THEATRE ISN’T DEAD:
HOLLYWOOD FRINGE 2025, JUNE 5-29
For those under the impression that creativity begins and ends in LA on the multi-screens of the AMC and IMAX theatres in every mall scattered about this town, the 2025 Hollywood Fringe has arrived to disabuse you of this false dichotomy.
For the past 14 years, come the month of June, the Hollywood Fringe Festival has swooped down to occupy Santa Monica Boulevard from the vicinity of Vine Street to Highland, with outposts on Western and Melrose Avenues. For the entire month, from June 5-29, every stage, available store front, bar, performance venue, coffee shop, back alley and occasional cemetery will be hosting plays of every variety, operas, immersive experiences, dance recitals, clown exhibitions, magicians and lots of solo shows running the gauntlet from a stunning bald model’s inspiring saga of her triumph over alopecia, to the star of a popular HBO series sharing the debauchery drenched memories of his years as a fixture in Germany’s Underground Techno-trash scene.
How many shows? This year, more than 416. Here I offer 42 shows that caught my attention, about 10% of the total number of participating productions. I include some performers I’ve seen before, international offerings, and stuff one just has a sixth sense about. But you need to discover what other wonderous entertainment and spectacular performances are being offered for yourself. Stage and Cinema will be publishing reviews, so feel free to contact us should you discover gold in them thar hills of Hollywood.
The festival officially begins on June 12, but previews run June 5-10, when it’s much easier to book shows (you’d be amazed how many sell out). Except for the rare full-length show, individual outings run from 10 to 90 minutes (average time: 45 minutes to an hour) with ticket prices wavering between “free” to twenty dollars (average $10 to $12). Running through June 29, the Hollywood Fringe offers a smorgasbord of tasty entertainment guaranteed to please any artistic appetite. To help you navigate scheduling (especially when you need to get from one event to another in five minutes!), peruse the back pages of this year’s Fringe Guide.
Here’s a sampling in no particular order. Click on the title for show info and performance dates.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
BEST. DAD. NEVER.
Woven from his essays featured in Cosmopolitan and O The Oprah Magazine, gay Armenian-American Haig “Hike” Chahinian recounts his humbling and oft-time hilarious adventures as he fumbles through fathering a bouncing biracial baby girl. A compassionate contemplation of all the hardships and hazards the heart is willing to endure for the joy of holding the world’s greatest treasure in your arms.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
THE DOG LOG
The West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department informed performer\writer Richard Lucas that to file a civil complaint against the hoarder next door to him and her two incessantly barking Yorkies from Hell, it would require he keep a “Dog Log”—a daily record chronicling their barking to show the court they qualify as “public nuisances.” But as he begins keeping the “log,” fate steps in with sadistic whimsy. The hoarder is hospitalized, and suddenly Lucas finds himself the caretaker to her two badly behaved Yorkshire terriers, the furry banes of his existence.
The show is based on the book The Dog Log: An Accidental Memoir of Yapping Yorkies, Quarreling Neighbors, and the Unlikely Friendships That Saved My Life. As I wrote in my TVolution review: “With a style approaching Japanese senryū, Lucas takes us down dark paths, but the light at the end of his tunnel is a reminder of a too often forgotten truth that, as Robert Ingersoll wrote, ‘We rise by lifting others.’” Signed copies will be on sale after every show. Directed by Bruno Oliver, and produced by Steven Vlasak, this true story of an epic journey—one which begins with a knock on a neighbor’s door—celebrates the amazing changes forged within the relationships we form.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
MARK VIGEANT: OUT THERE
With his last two solo shows, Mark Pleases You & The Best Man Show (reviewed by Stage and Cinema), Mark Vigeant sauntered over to the Hollywood Fringe like Godzilla over Tokyo. Only much, much funnier. Mark is dealing out uncut comic heroin; one taste and you’re jonesing for more. This newest interactive work tells the tale of one man’s journey into the vast wilderness of Alaska, where he tries to survive with no food or water, all the while filming himself so he can be a viral sensation. Mr. Vigeant tells me, “It’s kinda like if Grizzly Man was an interactive physical clown piece that was slightly less sad.” Expect an avalanche of absurd fun.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
PANDORA’S BOOMBOX
One of the crowd pleasers from HFF24 was the beautifully moving, shyly entertaining, wonderfully performed Delusions and Grandeur, featuring Australian clown and classical cellist Karen Hall. All that’s being revealed about her new show is this: two clowns are desperate to sneak back into paradise.
