Here comes the Fringe

Highlights from the upcoming festival (Aug. 30 – Sept. 14)

Spotlight Shows:

Britney’s Inferno, a dance combining Dante and Ms. Spears commissioned by the Fringe from Headlong Dance Theater.

Danny Hoch returns after a successful run in 1999’s festival with Jails, Hospitals and Hip Hop. The show will run at the TLA on South Street, moving a spotlight show out of Fringe’s home neighborhood in Old City.

Protein Dance comes from the U.K. to present Pub Life, a performance piece that takes place in an actual pub.

Scrap Arts Music comes to town from Canada, with their unique percussive work (using all kinds of industrial objects to make their music)

Roger Guenveur Smith, who has been commissioned to create a new work for next year’s Fringe, brings Iceland to this year’s festival. Smith is a critically acclaimed solo artist.

da da kamera, a Fringe favorite (this is their third visit) get the spotlight for the U.S, premiere of the Canadian group’s Cul-de-sac.

Mark Lord’s Big House Plays and Spectacles (creator of the walk-around-town-theater-experience Across at Fringe 2000) will put on Peter Handke’s The Ride Along Lake Constance. Also utilizing non-Old-City space, the show will take place in an old movie theater in Northern Liberties that is being used a Fringe venue for the first time this year.

There are dozens of performances in the adjudicated and unfiltered portions of the festival… here are a few highlights:

Pig Iron’s Quinn Bauriedel and Geoff Sobelle join forces as Antique Mécanique, a new company, to present machines machines machines machines machines machines machines.

SPLICE, a physical theatre show from LeCoq-trained New Yorkers Blue Inc., promises “100 years of cinema, 4 actors, 1 hour.”

Local dancer Jessica Dellecave collaborates with Minneapolis-based Miriam Colvin and Kenneth Emig and Elizabeth MacKinnon of Ottawa for Agitated Chi, Where Are You Now?” an improvised dance piece with a real-time Internet interaction in the mix.

Australia’s Drew Fairley does the hilariously-title The Golden Mullet, a one-man show.

Group Motion, Manfred Fischbeck’s veteran local company, presents Interplay, a dance and music performance.

Hotel Obligado, Del’Arte-trained artists who first showed off their stuff at last year’s Fringe, return with Contagion.

Montreal’s SaBooge Theatre stages the Philly premiere of Hatched, yet another LeCoq-trained, commedia-inspired ensemble doing a physical theater piece.
On the unfiltered side of things, here are some shows that look promising (but remember, with unfiltered you never know what you are gonna get):

Madi DiStefano’s Brat Productions puts on a two-man show, Howie the Rookie.

The Brick presents more of their Guaranteed Overnight Theatre, plus a new sketch comedy group, The Dive.

Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers, Co. premieres a new work, Mahler, Mayhem and The Dresser(s).

Local improv group Polywumpus shows off their latest format, “King of the Hill,” a competitive evening of improv.

The new Triangle Theater in Northern Liberties opens with companies in residence during the fest.

Hard Liquor Theater’s Needles Jones presents A Life Well Squandered … The Needles Jones Story. According to Jones’ release, which he handed out guerrilla style at the June 27 press conference announcing the program, the show is “like a 12 Step musical, without the sobriety.”