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Fringe Binge: Annual Downtown Manhattan Theatre Festival Fires Starting Gun
By Robert Simonson
12 Aug 2005
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An assortment of postcards from this year's Fringe selections
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The scrappy theatre blitz known as the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival will lay seige to lower Manhattan Aug. 12, as dozens upon dozens of shows get underway.
Tickets for all the shows at the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival went on sale July 30, and the popular downtown theatre event took in just under $25,000 in sales (all at $15 per ticket) in its first 24 hours, according to a spokesperson. As of Aug. 8, $100,000 worth of tickets had been purchased.
The festival's big first-day intake was up about 45% over the previous year's at this time. Among the early hot tickets for the ninth annual summer event are Bridezilla Strikes Back!, Fleet Week, Extraordinary and Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies.
The Rude Pundit in the Year of Living Rudely has sold out its run, and Silence! The Musical is well on its way.
A complete guide for all the shows at this year's New York International Fringe Festival, Aug. 12-28, is now available online at www.FringeNYC.org. Tickets to all shows are $15 each, and multi-show discount passes are also available. For more information, call (212) 279-4488 (in NY) or (888) FringeNYC (outside NY).
More than 200 submissions were invited to FringeNYC 2005 (almost 180 of which will participate). As in previous years (e.g. The Passion of George W. Bush and Infertility, The Musical That's Hard to Conceive), some shows employ unique titles to vie for attention among the many works to be seen at this year's festival.
Among the eye-catching titles this year are:
A Lesbian in the Pantry
A Play with Myself
BRIDEZILLA STRIKES BACK!
by Oscar Micheaux
BYUIOO
Cemetery of Lips
Dance With Me, Harker
DYKAPALOOZA
FLUFFY BUNNIES IN A FIELD OF DAISIES
Fucking Ibsen Takes Time
GRANDMOTHERFUCKER & THE SEDUCERS
JESUS IN MONTANA: Adventures in a Doomsday Cult
LOL
My Pony's in the Garage
SITCHAASSDOWN
Slow Children Playing
Sunset Bitch
TEST TITLE
The Greatest B-Movie Ever Told
The Mayor Who Would Be Sondheim
The Miss Education of Jenna Bush
The Monster Under My Bed Drank My Vodka
Weddings of Mass Destruction
Yes, We have No Bananas!
You Wanna Piece of Me?
Following in the Urinetown formula, a number of musicals are announcing their genre within their name, including:
Billionaires for Bush — The Musical
Byzantium: A New Musical
FLEET WEEK: The Musical
SILENCE! the Musical
SUV: The Musical!
The Banger's Flopera - A Musical Perversion
The Great Official Subway Musical
Treaty 321! A Musical
WARFIELD, USA: The Musical
You Again, a musical about cloning
Lastly (though pared down from previous years), there are the standard long-named shows including:
Animal Farm project I - Version White: Funny Pigs
Edna St. Vincent Millay Speaks to the Committee on Immortality
Professor Dilexi Presents Dramatis Personae of the Apocryphal Menagerie
Sex with Jake Gyllenhaal and Other Fables of the Northeast Corridor
The Last Two Minutes of The Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen
Uncle Sam's Satiric Spectacular: On Democracy and Other Fictions Featuring Patriotism Acts and Blue Songs from a Red State
UNSPEAKABLE: Richard Pryor Live & Uncensored, a dramatic fantasia
Among the more famous of Fringe alumni are the Off-Broadway stagings of Never Swim Alone, 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com, Debbie Does Dallas, Matt & Ben, The Joys of Sex and the upcoming Off-Broadway show, Dog Sees God. The grande dame of all Fringe alum is the Tony Award-winning Urinetown, which graduated to Off-Broadway, then Broadway and has since toured across the country.
Tickets to the Fringe Festival will be $15. For more information, including volunteer details, call (212) 279-4488 or visit the website at www.FringeNYC.org.
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