The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), the largest multi-arts festival in North America, hits the streets Aug 13–29. In its 14th year, Fringe will present programming by 197 of the world’s best emerging theatre troupes and dance companies in 20 venues throughout Lower Manhattan. LGBT highlights of the festival include The Secretaries, written by the Five Lesbian Brothers. Join this cult of murderous, Slim-Fast drinking, high-heel wearing, big-haired secretaries who work the desks of the Cooney Lumber Mill in Big Bone, Oregon. It’s just like your office, only with chainsaws. Also check out Shine: A Burlesque Musical, a tassel-twirling original musical about an infamous downtown burlesque theatre and the family of talented misfits who try to save it from demolition, or worse: respectability.
Howl Arts, Inc. brings its 7th Annual HOWL! Festival to Tompkins Square Park Sep 10–12 for an exceptional, existential and uplifting weekend of cutting edge art, fantasy, fun and superb family entertainment. Since its founding in 2002, thousands of artists and performing groups of every genre and background have taken to the streets, to the Park and to the stage as the HOWL! Festival roars through the East Village. This year’s festival features two stages in distinctly marked sections with fully separate programs for children and adults, including the yearly Art Around the Park, All HOWL! All the Time!; HIP HOP HOWL; and new to the Festival this year, the Lower East Side Girls Club’s East Village Earth Circus.
The Brick Theater presents the 2010 New York Clown Theatre Festival Sep 3–26. This year’s festival will feature 17 mainstage shows, 4 kid-friendly shows, 1 street show, and 5 cabarets, with diverse clown theatre artists from the Ukraine, Israel, Wales, Mexico, Canada and across the United States. The festival opens with a parade from Union Square through the L line subway to Williamsburg, followed by an open-to-the-public pie fight. It ends with clowns weeping in the streets of Williamsburg during the traditional closing day Funeral.
What Do You Think?