“I’ve been working with immigrant populations for 10 years now, and they are so ready to talk about it. It doesn’t matter what age group you belong to. It’s like being invisible most of the time, yet you have a story–a very important story–to say, to talk about. So once you open that door, it comes right out.”
–Nora Litz

FringeArts has had the opportunity to meet and hear about the amazing work that many different people and organizations in Philadelphia are doing to support their neighbors. On the latest Happy Hour on the Fringe, our hosts sit down with members of two organizations dedicated to improving the lives of Latinx men, women, and children living in Philadelphia.

Nora Litz with a young artist

Located in South Philly, Puentes de Salud (Bridges of Health) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that promotes the health and wellness of Philadelphia’s rapidly growing Latino immigrant population through a wide variety of programs. Their services range from providing high-quality and culturally competent healthcare, innovative educational programs that support young children through adults, legal support and community building, and the organization supports community members regardless of immigration status, race, and class. Nora Litz, as Director of Arts and Culture, guides children, adolescents, and adults as they use mixed media to recount their own personal immigration stories. The artists’ work has culminated in projects such as Las ligas que nos unen (“The Ties that Bind Us), which tells the stories of children from Puebla, San Lucas Atzala, San Andrés Calpan, and San Mateo Ozolco whose parents left them in order to find work in the U.S. and El viaje de los niños (“The Children’s Journey”), which was brought to FringeArts this November and tells the stories of Mexican immigrant children who have crossed the border to come live in Philadelphia. Although, Nora does not consider her work “art therapy,” it’s undeniable the overwhelmingly powerful effect telling their own stories through art have had on the participants. She lets us in on the process behind Salud de Puentes’ beautiful and meaningful projects.

On the other side of the city in Hunting Park, Esperanza, a faith-based nonprofit organization driven by the biblical mandate to “serve the least of these,” strengthens Hispanic communities through a large variety of educational, economic development, and advocacy programs and services. Their specific programs range from seemingly simple yet impactful programs such as distributing trees to community members to running the exceptional Esperanza Academy and Esperanza College (in partnership with Eastern College) to Esperanza’s latest project, the opening of a state-of-the-art theater in December. Rev. Danny Cortés, with his older brother Louis, sits at the forefront of this 30-year-old organization devoted to improving the barrio for the here and now and fortifying it for the future. For the second half of the episode, Raina and podcast producer, Sabrina, sit down with Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff of Esperanza, Reverend Danny Cortés, in the organization’s beautiful headquarters. He gives us a picture of how the organization got started and where it is going next.

                                 Dany Cortés

Listen to the episode to learn more about Puentes de Salud and Esperanza’s work and how you can support them.

Show notes
Learn more about Puentes de Salud: https://bit.ly/2hen25G

Learn more about other projects Nora Litz has led at Puentes de Salud:

Al Dia – https://bit.ly/2HwpQW5

Buzzfeed – https://bzfd.it/2rLLBuO

NBC News – https://nbcnews.to/2FJRDH5

Learn more about Esperanza – https://bit.ly/2Q2fSVG

“They see it [the LGBTQ community] as entertainment and forget that the entertainers you see go home at the end of the day. They don’t go home as this person. They’ve had coming out stories. Some of them have been homeless. Some of them have been in hiding. Some of them look for acceptance. Everybody. All of us look for acceptance because it’s not always given…They have to go other places to find acceptance. That’s exactly where this scene that everybody loves so much, that everybody is so interested in comes from.” – Torri Gillis

Dating back to the early 1900s, balls and ball culture came to prominence between the 1960s and 1980s as largely Black and Latino LGBT youth in New York used it as a place and way to express their creativity and build community and family. The culture remains alive and well in its birthplace of course, but has spread to cities across the country including Philadelphia and world. With the popularity of documentaries like Paris is Burning (1990) and television shows such as My House and Pose, more and more people have fallen in love with the art of voguing and ballroom.

Tori Gillis, assistant director of Legendary and accomplished voguer in the Philadelphia Ballroom Scene, stops by Happy Hour on the Fringe and gives us an insider look into the the world of ballroom: The dos and don’ts of ball culture, the difference between a ‘dip’ and a ‘shwack,’ and the voguers that you need to know. She also reminds us that although balls are fun, we cannot forget about the real people with real struggles who are behind the fabulous outfits, the jaw-dropping hair and make-up, the boldest walks, and baddest voguing.

Photo courtesy of Johanna Austin

Required Reading/Watching
Paris is Burning (1990)
My House
Pose
How Do I Look (2006)
Voguers such as Ashley Icon, Kemar Jewel, Destiny West, and Allison Prodigy
This week’s episode of Happy Hour on the Fringe.