Before Pandora released stress into the world, harmony and a good night’s sleep were easy to come by. But now, well, now we’re all just trying. So give yourself a break today, you deserve more play. For this family-friendly, non-verbal tale (think “Mr. Bean”), Hall’s clowning partner is deviser/writer Cota.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
MIKE BLAHA: INTERNATIONAL JOKE
One of the top Fringe producers, Mike Blaha has been treading the boards himself with two critically acclaimed shows, Spanking the Monkey; The Etymology of Onanistic Euphemisms, and Shagadelic – An Exploration of Terms for Doing the Dirty. This round, the U.S. premiere of International Joke, Blaha will regale audiences with how he was mocked by a monkey in Bali, nearly fell victim to Parisian muggers, and dodged being murdered in Sarajevo, all in his never-ending quest for the Holy Grail of comedy: the funniest joke in the whole wide world.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
MUST GO ON: A RITE OF PASSAGE
A solo show directed by Jozben Barrett, Terrell M. Green offers a poetic multimedia exploration of “coming out” through poetry, yoga, voguing, and puppetry, touching on themes of identity, mental health, and loss. More than a show, Must Go On is a call to action: to build community, break generational cycles, and redefine what it means to thrive.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
ELTON IN VICE-BOYS SCANDAL
This world premiere is an exposé of Britain’s most notorious libel case, the brutal, bare-knuckle courtroom clash pitting Elton John against Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun, infamous for headlines like “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster.” Written and performed by UK Fringe veteran Henry Naylor—whose Afghanistan Is Not Funny was awarded as Best International Production by TheTVolution in 2022—Elton in Vice-Boys Scandal, the story of a glitter-covered David against that bloated corporate giant responsible for Fox News, takes us to 1987, when The Sun ran an article accusing Elton John of paying “rent boys” for sex. The Rocketman would eventually file a total of 17 libel suits as he fought to clear his name.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
MONA LISA MISSING! THE MUSICAL!
In August of 1911, an art lover visiting the Louvre asked a museum guard why the most famous painting in the world wasn’t where it had been hanging since 1797. And that was how the guard, the Louvre, Paris, France, Europe and the rest of the world discovered that Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa had been stolen. What ensued was a madcap global manhunt (well, actually “La Gioconda-hunt”) that even landed Pablo Picasso in a police lineup—a perfect subject for a musical! A fact-based musical whodunit featuring a cast of thousands (okay, just nine).
With music by five-time Grammy nominee David Arkenstone, lyrics by musical theatre legend Wayne Moore, and book by Fringe veteran and really nice guy Steven Vlasak, this world premiere has singing, can-can, butting heads with France’s Sherlock Holmes Police Inspector Louis Lepine, and uncovering the beginnings of love and redemption with an aspiring Italian artist coincidentally named Lisa.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
HER RAGE
In a Taiwanese police station, a woman sits alone in the interrogation room after confessing to the murder of her abusive husband. Exhausted and traumatized, she falls into a dark dream that calls forth Medea and other women who were victims of domestic violence, and the painful isolation of being discriminated against as outsiders. Together they dance in sorrow and rage at the shared fate they suffered and seek to overcome. From China, Her Rage, written and directed by Dorothy Guo and Yuwen Yang, with music by Jiawei Shen and Giada Jiang as choreographer, we learn that sometimes violence becomes the only path to liberation, but it comes with a consequence.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
BELA LUGOSI MEETS EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
Rose London’s one woman show imagines a meeting between the great Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi (1882-1956), who is in Hollywood to recreate his celebrated stage role of Dracula, and Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Written by Jordan R. Young with Christine Cummings directing. (They had me at “Bela.”)
Lugosi and St. Vincent Millay had a number of things in common: Both achieved international recognition during their lifetimes for their respective artistic endeavors, both were charismatic, both had active romantic lives, both were prominent social activists, and both struggled with drug addiction at the end of their lives. So, what happens when Bela meets Edna? And what happens when the show’s narrator, Rose London, is commissioned by iconic 1960s TV star Bettye Ackerman (1924-2006) to write a solo performance piece in which Bettye will portray Edna on stage, to be helmed by prolific director Ted Post (1918-2013)? You’ll soon find out.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
WOODY FU: ONE MAN JOHN WICK 2.0
Merry mayhem and a brutal ballet of bloody battling knuckle busters are back as Woody Fu returns with the sequel to his epic HFF24’s One Man John Wick. Utterly sublime silliness with Fu himself as the kookiest and koolest ikonic Keanu! Version 2.0 has new games and pieces, as it preps for an Edinburgh Fringe run in August.
