Weirdness isn’t mandatory but it’s encouraged at the Hollywood Fringe Festival
Hollywood is a place that cultivates a vast and diverse fringe. For every act that reaches the rock club, there are scores of others still practicing in garages or music being programmed into laptops that may or may not ever reach the stage. For every play and film produced, thousands of scripts are rejected. But that’s just where it starts. The city is full of choreographers, jazz musicians, digital effects freaks, artists, performers and ideas that might be too weird — or too good — to ever find a venue. It’s a wilderness of artistic production that needs expression.
And so, the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
Beginning Thursday and continuing through June 26, Hollywood participates in a now-established tradition in nontraditional art. It’s the festival’s second year, and it has grown to include hundreds of performances — the unorthodox, the undiscovered, the emerging — with seemingly only one rule: anything goes.
From Franklin Avenue down to Melrose Avenue, east to Gower Street and west to La Brea Avenue, and centered on the Artworks Theatre and Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard — also known as Fringe Central — artists of all disciplines will set up shop on street corners, in coffee shops and in fully equipped theaters for performances.
Hollywood Fringe Festival director Ben Hill anticipates around 230 shows this year.
“For artists, if you have a venue and pay your registration you can be a part of Fringe,” said Hill. “You can be as ridiculous or subversive as you want and you can’t be turned away because we hate saying no and love saying yes.”
Having been to numerous fringe festivals in other cities, Hill and his friends recognized the need for one among L.A.’s artist community. The first fringe festival took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1947. Eight performance groups made an uninvited appearance on the fringes of the established Edinburgh International Festival, a widely recognized forum for theater, opera, music, dance and visual arts, capitalizing on the audiences already gathered for the main event. Now the idea comprises the largest arts festival in the world, with festivals happening in dozens of cities.
“Our goal is providing an open forum for artists to create and an annual event for the people of Los Angeles to enjoy emerging art,” said Hill.
For artists like Veronica Mannion, who is performing her show “Booze, Boys & Brownies: A Musical Journey,” the festival is a way to get noticed and to save money on the promotion budget.
“It’s kind of like a collective thing and they help you with publicity,” said Mannion. “It’s once a year and everyone tries to help each other out.”
The festival encourages artists like Mannion to put on a show without a significant financial strain. Artists find a venue they like and sign an independent contract to participate in the festival, with unusual venues such as a gym or a hair salon sufficing as a performance space.
Another festival newcomer, Stacy McKee, pounced on the opportunity to present paintings in her show “On and Off the Wall.”
“For me it’s sort of exciting to see all of these really talented undiscovered people get to showcase their work,” she said. “I don’t think people get much of a break and this can be a tough town.”
The Hollywood Fringe Festival still works on the original Scottish model: The festival is open access and the performances are uncensored and never curated. Musicals such as “Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens,” featuring characters in glitter go-go boots on stripper poles who use disco to save the universe, have a place to flourish.
“People not accustomed to going to musicals or shows will have fun and find an entirely new take on what musicals can be,” said John Frederick, company manager of the TMCC performing arts company that performs “Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens.”
Although many of the shows might be downright raunchy, the festival also features family-friendly shows and workshops identified on the festival website.
This year the festival is introducing a film category, presenting six feature films in several genres and 25 short films. It is the only semi-curated element to the festival, as films were submitted for selection, but Hill hopes that as the festival grows this too will become an uncurated feature.
“We are putting together a simple place and time where all the arts can congregate,” explained Hill. “Out of that comes Faulkner and Hemingway and hopefully the stuff third-graders will learn about in 30 years.”
The Hollywood Fringe Festival
Where: Fringe Central at Artworks Theatre and Studios, 6567 Santa Monica Blvd. and various venues in Hollywood
When: June 16-26, see website for showtimes
Price: Some free. Average ticket price $11.50
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