Taking on Fringe Festival audiences alone may sound like a daunting challenge, but these intrepid artists are doing just that. Check out some of the remarkable solo shows the 2016 Fringe Festival has to offer.

(image by M. McCool)

THIS INFO WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE @ Skinner Studio at Plays & Players Theatre
Mary McCool

You are all here because you seek something. This is very special. In here, tonight, we will seek together… Profundity abounds in this mystical performance-comedy event written and performed by New Paradise Laboratories co-founder and Pig Iron Theatre Company regular, Mary McCool. Visit www.thisinfo.info and click here for more info and tickets.

(photo by Devon DiMatteo)

Walk to Topaz @ Mascher Space Cooperative
Brendan Tetsuo

Like a pebble dropped into a pond, this work begins with a reimagining of a young person’s walk into a Japanese Internment Camp. It then ripples outward exploring how this event impacts the lives of the succeeding generations, as they try to comprehend the weight of this experience on their existence and identity. More info and tickets here.

(photo by David Brick)

Speculum Diaries @ 1fiftyone gallery + art space
Irina Varina

A young woman’s solo about longing. For love, connection, home and understanding of oneself independent of those things. Told through personal/fictional narratives and some dance, it features among other things: an antique speculum found in a basement, babushka, “Brilliant Traces,” voice of Charlie Kaufman. More info and tickets here.

(photo by Maria Shaplin)

One-Man Apocalypse Now @ Heart of Darkness Warehouse
Chris Davis

Chris Davis re-imagines the iconic film Apocalypse Now in a hilarious and dark 60-minute adaptation set in an industrial warehouse on Gray’s Ave. More info and tickets here.

(photo by Agathe Poupeney)

Le Cargo @ FringeArts
Faustin Linyekula

Faustin Linyekula has spent over a decade telling stories of bodies marked by history and lives marked by violence. Stories of the Congo. Of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of Zaire. Of the Belgian Congo. The country has been called all of these names. But how can you let the body speak of history while leaving words behind? In this journey towards himself, Linyekula boards a train that does not exist anymore, whose rails have been swallowed by the forest. His is a search for that which ceases to be, a dance that has been erased. Memory, forgetting, and the suppression of memory, Le Cargo addresses the legacy of decades of war, terror, fear and the collapse of the economy for himself, his family and his friends. More info and tickets here.

(photo by Will Drinker)

Explicit Female @ AUX Performance Space at Vox Populi Gallery
Zornitsa Stoyanova | Here[begin] Dance

(photo by Hannah Van Sciver)

The Long Tides @ Asian Arts Initiative, Studio A
Nicole Quenelle

How do we measure time? What is contained in a moment? And just what are we waiting for, anyway? Meet Joann Merriweather. She’s worked in the call center of Building 14 for a very long time. And now she’s looking at where that time goes. Leading her co-workers in a time-management seminar, Joann must look at how she spends her own time, and how her minutes add up. With inspiration from Ted Talks, corporate seminars, advances in physics, and the writings of T.S. Eliot, The Long Tides is at turns both clown play and poignant audit of how we spend our minutes–and what happens in the moments that stand out. More info and tickets here.

(photo by Jorge Cortez)

Human @ Studio Theater at Hamilton Family Arts Center
LeeAnn Mallorie

Human exposes the inner alchemy of a human life, stunningly expressed in physical theater. Laugh. Cry. Curse. Transcend. A soul-wrenching solo improvisation based on true stories—mine and yours—of pride, lust, longing, self-sabotage, devastation, and personal reclamation. Every woman’s journey on the path to being seen. More info and tickets here.