This scripted solo show takes us on the set of John Wick Chapter 5: E Pluribus Unum. Keanu needs the audience’s help to recreate all the hallmarks of this billion dollar franchise: elaborate fight choreography, death-defying stunts, and a plot device called “undeveloped dead wife character.”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
EARTH, WIND & CAR FIRE
In Earth, Wind & Car Fire, a journey of self-discovery, Janora McDuffie explores and rejoices in the twists and turns of life’s joyful road trip, taking us on a captivating journey of self-discovery and transformation. From embracing her sexuality and navigating the complexities of race to redefining personal expectations, this 60-minute solo show directed by Joseph Megel is also a celebration of life’s triumphs. Come with Janora on this entertaining & soulful joyride and oversharing adventure.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
TO BE LIBERATED
On August 15, 1945, the Allies announced the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan, ending the Second World War. It also ended 35 years of Japan’s brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. Today, Liberation Day is the only holiday celebrated by both North and South Korea. Commemorating the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation, Karla Suyeon Kim and Aubrey Kim portray two women who must face the choices each made during that occupation. Produced by Soo Chyun, who unleashed Cadenza on last year’s Fringe, the show is performed in Korean with English subtitles.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
THE SECOND COMING OF JOAN OF ARC
Bridging historical gravitas with bold, contemporary relevance, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, a solo performance from the UK, makes its U.S. debut at the 2025 Hollywood Fringe. Written by Obie Award-winning playwright Carolyn Gage and performed by Romanian actress Catinca Maria Nistor (seen in Golda, opposite Helen Mirren), the show conjures up the historical Joan to confront and expose today’s brutal misogyny and patriarchal oppression, in which women still find themselves consigned to flames on the political and social stakes of the modern world for the heresy of following their own visions.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
ANTONY ZIONI – TALES OF THE ANCIENT EAST
Described as “an ancient fantastical immersive experience,” Antony Zioni’s musical storytelling spectacular commences with Eden’s serpent, shimmies into the realm of Cleopatra, hops into the biblical tale of Exodus—complete with those crowd pleasing plagues—and then high kicks it to Golgotha to check out the crucifixion with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as the eleventh hour number. Sounds like toe-tapping fun to me.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
ABSOLUTE LEGENDS!
Two dudes hang out shooting the breeze. One is Heracles, bad boy of ancient Greece, and the other is Yuri Gagarin, first man in space, who had it a lot easier than Laika, the Soviet space dog.
Performers Will Thomas McFadden and Alan Linic assure audiences of “grueling physical comedy, advanced dialect work, bold movements that occasionally resemble dance, and deeply consensual audience interaction.” Cosmic hijinks where no clown has gone before.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
A HISTORICAL GAY COMEDY STARRING NANCY REAGAN; CLOWN SHOW
Seamus Mulcahy, in speaking of his solo clown show, tells us: “One Faggot’s border line infatuation with Presidential Libraries & Museums has taken him nowhere in life… Now that Faggot’s busting out all over the door steps of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.” On Nancy Reagan: “Who is she? Who was she? Who does she hope to be?” Where does the show take place? “Not heaven, not hell; sounds like a bathhouse on a Thursday evening.”
The desecration of an iconic Republican heroine, hmmmmm? Sounds like a good night of theatre to me.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
5:45
Edinburgh Fringe alumni from the UK, Abi Watkinson brings L.A. her darkly comic show of an uptight accounts clerk on the rise whose tightly wound existence begins to unravel when she encounters the turbulence of her ascent. An orderly life collides with a messy truth.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
One of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies is given a uniquely modern 75-minute spin. As any bardolater will tell you, “nothing” was a word Shakespeare delighted in using. In A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, “to airy nothing” his poet’s pen gives a “habitation and a name;” and in King Lear, he warned us “Nothing will come of nothing,” yet so much suffering did. In Elizabethan days, “nothing” was pronounced “noting,” and “noting” meant gossiping or overhearing. So, the title’s a play on words lost to us today. But director Evelyn-Claire Smith puts the “noting” back by cleverly framing the play’s persona as participants in a reality TV show.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
RAG DOLL ON A BOMB SITE
Whether as Maria Callas or P.T. Barnum’s Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind, Shelley Cooper’s musical biographies have been standouts of the Fringe Festival. This time she takes us to Berlin, 1928. It’s the opening night of The Threepenny Opera and the legendary Lotte Lenya awaits us in her dressing room.
