The Brooklyn Rail

The term “fringe festival” might evoke thoughts of Edinburgh, the Scottish home to perhaps the most well-known festival by that name, responsible for shows like Fleabag, Six, and even Sir Tom Stoppard’s masterpiece Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The immediate association with this city is accurate given that it was in Edinburgh in 1947 where groups of performers arrived to appear at the Edinburgh International Festival, but, uninvited, put their shows on simultaneously on what would later be termed “the fringes” of the official festival.

In the decades since the founding of Edinburgh Fringe, similar festivals have cropped up throughout the United States and Canada, as has the admission policy of the lottery system. Entry to the festival is determined by lottery, meaning, anyone can attempt to get their piece in, and the likeness of success is based entirely on chance.

While New York City has had a fringe festival since 2007 known as the FRIGID Fringe, the official New York City Fringe will launch this year. The festival, run by FRIGID New York under the helm of Erez Ziv, and artistic directors Jimmy Lovett and Marth Lorena Preve, has been reformulated to more closely associate New York’s output as part of the fringe ecosystem. As members of both CAFF (Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals) and USAFF (United States Association of Fringe Festival), New York’s Fringe is now a clear destination on the fringe festival circuit, offering artists the ability to mount their work in a city known for its importance in both the theater and performance worlds.

During a time when ticket prices continue to rise, and the cost of renting rehearsal space can be prohibitive, the Fringe team wants to ensure the greatest opportunity for involvement. Changing the festival’s dates to the warmer months (the festival historically took place at the end of February into March, hence its wintry name), as well as ensuring logistical support through guaranteed rehearsal and theater space, access to a ticketing system, promotional email blasts, and social media posts, all help to create a space for experimental theatrical projects without the anxiety of meeting costs.

“It’s a place where you can try out your work and you don’t have to have a lot of money to get to do your art,” said Lovett.

The spring festival, running April 3–21, is the centerpiece of the New York City Fringe, but the company keeps busy with year-round programming: there’s the Little Shakespeare Festival; Queerly, an annual showcase of all things LGBTQIA+; and The Fire This Time, a festival for African and African American early career playwrights to display their work.

The April festival will feature forty-five pieces in total, and, true to fringe form, they will be mostly small casts or one-person acts. Such shows are easy to transport and tour, experimental in nature, and COVID-conscious—“you can safely rehearse with yourself,” Lovett said.

Three artists—Emily Walsh performing Dad Girl; A Little Bit Pregnant produced by Paper Dog Press and written by Kate Lavut; and Emil Guillermo’s Emil Amok: Lost NPR Host, Vegan Trans Dad—all anxiously await New York audiences’ reactions to their work.

Walsh’s show, a one-woman standup piece about the debate to have children, walks the audience through the experience of losing her father at a young age and meeting her now-husband at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. First performed in Edinburgh, Walsh is now looking forward to bringing the work to New York. Across the pond, excited audiences approached her after the show, telling her to just have a kid; in New York, a city where many people live childless for their whole lives, she is curious if the responses will be similar.

In A Little Bit Pregnant, which debuted at the Montreal Fringe two years ago, Lavut tells of two heterosexual couples determining what to do about pregnancy: one couple is actively trying to conceive, the other is not. Through a series of discussions about abortions, IVF, and the attempt to grow up, the play seeks to represent the physical and emotional responsibility of carrying a pregnancy to term. Based in Canada, Lavut and her director Rana Liu emphasized how they imagine the plot of A Little Bit Pregnant will resonate quite differently in this country given its charged politics surrounding bodily autonomy.

Finally, Guillermo, a former NPR host, is presenting a show whose title takes, in part, inspiration from his transgender child. Guillermo discusses his life and career and the many places they’ve landed him, including in the Philippines, where he covered martial law under President Ferdinand Marcos. It was there, doing “hard journalism,” that Guillermo felt drawn to art criticism and a type of poetic journalism that didn’t yet seem to exist for him. Guillermo’s show is a testament to finding his voice and an outlet to share his experience of outsiderness.

New York City Fringe will take place in three downtown locations: UNDER St. Marks, FRIGID’s home theater; wild project on East 3rd Street; and 14Y Theater. With dozens of entries, one can see wildly different work while also seeing various parts of downtown Manhattan. As Guillermo knows from his travels, “Nothing compares to being in New York and doing your work,” he said.