With a chill now in the air, fall has officially arrived, putting me in just the right mood for “Spooky Stories in the Stacks” at the Central Library. Starting in the Rundel Memorial Building, our audience was brought downstairs to take our seats in the secluded stacks, a section of the library the public doesn’t […]
Fringe Reviews
Posted inSpecial Sections
Leah reviews ‘Careless Whispers’
Each year, there are many comedy offerings at Fringe — sketch, improv, stand-up (and yes, there’s a difference). Thank You Kiss, which presented its hour-long show, “Careless Whispers,” at Blackfriars Theatre, is a Rochester-based sketch comedy troupe. Whereas improv isn’t usually scripted and stand-up often addresses the audience directly, sketch relies primarily on scripted scenes […]
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Frank reviews EstroFest and You’ll Thank Me Later
EstroFest was a blast, I tell ya. You know, I go to these things hoping with all my might to laugh, to be taken out of the doldrums of my day, and allowed to view the world askew for a few. Well, the gals and one dude (as a guest) in EstroFest did not let […]
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Rebecca reviews ‘Savage Sanctuary’ and ‘Guerrilla Art’
In his artist statement, Denton Crawford says that his latest multimedia exhibition, “Savage Sanctuary,” “investigates the relationship between mysticism and the absurd and how personal experience informs our experience of each.” Through a remix of iconic imagery, Crawford pokes at the relationship between religious belief, political affiliation, and individual rights and freedoms. Several very rad […]
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Rebecca reviews ‘Scarred by the Somme’
The Eastman School’s gorgeous Kilbourn Hall was again the backdrop of Table Top Opera’s Fringe production. Commemorating the 100th anniversary of one of the bloodiest engagements in Europe’s Great War, “Scarred by the Somme” echoed the tragic, grim themes of the group’s 2015 program, "Kindertotenlieder" (songs on the death of children). The show’s organizer, Eastman […]
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Leah Stacy reviews ‘Dracula’
Producing one Rochester Fringe Festival show is ambitious — but just one show isn’t enough for Virginia Monte and WallByrd Theatre Co. In addition to “The Kiss,” which plays at SOTA for a last time on Saturday, September 24, at 9 p.m., WallByrd teamed up with Syracuse-based actor and playwright Alec Barbour to mount his […]
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Rebecca reviews “Seven Windows”
“Seven Windows” was not nearly as straightforwardly narrative as it was billed. But no matter — the brief, seven act dance production is a sweet, effective exploration that cradles the broken heart of our transient nature. Presented by SHARP Dance Company (at RAPA @ SOTA: Allen Main Stage Theatre) and choreographed by Diane Sharp-Nachsin, the […]
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David reviews ‘Hearing Ophelia’ and ‘Theater Lieder’
A popular trend nowadays is the vocal recital “plus”: adding a visual or theatrical element, or at the very least a theme, to the performance of a selection of songs or a song cycle. Tuesday night, the Lyric Theater presented a number of Eastman School voice students in two different approaches to lyric theater — […]
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Rebecca reviews ‘Next Fall,’ ‘Commotion Dance Theater,’ and ‘No More Words’
My Sunday at Fringe began with “Next Fall,” a Geoffrey Nauffts play directed by Thomas Markham and staged at TheatreROCS. The show is about a group of family and friends struggling to reconcile differences in faith and sexuality. It opens with the extremely jarring sounds of a car crash in the pitch black, after which […]
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Adam reviews ‘Muddy Track’ and Big Wigs
I started off day three of Fringe by catching a screening of the little-seen documentary, “Muddy Track” at the Dryden Theatre — the only Fringe event held at that venue this year. Scheduled as part of the Dryden’s series on the films of Bernard Shakey (the pseudonym used by musician Neil Young in his little-known […]
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David reviews ‘Dangerous Theatre’ and ‘Marx in Soho’
Hallie Flanagan is not a well-known name today, but in the 1930’s she was vastly influential as the director of the Federal Theatre Project, a WPA initiative that sought to employ actors, writers, designers, and other out-of-work theater professionals by assigning them to “theater enterprises” throughout the United States, many in areas that had never […]
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Adam review the RIT Student Honors Showcase and ‘Murder Night’
Every year at the Fringe, I look forward to attending the RIT Student Honors Showcase, the annual event held at The Little Theatre that highlights student work from RIT’s School of Film and Animation. It’s always fun to see what the talented group of up-and-coming filmmakers are up to, and this year’s program didn’t disappoint. […]