Today, Lenya is remembered best for her role as Klebb kicking at James Bond with her poison-tipped high heels in 1963’s From Russia With Love, but her stage career stretched from pre-Nazi Germany to the original Broadway cast of Cabaret. A fascinating subject for the talented Cooper. Infusing a new contemporary score composed by Cooper, choreography, dazzling multimedia, this solo musical dance show takes a gritty look at a woman who fled her abusive home, survived adversity and blazed a trail as a landmark performer.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
LA CANCIÓN DE NUESTROS DÍAS
A play of memory, entirely in Spanish, the story of three sisters in the mountainous region of northern El Salvador. A land of imposing landscapes, crystal-clear springs, and music, that is about to be irreversibly transformed by the arrival of war. Three voices, one story: La Canción de Nuestros Días recreates the lives of the three sisters just before their world would be lost in war forever.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
OH FUCK! AN ICEBERG! A ONE WOMAN TITANIC WITH MAGIC PRESHOW
Mallie McCown is a wide-eyed 12-year-old who, enthralled after seeing James Cameron’s Titanic, recreates the great nautical mishaps in her room, playing all 2,200 doomed souls, the entire North Atlantic, and who knows what else. We’re promised “a madhouse of physical comedy and some raucous audience participation.” So, screw Jack and Rose, the big crybabies, let’s have some cheap laughs. This 90-minute “One Woman Titanic” is aided by the magic of Dylan George.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
WOODY ALLAN’S MR. BIG
A film noir, slapstick theomachy from Woody Allen’s Getting Even (1971), his first collection of humorous stories and essays. Brian Knudson plays the cynical gumshoe hired to hunt down the Supreme Being, the Almighty, Jehovah, Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, Odin, aka “Mr. Big.” Featuring “quick-change chameleon” Catherine Allison as a cast of everybody else, and Tuba Heatherton as Groucho Marx, Knudson’s 30-minute adaptation promises to be hard-boiled laughs a-go-go!
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
ACCORDION RYAN’S POP BANGERS
Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, John Lennon, Peter Townshend, Sheryl Crow, and even Prince were “stomach Steinway” enthusiasts; in other words, they played the maligned accordion.
Since leaving Austria, Ryan Simpson has been globe-trotting Fringes from Perth (Winner Best Cabaret & Variety Show) and Adelaide (Winner Best Cabaret) up to the Reykjavik Fringe (Winner – Spirit of the Fringe) with a hop over to the UK to perform on Britain’s Got Talent (“You’re funny, I like you.” – Simon Cowell).
Ryan brings his combination of comedy, cabaret, “sing-along,” and the melodious music of the “groanbox” to the HFF. It wouldn’t surprise me if we all turned into apostles of the accordion with little shrines in our homes to Lawrence Welk.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
HOW DO I HOLD IT?
