Posts Tagged ‘Fringe Festival’

Oblige Your Thirst

Friday, June 27th, 2014
Frackenstein: Taking theater to the streets (and new heights)

Frackenstein: Taking comedy/drama to the streets (and to new heights)

First, we’d like to thank Anna Phillips for reminding us about the Fringe Festival here in town this weekend.  We attended the 2013 festival and saw Anna act out her show ‘Spatial Profiling.’

Fringe seems to be great place catch some innovative art presentations.

Last night we experienced ‘Frackenstein, which was presented along the Connective Corridor, at the Syracuse Stage patio. The one act show envisions a totally fracked future mixing elements of Cirque du Soleil and Mad Max’s Road Warrior, with a small pinch of Laurel and Hardy slapstick.

Frackenstein features Mr. Sticks (played by Steve, who must have been a gymnast in a past life) and Splendito (played by the uber flexible Freddy). The duo provides just enough shock value to keep the audience, and those strolling along East Genesee Street, guessing.

We would have loved to see this type of event take place during SU Homecoming or an ACC Game Day Weekend when it would have just freaked out visitors (in a good way).

Frackenstein will play for the next two nights. If you are in the neighborhood stop by and check it out. You just may become part of the show.

Splendito (played by Freddy) and Mr. Sticks (played by Steve) occupied an open air stage on Syracuse Stage's patio for about an hour on Thursday.

Theater of the Here and Now: Splendito (played by Freddy) and Mr. Sticks (played by Steve) occupied an open air stage on Syracuse Stage’s patio for about an hour on Thursday as part of the 2014 Syracuse Fringe Festival.

A Life of Layers

Saturday, March 8th, 2014
Juan Miguel Hernandez appeared in the theatrical memoir "From Cuba to Cuse" Wednesday night at Syracuse University.

Actor Jose Miguel Hernandez appeared in the theatrical memoir "From Cuba to the Cuse" Wednesday night at Syracuse University. Hernandez also performed the play at last year's Fringe Festival at CFAC.

Fringe Factor

Monday, June 24th, 2013
Fringe Technical Director Gabriel Pinto occupies Saturday night with a sax solo.

Fringe Technical Director Gabriel Pinto occupies Saturday night with a sax solo.

Finally a cross-town collaboration between Lemoyne and SU (well,sort of). Le Moyne alums Jacob Ellison and Justin Sullivan used creativity and crowd funding to pull together the inaugural Syracuse Fringe Festival last weekend, and it was held at the Community Folk Art Center along the  Connective Corridor. The event featured three days of multi-disciplinary artistic endeavors.  We checked out the final day of the program, which featured David Doyle, Ruth Arena and Anna Phillips. Fringe was very reminiscent of the THINC Sideshow parties from a decade or so ago (except the demographic for the Fringe was slightly older).

Live Art: Body Painting

Live Art: Body Painting

What was most surprising on Saturday was to watch Phillips, who is the artistic equivalent of a love child between Missy Elliot (always ahead of the curve) and Steven Wright (wry humor), do a comedy show in the Black Box Theater and smoothly transition into a monologue about her life that was more compelling than a episode of HBO’s In Treatment.

Was it Something She Said? Anna Phillips the comic meets the Real Anna Phillips for an evening.

Was it Something She Said? Anna Phillips kept it real for Spatial Profiling.

Not that it wasn’t good, just unexpected. We look forward to Anna’s upcoming gigs, where she will bring the noise again with jokes at two shows locally: Chicks are Funny and Guns n’ Syrup.