Five shows we’ve loved at the Philly Fringe Fest so far

The Fringe Festival is in full swing, and the city is buzzing with performances. There are solo shows baring personal truths about the healthcare industry, explorations of gender through cannibalism or peyote trips, a relaxing dance installation that encourages you to move, and more. Here’s a look at some of the best shows we’ve seen so far and what’s upcoming. Shows that are still running are noted.

“It’s very lonely up here in this broken brain,” Hannah Parke tells her audience. By this point in her autobiographical solo show, she’s cracked self-deprecating jokes and presented X-rays of her brain to explain her epilepsy. After describing her first seizure at 24, Parke presents her stages of grief through video montages and original songs, backing up her soul-baring with stark data about her medical experience: Last year, surgeons drilled 28 holes into her skull and put her through an unimaginably torturous exposure therapy process to study her seizures. The play, for her, is a means of reaching the stage of acceptance in real time. It was a revelatory and moving work that lingered with me long afterward. I can still hear her beautifully singing, “I’m dying.”

This meditative and immersive dance installation invites guests to come and go, to switch seats and walk around, or even stand if they’d like. Mimi Lien’s mesmerizing set is a white room with various seat options — swivel chair, fuzzy rug, rolling chair, or cocoon-like chair — but it’s the ceiling that captures the most attention. A swath of white fabric breathes slowly above, with mechanical winches lifting and lowering; behind it are otherworldly sculptures of light and soft cloth that poke through circular cut-outs. Ambient, ethereal music accompanies 10 dancers as they move in unison throughout the space — sometimes joining together and sometimes moving alone as they lean on each other. They sway, rise, and fall. Lien and choreographer Susan Marshall collaborated with neurodiverse consultants and Temple’s Institute on Disabilities for this relaxed performance where they invite everyone to show up as they are. The audience is in the middle of the action, close enough to make polite, awkward eye contact and see the sweat prints dampening the dancers’ blue uniforms. Look anywhere you want, but the feeling will be the same — you’ll want to sway and move, too. (Runs through Sept. 24.)

It’s funny, until it isn’t. Tripping on peyote, Zeta (Isabel Penn) messily stumbles into A Christmas Carol-like hallucinations, getting visits from Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong (played with superb spunk by Deadb0y), a spirit called the Genderweird (Tyler Econa), and the King of Cumbia (also Econa). Zeta spirals out of control and consciousness trying to unpack his gender, his substance abuse, and his broken relationship with his dead mother who once told him: “I don’t get it. You’re already brown. Why would you choose to be a queer?” Though his best friend Heatdeath (Tori Rodriguez) tries to help, Zeta is lost, and the audience — seated on either side of a foot-high square stage — must face the tragic result.

Cannibalism isn’t usually a hit topic for live performance, but John Jarboe embraces the surprise factor with silly, introspective glamor. In this autobiographical show, Jarboe is more concerned with gender cannibalism, an idea she developed after learning that she “ate,” as she calls it, her twin sister Rose in the womb. Backed by an exquisite live band covered in rose bush costumes, Jarboe jokingly reenacts the crime and sings about stealing her mom’s lipstick and pearls as a kid, imagining Rose by her side the entire time. The levity is undercut with reflections on her painful upbringing in a conservative household with parents who didn’t understand queerness. In a call-and-response bit where the audience plays Mom, Jarboe coaches us to say in response: “I forgive you. I love you. I will change.” (Runs through Sept. 23.)

Shakespeare is the stuff of prestige theater, elaborate sets, and well-rehearsed actors who take themselves very seriously. The premise of Shakespeare on Tap, however, is to return to the roots of the Bard’s Elizabethan-era performances when the actors had little prep time and the audience had a lot to drink. Cue the fun and debauched Macbeth in a Bar, performed by professional actors working off one rehearsal. All the action happens in the middle of the walkway separating bar stools from table seating. The props are mostly household cleaning items, with sponges for daggers and mops for swords. The witches (Valleri Bowman, Roxy Geers, and H. Caroline O’Connell) chug mini bottles of Fireball before issuing prophecies to a well-studied Macbeth (Devin Preston). Macduff (Jonathan Harper Schlieman) is more of a valley boy surfer and Banquo (Elena Nahrmann) is surprisingly sassy. The drinkers cheer on the actors as they shine and stumble through the complicated lines for an entertaining, albeit cramped, night.

Good Bones: At 74, Frederick Andersen takes stock of his life story through a one-man show about being a gay man in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and beyond. He opens up about struggling with alcoholism and caregiving for a loved one who died of AIDS-related complications, while candidly examining the recent fear and challenges of navigating medical care following his husband’s stroke.

Collective Rage: Meet the Betties, there are five. One Betty is an uptight rich housewife who’s enraged by TV news, another Betty wants to find fame through “the theatahh,” and another Betty has no friends except her hand puppet. One Betty loves the other Betty, but that Betty doesn’t know. The lesbian comedy includes vagina-gazing, confessions over playing with toy trucks, and a guitar number from a Betty-turned-lion-turned-vagina.

What’s upcoming on my radar: Black Wood, Make Bank, Waiting for Ganol, The Pecking Order, Half Magic, Circus Phantasmagoria. See the full event guide here.