Everybody has a story, and First Person Arts Festival is back with a line up of personal stories that will make you laugh, cry, and reflect as well as workshops to empower you to tell your own. Jamie J. Brunson stopped by our podcast, Happy Hour on the Fringe, to give us a preview of this year’s Festival and an inside look into what the Festival seeks to represent.  FringeArts is excited to be partnering with First Person Arts to bring several shows to our own stage including:

Felonious Monk

Wed, Nov 7 to Fri, Nov 9

You may have seen Felonious Munk as the “resident blegghead” on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, but now Felonious Munk has updated his smash-hit Second City performance and is bringing it to the First Person Arts stage. This is a hilarious yet harrowing first-person story of how one black man went from six years in a state prison to a six-figure job in corporate America. Felonious then transitions to a new life as an activist and satirist in his one-man show debuting at the First Person Arts Festival.

Pa’lante

Sun, Nov 11 to Mon, Nov 12

Gabriela Sanchez, Founder and Executive Producer of Power Street Theatre Company, joined the First Person Arts creative team this year, but you might remember Sanchez and her work from Power Street Theatre’s past productions, Shelter in Place and Morir Sonyando, which appeared in the 2015 and 2014 Fringe Festivals respectively.

Gabriela is masterful at creating devised theater that is passionate and pushes for social change. Her Festival directorial debut Pa’lante is no different. This devised work asks a diverse representation of the Latinx community to share their stories of living the Latinx experience in these United States of America. Influenced by the five senses, cultural roots, and resilience, each storyteller explores traditions and legacies.

For this run of Pa’lante, we are proud to partner with Puentes de Salud, a health clinic serving the Latinx immigrant communities of Philadelphia by bringing Puentes de Salud’s El Viaje de los Niños, a visual project which tells the stories of Mexican immigrant children who have crossed the border to come to Philadelphia, to FringeArts. We invite you to explore “El Viaje de los Niños, developed by Puentes Director of Art and Culture Nora Litz, before and/or after the performances of Pa’lante.

Legendary

Wed, Nov 14 to Fri, Nov 16

Voguing did not begin with Madonna by any means. Largely Black and Latino LGBT youth created the dance style during the 1980s Ballroom Scene in New York City. Kemar Jewel and the Xcel Dance Crew pay homage to the style and era with their hit show Legendary, which premiered in the 2017 First Person Arts Festival. The one-night-only performance was so fabulous, Legendary is back for a three-night run at this year’s festival.

Stay after Thursday, Nov 15’s performance for a talkback with Kemar Jewel and the Xcel Dance Crew. On Friday, Nov 16, we have a very special evening in store. A *legendary* Vogue Showcase Ball will follow the performance. The night continues with our November Get Pegged Cabaret featuring Justin Sayre’s Storytime Pajama Party.

GrandSlam: Swept Away

Sat, Nov 17

The First Person Arts Festival closes out with the GrandSlam. The culmination of First Person Art’s monthly StorySlam series, the GrandSlam brings togeter all the StorySlam winners from the past year to go head to head and see who will take home the title of “Best Storyteller in Philadelphia.”

Sometimes amusing, sometimes heartbreaking but always relevant and moving, First Person Arts Festival is a chance to sit back and listen – something so many of us do too little of today.

To hear more about what the festival has in store, check out our interview with executive director of First Person Arts, Jamie Brunson on Happy Hour on the Fringe here.

Get your tickets at FringeArts.com and see the full line-up visit firstpersonarts.org. Follow FringeArts on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We’d love to hear what First Person Arts shows you’re seeing.

FringeArts believes in the inherent value of diverse communities, and the importance of learning, being open, and listening. From our ticket-buying process to arriving at our building, the performances themselves to our post-show experiences, we are working hard to continuously improve our accessibility. We’re excited to share our new Accessibility Guide, where you can find a description of what to expect when you come to any performances at FringeArts, including relaxed performances which are adapted to reduce anxiety and for audience members with sensory needs. We hope this new initiative creates an even greater sense of inclusiveness at FringeArts. You can find the guide under the Accessibility tab on our website, or directly here.

In addition to these efforts, we also provide Audio Descriptions, Open Captioning, and ASL Interpretation for any performance with one month notice. We always have Hearing Assistance Headsets available at the box office upon request.

FringeAccess Members, for those holding a Pennsylvania Access Card, can receive up to four $2 to any performance at FringeArts per year. Tickets may be purchased through the FringeAccess Membership login, by calling 215.413.1318, or at the box office before a show.

