Philly Fringe celebrates 15 years of being "out there"

Sixteen summers back, Nick Stuccio - a dancer with the Pennsylvania Ballet - went to Edinburgh, Scotland, to see the mother of all Fringe festivals and came back to engineer one in Philadelphia.

Friday is the start of the 15th festival, an annual burst of performance that offers about 200 productions over two weeks. There are two components: the Live Arts festival - work Stuccio invites here - and the Philly Fringe, to which presenters invite themselves.

Stuccio, with a $2.6 million budget, oversees it all as producing director. Inquirer theater critic Howard Shapiro talked with him about the Fringe - as almost everyone calls the two festivals.

Question: Is this festival what you envisioned 15 years ago?

Nick Stuccio: I honestly never look back or look forward that far. Who knows what artists are going to be doing, thinking, and making, and who knows what audiences are going to want to see? In five years, it could be that audiences are going to hate coming together live, and my job will be mediating this virtual conversation in the world. I hope not. But I don't know.

Fifteen years ago, I just wanted to keep this thing going as long as people found value in it.

Q: To put together such a large, eclectic festival, you have to plan in advance . . .

Stuccio: This piece this year with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Shantala Shivalingappa [a U.S. dance premiere called Play] is an example. I first saw Sidi Larbi dance at the Edinburgh festival, and I don't think he was 20. Over the years, I saw his work develop. Given our narrow window, he wasn't available one year, or the work I could bring I didn't really like. So it's a dance between availability, the right work, the right timing. He's here in 2011, after 16 years following his work.

Q: That's extreme, though. How long is the usual planning?

Stuccio: Probably two years. We're about halfway through '12, and we're negotiating on works for '13. For international companies of scale, there's a lot of planning. The bigger they get, the more complex they get, and the more complex the funding picture gets.

Q: You said you saw some work you hadn't liked and waited for work you liked. How much of the Live Arts festival is you?

Stuccio: I'm not unlike any other multitude of curators around the world. For good or bad, we have an opinion, and mine is about whatever I think is high quality for many reasons I can explain and cannot explain. And I also factor in what I feel the public would like. And I have people I bounce my opinions off of, for sure.

There've been works I love and there's no way people will like - although not too much, anymore. Around 2006, 2007, I noticed a change in the core audience we have, in their capacity to take some things that are pretty out there, pretty experimental. One was The Show Must Go On, this Jérôme Bel piece [a nontraditional dance, often without dancing] we brought to the Kimmel Center - a pretty provocative piece.

And I could just feel the audience going, "Whoa, this is really different. Do we hate it? Do we love it? I don't know . . . we . . . love it!" After that, I felt great about the future.

Q: Aside from acquiring a permanent space, at Race Street by the Delaware, tell us the biggest changes in 15 years.

Stuccio: I could cite every single thing about everything we do. We didn't know jack in '97 - it was all pure naivete. My gut said there's a great body of amazing work out there. And we learned a lot about marketing: how to sell shows, how to raise money, how to serve a body of customers that's grown every year. On the curatorial side, our literacy and capacity have grown with the audience's.

Q: And the obstacles?

Stuccio: The culture's moved along in terms of understanding work that blows through boundaries. PNC Bank has been a great supporter of ours for years, but back when [we were dealing with] CoreStates, they were insulted that we asked them to support this kind of art-making.

There was such hostility across the board. The only kind of money we could get, at first, was Camel cigarettes, and, hell, we took it because we were raising money for the arts. Delilah's was a sponsor. Liquor distributors would support us, and thank god for it.

But now we're courting a lot of banks. That goes to show you that people who appreciate experimentation in contemporary art also have bank accounts.

I have to say the city's never been an obstacle. The Commerce Department, from the start, has been supportive. I think our biggest obstacles were ourselves, honestly. We were only as good as our capacity. The smarter we got, the better we got, the more that great things happened.