The first love of Tabatha Myers, a Black girl from the Appalachian hills, was thirty years older and a Welsh pop star (Green Gartside? Tony Etoria? Michael Jones?) The star-crossed lovers parted and went their separate ways. Flash-forward to 2021 and Myers finds herself flying to England fueled by a burning urge to see the face of her first love. This solo show—“an earnest comedy about a real tragedy”—recounts what transpired over the next two days that landed her in the city of brotherly love, bruised, battered and laughing very hard. Produced by Lou Caltabiano.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
WILDS OF SEA
Producer, director, puppet builder, and puppeteer Shannon Reagan, along with seven other puppeteers, offers a 30-minute deep-sea puppet adventure. Featuring life-like puppets and real-sized predators, we follow a young seal pup, who—after being separated from its mother—embarks on a journey through kelp forests, and the open ocean, befriending sea creatures, dodging danger, and discovering the strength within.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
NO
From Italy, Annalisa Limardi faces the outside world, a technological nemesis embodied by a microphone, “a symbol, a medium, and an amplifier of speech.” This 35-minute solo show is a titan battle between a woman and a device—and making her own voice heard.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
A PAPER ORCHESTRA
From Emmy-nominated writer Michael Jamin, (King of the Hill, Beavis & Butt-Head, Just Shoot Me) a one-hour solo show that poses the question: “What if the smallest, almost forgotten moments were the ones that shaped us most?” Based on his bestselling book of the same title, Jamin said, “When my eccentric neighbor died, I learned he was a hoarder. It filled me with judgment, which is a quality I loath in myself even though I’m so damn good at it you’d think I’d be proud. Exploring his house, I had to admit I was keeping my own dark secret.” Copies of A Paper Orchestra will be available after each show, with the author signing. Directed by Cynthia Jamin.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
SLAY ME
From Theatre of Mutiny, your typical romantic comedy, boy meets girl, girl loves boy, boy murders twelve other women, girl feels neglected. Okay, maybe Slay Me written by and featuring Veronica Rosas, isn’t all that “typical,” but gosh, she was sure there was a spark between them. Directed by Ashley Karp.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
OH, CONSTANTINE!
How’s this for hilarious? Constantine the Great is the Roman emperor who slaughtered his son and daughter-in-law, drowned his wife after first poisoning her father and brother, had the throats of his half-sister’s husband and son cut, and did all this after becoming a Christian and establishing Christianity as Rome’s official religion. It’s now 325 A.D. and Constantine has called the First Council of Nicaea to figure out if Jesus was kidding about all that love one another stuff or what? Four bishops—each more ridiculous than the last—and a mysterious barmaid with secrets turn divine disputes into a holy mess of wit, antics, and outright lunacy. Is Jesus God? Or just God-adjacent? A musical comedy written and directed by Jan-David Soutar, and composed by Soutar, Kyle Donald & Aviram Spies, Oh, Constantine! asks us to “come for the theology, stay for the unholy laughter!”
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
SMILE: THE STORY OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Smile, Marcel Cole’s homage to the life and career of Charlie Chaplin has earned the performer awards from the Adelaide Fringe, Newcastle Fringe, Sydney Fringe, and San Diego Fringe, to name a few. It is fitting that Cole has now brought Chaplin and his “Little Tramp” back to the city that made him into the world’s biggest star, then turned him into an outcast. Cancel Culture is nothing new.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
TRUNK
Two sisters are attending to the unpleasant task of cleaning out their dead father’s house when they come upon a huge grim-looking trunk with a formidable lock. A “pitch black comedy” from the team of Jim Hanna, Kate Hellen, and Lucie Beeby, Fringe veterans all.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
STUMBLING ON CEREMONY: FROM AYAHUASCA CONFESSIONS TO MY DAUGHTER’S WEDDING
A divorced single dad (writer\performer Larry Davidson) is tasked by his daughter to give a speech at her wedding. Plagued by self-doubts as to whether he has any “nuggets of wisdom” to share with her, he attends a spiritual ceremony where he makes the acquaintance of Mother Ayahuasca, a South American psychoactive beverage, traditionally used by Indigenous cultures which can result in nausea, vomiting and discussing the meaning of life with your neighbor’s cat. If this show is half as clever as Davidson’s last Fringe Show, The Undiscovered Country: A Skeptics Guide to the Afterlife, then you’re bound to be entertained. Heather Dowling directs.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
ONE MAN POE
To commemorate the 175th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s death, Stephen Smith from the UK will be offering two shows with four classic stories by the master of macabre. One Man Poe won Smith the Best Horror Solo Show Award of Edinburgh Fringe 2024,
Show 1: The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe’s chilling account of a man’s descent into madness and murder, and The Pit and the Pendulum, in which a prisoner struggles to cling onto his sanity as he faces torture at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition.