More detailed accessibility information can be found on our Know Before You Go sheet, or by contacting Patron Services at patronservies@fringearts.com or 215.413.1318.

Many thanks to Roger Ideishi, Occupational Therapy Program Director and professor at Temple University, and his graduate student team (Remy Binder, Vivian Hin, Christina Neroni, and Johanna Reed) for their help putting together the Accessibility Guide!

Within the last twenty years, technology has changed every facet of our lives, and art has not been immune to the technological revolution. The computer and internet have given rise to an entirely new medium with which artists, whether they self-identify as one or not, can experiment and play.

In Philadelphia, the digital art community may still be a bit “underground”—some people may say non-existent multimedia artist and founder of CRUXspace Andrew Zahn notes, but they would be mistaken. The community of people using technology creatively is growing, and three very different institutions are at the center of that growth: CRUXspace, FringeArts, and Philly Game Mechanics.

Many galleries, like Philly’s Vox Populi, show digital and multimedia art, but few are dedicated solely to the medium. Bitforms in Manhattan comes to mind, but a comparable space does not exist in Philadelphia. Enter Andrew Cameron Zahn. Zahn, who started experimenting with online art and design applications like Photoshop and Quark as a kid, sought to fill that void with his new media art gallery CRUXspace in 2014. Growing out of art exhibitions for “hackers” that he organized as a student at the University of the Arts, CRUXspace found its first home at 7th and Master in Ludlow. Andrew and lead curator Kim Brickley have collaborated with the likes of Mural Arts, University of the Arts and FringeArts and have presented artists such as G. H. Hovagimyan and Molly Soda. Earlier this year CRUXspace moved out of its original location and found a new home at the WeWork in Northern Liberties, but its purpose, to provide a space for creators experimenting with technology in art and design has moved with it. In its new space, CRUXspace will be presenting a new exhibition featuring the digital media artists Swoon, who makes use of stop-motion animation, installation, and video techniques and Eric Westray, who employs cutting-edge 3D modeling techniques to bring to life impossible humans and environments. The Swoon/Westray exhibition opens October 26.

Past CRUXspace collaborator FringeArts seeks to provide digital artists with a platform of their own as well but in a very different way. FringeArts has maintained a mission “to present world-class, contemporary performing arts that challenge convention and inspire new ways of thinking” for decades. In 2015, the organization’s Fringe Festival was already 19 years old, but the team recognized that much of the art that aligned so perfectly with their mission was being created digitally but not presented nor seen. With about 15 digital art pieces, FringeArts launched its first Digital Fringe, a platform that allows audience members to experience the work of digital and multimedia artists for free, as part of the annual festival.  Three years later, Digital Fringe has grown to 26 pieces with an additional two digital works, R&J and SPIES!, featured in the traditional Fringe Festival. Digital Fringe artists provide a URL or another method (app, text message, etc.) to access their technologic creation on the FringeArts website and in the Festival Guide. This year, you were able to cook with drag queens, outsmart the undead, and escape-the-room (chatroom that is). 

Whereas Fringe and CRUXspace work with people who think of themselves as artists, that is not necessarily the case for FringeArts’ Digital Fringe partner, Philly Game Mechanics. Philly Game Mechanics is a charitable organization focused on supporting game development and indie game enthusiasts in Philadelphia, PA. PGM members take game development classes, create relationships and share their work with other gamers, creators, and makers through different talks and their indie arcade cabinet, the Philly-Tron (currently being housed at the Franklin Institute.) Through partnerships and relationships with other organizations such as The Franklin Institute and Drexel Game Program, Jake O’Brien from PGM points out, members further develop their skills and expand their perspectives. Recognizing the benefits of such partnerships herself, Jenny Kessler, a FringeArts intern brought her supervisor, Jarrod Markman, and PGM together to partner. Jake posed the question “What is digital art?” to the PGM community, and eventually, several Digital Fringe pieces were developed by members. On September 12, many of those pieces were shown at Philly Game Mechanic’s Digital Art Showcase at Harrisburg University’s Philadelphia Campus.

Although we may not be ready to distinguish digital art as its own distinct branch of art yet, CRUXspace, FringeArts and Philly Game Mechanics are filling the void and bringing the digital creative community to the surface. Once other institutions begin bridging the disconnect between themselves and the hackers, gamers, and artists utilizing technology in creative ways, these three groups will likely be cornerstones to the digital art community in Philadelphia. In a lot of ways, they already are.