hometown audiences where you saw faces you knew in the crowd."

You may think of Pig Iron as thoroughly Philly, and it is. But it's also a troupe with international roots, road warriors who have played all over the world. "About half of us met at the Lecoq school in Paris," says co-artistic director Dan Rothenberg, referring to L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, the famed school of physical theater in Paris. "And we took our inspiration from the Edinburgh Fringe. We collaborated with people we met there, and we got people there to come and do their shows in Philly."

Phillips called in from Jönköping, Sweden, where he is directing a show. "I'm giving myself about a week between this and A Billion Nights on Earth," he says. He workshopped Nights in Denver, with special attention to the 3-10 age group. "I wanted to do a show they would like, but a show an adult could also like," he said. "And when we did it, they really got it. Sometimes the things they liked were disconcerting to the adults."

Why keep returning to Philly Fringe? "We have such great audiences when we play there," he says. "All these people coming in from other cities to see you work, a really magical, creative, crazy time."

"As we have grown, the audiences for our international artists has grown, too," Stuccio says. "Audiences really turn out. Last year, when Romeo Castellucci did Julius Caesar, it sold out, and these are audiences of great understanding and sophistication."

This year, in addition to McIntosh with Worktable, global talents include choreographer/dancer/composer Olivier Tarpaga, originally from Burkina Faso. Tarpaga offers Declassified Memory Fragment, an exploration of geopolitical realities in Africa (Oct. 12-14). And the work of renowned Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Spanish dancer/choreographer Salva Sanchis returns to Philly Fringe for the premiere of A Love Supreme (Sept. 22-24), in which four dancers embody the four instruments in John Coltrane's historic album.

Five years in the making, Declassified Memory Fragment was inspired by a series of electoral debacles in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and the Ivory Coast over the last decade. "Every time, when the election results came in and the [incumbent] lost," Tarpaga said by phone, "he declared himself the winner and told [the challenger that] to avoid bloodshed he should" back down. In each case, said Tarpaga, the ostensible winner joined the incumbent's cabinet. The piece also has a deeply personal dimension, he said: "I also talk about how during my lifetime – I was born in 1978 – I have seen six coups in my country."

Steven Fisher's play Love, Lennie (OR Bernstein's Kaddish), about onetime Philadelphian Leonard Bernstein, was workshopped in Chile, comes to Philly Fringe for a staged reading (Sept. 7), and returns to Chile for its first full production. And Marx in Soho (Sept. 6-7, 10, 14, 16-18, and 22), Howard Zinn's 1999 one-man show, has quite a future. Actor Bob Weick began a national tour here in 2004, and it's still going. And post-Fringe? "Well, next year is the 200^th anniversary of Karl Marx's birth, and there is interest all throughout Europe in bringing this play there," Weick says. That includes Trier, Germany, Marx's birthplace; and London, where he died.

But the play introduces Marx to an American audience primarily; will Weick tweak it for European eyes and ears? "Oh, they know him better than we do, and in a different way," Weick says. "They're interested in seeing what he has to say to Americans."

Fringe Festival 2017

FringeArts presents more than 180 shows in 105 venues Sept. 5-24, staged in nine neighborhoods: Center City, Fairmount, Kensington, Northern Liberties, Old City, Queen Village, South Philly, University City, and West Philly.

Information: 215-413-1318 or fringearts.com.