At Philly Fringe festival, the audience doesn’t just sit there

From an old surgical auditorium to the back of a U-Haul truck, this year’s Philly Fringe is all about getting the audience into the act.

Lovers of contemporary, experimental or just plain wacky theater will have ample opportunity to get involved: There are nearly 200 performances spanning the two weeks of the Fringe and its accompanying Live Arts festival, which opens Friday and runs through Sept. 16.

Now in its 10th year, the festival is best likened to a carnival, “where you’re not sure what you’ll do, but you know it will be fun,” said Nick Stuccio, the producing director.

An avalanche might also serve as a fitting analogy -- the fest has been gaining momentum since its inception.

Its budget has grown more than tenfold from its original endowment of $100,000, and its initial lineup of 60 artists has more than tripled. About 45,000 tickets have been sold for this year’s shows.

Stuccio and his colleagues handpicked the 30 performances that make up the Live Arts festival, looking for what he called the “best and brightest experimenters out there.”

Following tradition, the simultaneous Philly Fringe is open to any artist who wants to put on a show. “Fringe is not a category of art, it’s a movement,” Stuccio said. “It’s a reaction against selection, adjudication. It’s pushing aside barriers between the work and the audience.”

Stuccio said he prefers to think of festival attendees as “participants,” rather than audience members. A glance at the acts from choreographers, actors and musicians, who hail from Norway to Argentina, makes that designation seem more than appropriate.

The festival includes “Amnesia Curiosa,” in which actors exhume family ghosts inside the nation’s oldest surgical amphitheater; “EYE-95 re-tarred,” where viewers are handed a beer and Frito-Pie (chili on corn chips) to watch the rockabilly extravaganza; and “The Guided Tour,” a work on wheels that takes the audience on a jaunt through the artist’s failed tour guide career.

In “Cell,” audience members divulge their mobile phone numbers when they buy their tickets and receive a time and place to show up. They are then given a series of challenges -- places to go, people to follow, actions to complete -- all directed through their cellphones.

“It’s a cross between a maze, a secret mission and a utopian cult,” said Andrew Simonet, co-director of the Headlong Dance Theater. “If you make it through the piece, there’s a sort of treasure at the end.”

Director Juan Souki takes his audience into the back of a 24-foot U-Haul truck for “The U-Haul Trilogy,” three dance theater pieces about dysfunctional relationships in limited spaces.

“It’s a little uncomfortable for both the audience and the performers, but so much material in such a little space has a great impact,” Souki said.