30 years of Orlando Fringe memories: 2016, the 25th festival
Editor’s note: Back in 2016, I celebrated the 25th Orlando Fringe Festival in a series of articles detailing each year of the theater fest leading up to the milestone. This year, to honor the 30th festival, we’ll continue that series with an installment each month leading to the big 3-0 in May.
For the 25th festival in 2016, Orlando Fringe pulled out all the stops — and was rewarded with record-setting attendance.
More than 72,000 people attended a show during the festival’s two-week run in Loch Haven Park. But the festival’s venues, centered in the Lowndes Shakespeare Center and Orlando Repertory Theatre, continued to spread outward.
“Fringe is everywhere!” proclaimed the Sentinel’s headline.
Orlando Museum of Art and Loch Haven Park’s Junior Achievement Building hosted shows. Further afield, plays popped up at St. Matthew’s Tavern, Savoy, The Venue and White Wolf Cafe. A shuttle took theatergoers to the Parliament House for performances; one particularly memorable production involved watching a performer take a bath in a Comfort Suites Downtown hotel room.
A private home hosted “Living Room Theater,”
— in the living room, naturally — and the mysterious “Enter Penumbra” wouldn’t tell participants where its theater was. Those with tickets boarded a bus and were whisked away to the show (which turned out to be in a strip mall in south Orlando).
The celebrating began before the festival even opened, with a Silver Party — the color being traditional for 25th anniversaries. Guests donned their silver glad rags and danced to the music of the 1990s.
During the festival itself, special events included a drag competition where performers vied to be Queen of the Fringe and the debut of “Flori-DUH,” a comic look at actual news from the Sunshine state led by Mike Delamont of “God Is a Scottish Drag Queen” fame. “Flori-DUH” went on to have a long, successful life at subsequent festivals; we seemingly never run out of wacky Florida happenings.
Among the festival’s mini-trends: Two shows used Peter Pan as inspiration; plays set in space were a hot commodity; and in an election year, many turned to politics.
“The Foreplay: An Exploration of the Birth of Our Nation” was a raucous look at the Constitution, while Orlando actor J.D. Sutton’s “My Master, My Slave, My Friend” was a
thoughtful and moving look at slavery and Thomas Jefferson. It won the Critics’ Choice Award for best drama.
But the biggest buzz was around “Simpleton: The Legend of President Trump,” an award-winning and prescient musical that parodied Broadway smash “Hamilton” while
imagining the country’s future — should reality-TV star Donald Trump win the November presidential election. Oh, how innocent we all were.
“I’m just like my country: I’m rich, racist and grumpy,” rapped Fredy Ruiz as Trump, in the funny and on-point lyrics from Lakeland-based Thom Mesrobian, Samuel Hammersley and Seth Brown.
Jeff Jones debuted his comic look at familiar, if not exactly alive, themepark
animatronics in “The Animatronicans,” which was named best comedy, and Blue Star won best dance show with a revived and revamped production of the popular “VarieTease: Carnivale.”
The top show chosen by the critics was “Edgar Allan,” a creepily atmospheric musical look at the life of writer Edgar Allan Poe, by Brooklyn-based The Coldharts.
Festival artists took home a record-setting $424,446, and Kids Fringe set a
record of its own as about 9,500 people attended its free activities.
2016 was big for the Fringe in other ways, as well: The organization established new offices in the Lowndes Shakespeare Center and hired a fulltime development director and part-time associate producer.
Biggest of all, with a $1,000,000 budget, Orlando Fringe became a cultural partner of United Arts of Central Florida, opening the door for increased financial support through the annual Campaign for the Arts. It also meant joining the leaders of other institutions for United Arts’ monthly confidential discussions about the local cultural scene.
“We’ve never been invited to that table before,” said executive director George Wallace, who proudly told the Sentinel after a year filled with success: “We’re a worldclass arts organization.”
To read the original 24 columns in this series, published in 2016, search “Orlando Sentinel Fringe Memories” on Google. Find me on Twitter @ matt_on_arts or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Want more news of theater and other arts? Go to OrlandoSentinel. com/arts.