The Kansas City Fringe
recently held its 8th festival, and if there’s one thing the festival
has become known for (besides burlesque) it’s as a breeding ground for
new plays by local writers. There are several theatre companies in
Kansas City that will occasionally produce works by local playwrights,
but none that are devoted exclusively to the task or that do much to
foster the creation of new works within the community. Consequently, the
Kansas City Fringe Festival is where local writers go to test their
mettle. With its low barrier for entry, an atmosphere of risk taking,
and an audience eager to try something new, playwrights are using the
Fringe to hone their craft and build their reputation.
This year’s Fringe saw the debut of more than two dozen new plays,
and many of these playwrights are also producing the plays themselves:
finding directors and actors and sometimes performing. They are getting a
crash course in production – often handling scheduling, design, and
publicity in addition to writing the script. They’re quickly learning
what works and doesn’t work in a Fringe environment where tech is
minimal, competition is fierce, and budgets are miniscule. Most
importantly, Fringe playwrights are forming strong relationships with
directors and actors that will enable them to grow beyond Fringe.
Ultimately, they must grow beyond Fringe. A playwright needs more
than one production of their play to thrive, but the biggest problem
with being a Fringe playwright is that most of the plays are only an
hour long. Aside from other Fringe Festivals, there aren’t a lot of
places you can take a Fringe show. A few writers in Kansas City have
taken shows to the Edinburgh Fringe, New York Fringe, and New Orleans
Fringe. Many playwrights just toss the script aside and start writing
something for next year’s festival. In my own experience, writing and
producing a show for Fringe is a year-long endeavor, and financially
it’s hardly lucrative. The only reason to keep doing it is partly to
build up a reputation in the community that might lead to bigger and
better things, and to partake in the exciting, community atmosphere of
Fringe.
Playwriting isn’t the only thing benefiting from the Kansas City
Fringe. Burlesque has been rediscovered thanks largely to the Fringe
Festival, and Fringe provides a forum for performances that just don’t
fit into anybody’s season calendar, like magicians, improv, sketch
comedy, poetry, and spoken word; not to mention several off-beat forms
of dance: fire dancers, aerial dancers, belly dancers, hoop dancers, and
Indian dancers. As the Kansas City Fringe continues to grow, it hopes
to bolster other art forms like visual arts, dance, film, and music.
This year they launched the Experimental Music Showcase to highlight
avant garde composers, and they’re also building a strong youth
component. For the most part, however, the Kansas City Fringe is
regarded as a theatre festival, with the whole theatre community eager
to jump in and take part, and a great place for playwrights to get their
start.
from 2AM Theatre
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