Three of the biggest hits of the 2002 Fringe Festival — Matt & Ben, Beat and The Joys of Sex — received the kudos of the their peers at the FringeNYC Awards Aug. 25, alongside musical theatre's Liz Larsen (The Rocky Horror Show, Damn Yankees) and Tape playwright Stephen Belber. The annual accolades for the best of the Fringe Festival were awarded by Fringe producing artistic director at an evening ceremony held at B-Bar.
Matt & Ben, a satire on the friendship between Academy Award winners Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (starring two women as the duo) got the nod for Overall Production. Beat won for Ensemble Performance with a cast that included "Who's the Boss"' Danny Pintauro and for Direction for Kelly Groves. The Joys of Sex, a musical comedy revue set in the bedroom, earned a Direction honor for Jeremy Dobrish. Larsen, most recently on Broadway in The Smell of the Kill, was honored for her performance as Her in Paul Scott Goodman's short musicals, Him & Her, while Belber won for his play, The Death of Frank.
A complete list of the FringeNYC Award winners follows:
Overall Production
Billy Nijinsky
Matt & Ben
Five Frozen Embryos and The Sleepers
6 Story Building
Solo Show
The Bizarro Baloney Show
I Kiss Dash Riprock
Starfuckers Direction
Kelly Groves, Beat
Jeremy Dobrish, The Joys of Sex
Arian Blanco, Dismiss All Poets
Performance
Tonya Canada, It's All About Me
Liz Larsen, Him & Her
Shiek Mahmud-Bey, The Way Out
Matthew Swan, On the Clock
Choreography
Clare Byrne, Wet Blue & Friends
Mario Heineman, Blind Dated
Playwrighting
Stephen Belber, The Death of Frank
Kirkwood Bromley, The American Revolution
Herman Daniel Farrell III, Portrait of a President
Kelly McAllister, Last Call
Ensemble Performance
Beat
Resa Fantastiskt Mystisk
Sajjil (Record)
Scenic Design
Andromache Chalfant, Two
Costume Design
Karen Krolak & Ameila O'Dowd, Aspic
Not the types to rest on their laurels, the Fringe Festival 2003 is already accepting applications. For information, call (212) 420-8877. The Fringe 2002 ran from Aug. 9-25 in 19 different venues in Lower Manhattan. Commercial producers have so far shown interest in The Joys of Sex, Beat and All American Boy, a gay satire of boy bands.
— By Christine Ehren
