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Go Deeper 2019 Fringe Festival Spotlight: Theater Classics in the Fringe

2019 Fringe Festival Spotlight: Theater Classics in the Fringe

Posted August 27th, 2019

In creating something original and new, artists often look to the past. This year’s Fringe Festival includes a host of theatrical works based on the literary canon. Shakespeare! Homer! Ibsen! Brecht! It’s the classics, Fringe-style.

A Literal Doll House
MACHO GOAT
This deconstruction of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House features the entire play acted out by a girl playing with literal dolls. Do not be fooled: There is more to this show than meets the eye. A struggle that rings true throughout the ages. This is not a one-woman show.
More info and tickets here

An Iliad
Jason Greenfield                           
This new adaptation by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare based on Robert Fagles’s translation of The Iliad telescopes Homer’s Trojan War epic into a gripping monologue which captures both the heroism and horror of war. Crafted around the stories of Achilles and Hector, in language that is by turns poetic and conversational, An Iliad brilliantly refreshes this world classic. Directed and performed by Jason Greenfield.
More info and tickets here

And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens
EgoPo Classic Theater
Candy Delaney is a “New Orleans queen” approaching his dreaded 35th birthday. While Candy is looking for romance, his newest pickup is looking for his next drink. Audiences are welcomed into Candy’s apartment, champagne in hand, for Tennessee Williams’s stunning portrait of unrequited love. 
More info and tickets here

Come Back, Little Sheba by William IngeCome Back Little Sheba
The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium
Precarious sobriety: poignant and potent with humor to spare, the quietness of quiet desperation explodes the claustrophobic lives of Lola and Doc. William Inge’s 1950 classic comes alive amid outsider art in The Bethany Mission Gallery, illustrating how the pursuit of primal instincts derails and illuminates everyday lives.
More info and tickets here

H5¹, a one-man adaptation of Shakespeare’s HENRY V
Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company
A bare-bones staging of William Shakespeare’s Henry V, this one-man performance by Paul Parente (directed by Ann Ciccolella) highlights the necessity for authentic, compelling, and selfless leadership.
More info and tickets here

Lysistrata, Cross Your Legs Sister!
Kaleidoscope Cultural Arts Collective
The women withhold sexual privileges and occupy the main bank building to force the men to make peace and end the war. This musical adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata explores the timeless message “Make love not war.”
More info and tickets here

Mother Courage and Her Children
University of the Arts – Ira Brind School of Theater Arts
Mother Courage drags her cart across the battlefields of the Thirty Years War, profiteering from a conflict that destroys her children. It isn’t easy, starting a war, but nothing worthwhile is easy. By Bertolt Brecht and Margarete Steffin, translated by Eric Bentley.
More info and tickets here

Richard III
Hestia Theatre Company
Three Richards. Six women. Ninety minutes. This infamous play will be performed in one of the city’s most historic sites. Hestia Theatre Company teams up with Christ Church Burial Ground’s 300th anniversary. Whether you are new to Shakespeare or a well-seasoned lover of verse, this all-female production has something for you.
More info and tickets here

The Sea Voyage 
The Philadelphia Artists’ Collective
A war of love and duty breaks out when a band of privateers find themselves stranded on a seemingly uninhabited island. John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s work is a true maritime romp of the Jacobean era: raw, bold and devilishly funny.
More info and tickets here

Mark Twain once said “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” At least that’s what we saw on the internet. Who reads Twain anymore?

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