Show 2: The Black Cat, a stunningly precise analysis of the psychology of guilt, and brutal indictment of the dangers of alcoholism, which sadly Poe knew only too well, and The Raven, perhaps the most famous of American poems, in which the narrator struggles to free himself of the painful remembrance of a dead lover, as he also clings onto those memories unwilling to lose her again to forgetfulness.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
DOG OF CARNAGE
Writer Benjamin Schwartz offers up a mixture of “rom-dramedy” and “courtroom drama” with a pinch of Lassie Come Home thrown in for good effect. Directed by Natalie Dressel, visit a courtroom where love is on trial and the adopted child in the center of it all is… definitely not human. In their passionate, fierce, and at times, absurd battle, X (Callie Ott) and Y (Spencer Weitzel) are forced to confront every aspect of their identities, as well as where they fit into the world and each other’s lives.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
JUST TO BE CLOSE TO YOU
Renowned lounge singer Carl Poteraychke (America’s Got Talent quarterfinalist Cam Poter) will belt his audience with love, love songs, and who knows what else. Expect to be thoroughly wooed by this debut clown show, just for an hour.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
𝝅r²
From Spain, actress\director\creator Pia Nicoletti offers in 𝝅r² (pi r squared) a wordless performance full of physical theatrics, dance, aerial acrobatics, sound collages, and artistic visuals. Switch off your mind, unmask your heart.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
SHAKE IT AWAY: THE ANN MILLER STORY
Ann Miller (1923 – 2004) was an American actress and dancer whose career spanned from Room Service with the Marx Brothers to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Kayla Boye, who gave a knockout performance as Elizabeth Taylor in Call Me Elizabeth (HFF22) brings another icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age to life as she revisits an MGM soundstage in 1970.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
NEAR SEX FOR WORK
A wide-eyed innocent comes to the big city with dreams of stardom only to be lured into the Porn Industry. It’s a story you’ve heard a thousand times. And if you want to hear it a thousand and one times, this show by writer/performer/sex-adjacent worker Daniel Shar may be the ticket. Shar shares how he tumbled down an X-rated rabbit hole that took him from a mild-mannered dildo salesman to the Porn film industry’s top (maybe only) exclusively non-nude non-sex extra. Properly censored videos chronicling Shar’s rise to stardom will be used in this show. CONTENT WARNING: Adult content and sexually explicit language. Being weird or creepy about all this is strictly prohibited!
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
PUMP UP THE VOLUME: THE MUSICAL
The film Pump Up the Volume follows Mark, a shy high schooler living in a small conservative town, who starts a pirate radio station from his bedroom, broadcasting as “Hard Harry.” Based on this 1990 coming-of-age cult classic written and directed by Allan Moyle, the world premiere of Pump Up the Volume: The Musical was set to open on April 3, 2020—but unfortunately, COVID-19 beat them out, with the first case on January 19, 2020.
Now, directed by Dave Solomon and featuring a cast of the hottest NYC and L.A. performers and musicians, this Special Presentation of a New Musical promises to be a must-see special event at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Starring Broadway’s Anthony Norman (Reefer Madness) in the role made famous by Christian Slater, this full-out, 2-and-1/2 hour musical channels the rebellious energy of underground radio into a heart-pounding theatrical experience. Be among the first to see the raw, defiant and deeply human spirit of Pump Up The Volume by Jeff Thomson (music) and Jeremy Desmon (book and lyrics), with this staged concert production at the Hollywood Fringe as their first step to Broadway.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
MS. TUCKER WILL SEE YOU NOW
Sophie Tucker (1886 – 1966) was a Russian-born American singer and comedienne who dominated vaudeville with her raunchy humor and risqué songs. Laural Meade‘s tour de force performance as The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas serves up the extraordinary life and music of this legendary broad. Combining the pizazz of Tucker’s numbers with raucous audience interaction, Meade channels Tucker’s irreverent wit and sexed-up spirit. With charming side-kick Fred Cassidy at the keys, you’ll discover why Tucker was the most sought-after nightclub entertainer of her day.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
AND FINALLY….
FRINGE! TONITE! ALIVE! WITH ALEX ENRIQUEZ
Back by popular demand, the show that talks all things Fringe! With musical selections from hit shows and interviews with the movers and shakers of the Fringe family, Fringe! Tonite! is hosted by Alex Enriquez, the man who ironed the ruffles outa “cool.” A quick, entertaining way to dive into the deep end of Fringe!
poster graphics by Donn Marlou Ramirez
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
This article implies “The Second Coming of Joan of Arc” is somehow historical in spite of the fact that the following article at the Medieval History Database points out that it doesn’t even get the basics correct, and almost all of its claims about Joan of Arc’s circumstances and beliefs were invented out of thin air or based on the playwright’s life and beliefs: http://www.medieval-history.org/index.php?MHDB-Article-Review-The-Second-Coming-of-Joan-of-Arc-by-Carolyn-Gage