The KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival keeps on growing. Organizers on Thursday announced that the 2017 Fringe was its largest event so far. Attendance at the approximately 500 performances and events is estimated at more than 78,000, which is a 15 percent increase over 2016. This has prompted organizers to add an 11th day to its […]
Fringe 2017
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Fringe 2017: What we want to see again
The KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival, which wrapped its sixth year on Saturday, was a 10-day rush of arts overload. With around 500 performances, tens of thousands of people came through downtown Rochester for dance, theater, music, visual arts, and multi-disciplinary performances — and some shows that just can’t be easily classified. But the Fringe isn’t […]
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Fringe Street Beat gives dancers a platform
The East Main Street end of Gibbs was packed and buzzing with energy on Saturday as almost 200 people gathered for Fringe Street Beat. The Rochester Fringe Festival brought back the all-styles dance competition for its second year, drawing in teams from the region and as far as Montreal to compete for a $1,500 cash […]
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Becca reviews ‘Out of Sync’ and ‘Antigone’
Before Charles Miller commenced his multimedia performance piece, “Out of Sync: Abstractions,” at the Little Theatre on Saturday night, he told the gathered audience that the soundscapes were all prior compositions, while the accompanying visualizations projected on the big screen would be improvisational. Miller created the visual stream by cutting acetate into strips and applying […]
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Kathy reviews ‘Really Rosie’ and ‘Merged V’
There truly is something for everyone at Fringe. And that includes kids. Friday evening, I stepped into what felt like a storybook come-to-life in “Really Rosie.” The production at Blackfriars Theatre combines music by the incomparable Carole King with lyrics by Maurice Sendak (of “Where the Wild Things Are” fame) and an energetic young cast. […]
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Becca reviews ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ ‘Childhood/The Lottery,’ and ‘Anatomy of a Black Man’
Masquer’s Drama Club/Dangerous Signs’s creative retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” at The Little kicked off my Friday night. This team does an amazing job — Fringe 2016 was my first time seeing the group, when it presented “Hands Full of Shakespeare.” Through spoken word voice-over, ASL, dance, and pantomime, the tale is […]
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Becca talks Farm to Fringe offerings
New to the Rochester Fringe this year is a Farm to Fringe mini series. Fringe partnered with local farms, vineyards, and distilleries — including Hurd Orchards, Schutts Apple Mill, and Finger Lakes Distilling — to put together a series of seasonal events that celebrate the fruits of the harvest. The first event took place on Saturday, […]
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Fringe review: John Mulaney at Kodak Hall
John Mulaney, Fringe’s 2017 comedy headliner, has many notable accomplishments, one of those being the fact he co-created “Saturday Night Live’s” eccentric and brilliant Stefon character with Bill Hader. And really, Fringe sounds like Stefon describing Rochester’s hottest new festival. “It has everything: A summer igloo, complimentary heckling, giant floating eye orbs, and sperm kites […]
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Frank reviews Loop Painting and Matt Griffo
Seth Faergolzia is a madman; the kind of sub-genius I like to truck with. Discipline. In their literature, the Fringe higher-ups talk of disciplines in classifying and categorizing performances. Faergolzia’s Loop Painting technically had two and yet no discipline at all. It was a full-blown free for all. Faergolzia entered Gregorian chant-inspired, vowel-heavy moans and […]
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‘Labyrinth’ gives climate change a multi-sensory interpretation
The highly anticipated Sunday night premiere of “Labyrinth” at RMSC’s Strasenburgh Planetarium did not disappoint. Co-created by BIODANCE’s Missy Pfohl Smith and media artist W. Michelle Harris — who together presented the acclaimed “Anomaly” at the same venue in 2013 and 2016 — the multi-sensory show was performed to a full house as part of […]
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Kathy reviews Murder Mystery at the Central Library and ‘Bushwhacked’
Part of the fun of the Fringe is not only seeing shows, but becoming immersed in them. Both Murder Mystery at the Central Library and “Bushwhacked: Crystal Magic Wonder Cabinet Palace Tent” fit that bill. Walking into the library on South Avenue, I quickly noticed the beautiful old building was adorned with crime scene tape, fingerprints, […]
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Adam reviews ‘Spy in the House of Men’ and ‘The Bicycle Men’
The touching “Spy in the House of Men,” is a one-woman show by performer Penny Sterling about her personal journey toward living her life openly and authentically as a transgender woman. Aside from some brief music transitions and the occasional prop, Sterling herself is the front and center of the hour-long monologue, broken up into […]
