The Philly Fringe Festival shows that made us laugh, think, and cry

Every year in September, hundreds of Philadelphia actors, dancers, comedians, and multidisciplinary artists perform shows across the region in the wild and beloved Fringe Festival. This year’s edition was the biggest yet, with nearly 350 productions. We’re looking back at eight performances that made us laugh, think, and tear up.

Making friends is tough enough, but breaking up with them might be even harder. Lea Devon Sorrentino and Liam Paris cohost an interactive and partly improvised game show asking participants from the audience to respond to scenarios where they can end friendships. It’s silly fun until you realize that Liam plans to launch a solo show and tries to break up with his friend Lea as we watch. They fight over years of resentments, miscommunications, and bruised feelings. The relationship unravels onstage in a whirl, leaving viewers with abrupt and profound heartbreak that underscores their thesis: Friend breakups hurt just as much as romantic ones.

The production was a bit of a mess, experiencing some audio mishaps and a little awkwardness with a small and spotlight-shy audience, but the material was so smart that little could detract from the impact; I still left with tears in my eyes. — RC

Playwright AZ Espinoza is a frequent chronicler of Afro Latino stories, incorporating magical realism into plays with imaginative and emotional results. Their latest work is an anticolonial, queer take on Shakespeare’s King Lear that centers on a trans man returning to his island home to face a bigoted father on the cusp of a catastrophic hurricane. Cord (formerly Cordelia) plans a drag show in the middle of the storm, with support from his partner’s mystical, genderqueer aunt, and the group unlocks a transformative power that reconfigures the world order. The staged reading was just a glimpse into Espinoza’s emerging story, but I could already picture elaborate costumes and a dynamic set of lush nature, as guava trees play a special role. I’ll be curious to follow the show’s progress. — RC

No songwriting experience? At Let’s Make an Album!, no problem. Each performance is a live Mad Libs–style exercise, with the audience and band cocreating a song by crowdsourcing a theme, title, genre, and lyrics as a digital clock counts down from an hour.

The song that came out of the event I attended, “Rupture & Repair,” doesn’t quite sound like the Sabrina Carpenter-like pop we’d agreed on at the beginning, but it did turn out to be a catchy, mournful take on the loneliness of lost friendship. Most importantly, a room full of strangers made something new.

Let’s Make an Album! is hosted by (real) pop-punk band Happier Than Ever, a trio of former University of the Arts students who hope to turn the songs created during this Fringe run into an actual album. Stay tuned. — JZ

Welcome to Dumb Hub, a festival hub for “clown, idiot, alt comedy, performance art, and freak sh*t only.” This one-night-only performance began as promised: A person in a cheap-looking gorilla suit walked to the center of the stage, assessed the aforementioned chair, and sat. Then he rocked, slowly, for the better part of an hour. He never revealed his identity — the artist was only credited as “a young man.”

Then, all around the gorilla, both nothing and everything happened. Minutes into the show, audience members began doing stuff. The apparently spontaneous actions started with soda tabs flicked in coordination and exaggerated shushing, and escalated to pop music singalongs and a wrestling match. The point seemed to be to force us to engage with theater as we might never otherwise — to make noise, to get up close with the art.

And if not, what did it mean? What was it for? Who’s to say? Who cares? When everyone in the room is rapturously dancing to the Vengaboys’ “We Like to Party” while a gorilla man rocks nearby, you rapturously dance, too. — JZ

Terms of Use starts with a visual mashup of early-internet memes backed by house band the Scrubs playing warped covers of ‘90s classics, and ends with a dramatic reading of a certain Pennsylvania candy company’s lengthy Terms & Conditions page, inscrutable legalese and all.

Playwright and director Angela Harmon of Leftovers Art Collective stars alongside Jon Braun and Anthony Diaz, the titular “millennials” acting out absurd scenes of Y2K malaise. The audience is asked to consider: How do you feel about the fact that there’s an untold number of photos of you on the internet, whether you posted them or not? Do you like logging in dozens of times per day? Well, when you put it like that, no, not really. Maybe all this so-called social media isn’t worth what the user must give up to participate.

Besides the food for thought, though, Terms of Use’s best offering is the nostalgia-inspiring swag: key chains attached to mechanical keyboard keys. We millennials love a fidget toy. — JZ

Brought back after a successful Fringe run in 2018 (and Edinburgh Fringe in 2019) Chris Davis’ The Presented asks the age-old artist question: What am I making art for? For Davis, the 50-minute solo show is more an exploration on how the landscape of the art world has changed, and how to best create work in a “post golden age of theatre” era. It’s an incredibly witty examination of this idea that takes a deeper look at the state the art world is in as arts funding is under constant attack.

Davis is an adept performer with a likability that is instantly engaging to watch. As creator of the show, he is familiar with the material, but it doesn’t feel over rehearsed or put on. The entire piece felt so off the cuff and of the moment, like he could’ve been coming up with it on the spot. His physicality is impressive, including a recurring bit involving a bear, and the show never drags. For a show that is framed as a pitch for another artist, it’s deeply personal, while also being universal, which is not an easy task to achieve.

The Presented was a highlight of this year’s Fringe Festival, and is still as relevant and timely as ever. Davis has a natural skill as a performer that is undeniably enjoyable to watch. — FS

It’s always refreshing to see a production of a new work that makes you glad you saw it now, before everyone else. La Otra, presented by 1812 Productions/Tanaquil Márquez & Eliana Fabiyi, is just one of those plays. The world premiere, written and directed by Márquez, tells a funny and heartfelt story of three Colombian sisters reconnecting for their father’s 80th birthday. Drama and secrets unfold, but told in a hysterical style that allows the material to truly shine. It is a story that is not wholly unique but is told in such a fantastical way that it makes it feel fresh and new. The show is bilingual, allowing the characters’ relationships to thrive in the fast-paced nature of hopping from one language to another.

The show is a bombastic exploration of the traditional family drama story. It has an air of magic realism that takes its characters on a wild ride. The cast was top tier in performances, with Yajaira Paredes being a standout in her dual roles as Yamile, one of the sisters, and Luz, the fourth-wall-breaking, hysterical maid. Her warm, welcoming nature immediately invited the audience to engage, allowing for the humor to effortlessly flow throughout the show. The set by Dahlia Al-Habieli was incredibly inventive and transformed in truly fantastic ways.

Overall, La Otra was a standout in many ways and one of those Fringe shows that you hope has a continued life and success after the festival is over. — FS

Death as a subject has fascinated playwrights for decades. Lightning Rod Special’s Fringe offering this year is an extremely personal exploration of a death but presented in an unique way. Cocreators and performers Alice Yorke and Scott R. Shepard share the experience of losing their fathers within a short period of time. They’ve decided to not fully focus on the emotional weight of losing a parent, but instead on the insane amount of clerical work that comes about when someone dies.

Shepard and Yorke frame the daunting task as if they were two Dickensian clerks out of a Christmas Carol. It’s a comical angle for such morose material, and it works well because of that juxtaposition. Both Shepard and Yorke are in top form in this production, navigating the highs and lows throughout effortlessly. While every joke might not land, or slightly overstays its welcome, the show as a whole is a triumphant examination of who their fathers were and how they continue to work through their joint loss. — FS