Tag Archives: Cincinnati Fringe Festival

May 25, 2021 · 9:22 am

Grapes Battle for Supremacy at Cincy Fringe in PLANET OF THE GRAPES LIVE – An Epic Sci-Fi Toy Theater Experience

Basic RGBPLANET EARTH – PLANET OF THE GRAPES LIVE is pandemic performance pioneer Peter Michael Marino’s internationally acclaimed comedic homage that takes audiences of all ages on an epic, 60-minute adventure fusing the Victorian era’s Toy Theater movement with the 1968 Charlton Heston/Rod Serling classic, “Planet of the Apes.” Digital performances for Cincy Fringe play live from New York June 5-18, 2021.

In PLANET OF THE GRAPES LIVE, an astronaut crew crash-lands on an unfamiliar planet in the distant future and are enslaved by a society where grapes have evolved into speaking creatures with human-like intelligence. The original “Planet of the Apes” is credited as one of the most groundbreaking science fiction films of all time. The film’s themes of science vs. religion, biased class systems, and mankind’s self-perceived entitlement to everything on Earth strongly resonated with Marino who peppers the script with excavated passages from co-screenwriter Rod Serling’s original screenplays.

What is Toy Theater? The early 18th century ushered in Europe’s Toy Theater movement, where adults and children assembled mass-produced paper replicas of over 300 popular plays that included the script, stage, scenery, and characters. These DIY kits were sold at the concession stands of opera houses, playhouses, and vaudeville theaters to be performed for family members and guests. Toy Theater literally brought theater into homes.

Since the pandemic began in March 2020, Marino has presented over 100 performances of his interactive, digital live shows “Show Up, Kids!” and “Desperately Seeking the Exit” which were nominated for “Best Zoom Show Performed in Real Time” (BroadwayWorld), and “Outstanding Achievement In An Individual Performance” (No Proscenium). Marino was named “2021 Creative of the Year” by the Young-Howze Theatre Awards.

WHAT: PLANET OF THE GRAPES LIVE
WHO: Created by Peter Michael Marino
Directed by Michole Biancosino
Music by Michael Harren

WHEN:

  • 8:00 p.m. EDT Saturday, June 5
  • 6:15 p.m. EDT Sunday, June 6
  • 1:00 p.m. EDT Saturday, June 12
  • 4:30 p.m. EDT Sunday,  June 13
  • 8:00 p.m. EDT Friday, June 18

WHERE: Television, computer, or tablet

HOW MUCH: $10-$15

TICKETS: https://cincyfringe.com/planet-of-the-grapes-live/
RUNNING TIME: 60 minutes, with 3-minute intermission
WEBSITE: www.planetgrapeshow.com

BIOS
Peter Michael Marino (Creator) is a NYC-based teacher, writer, performer, and producer. He’s one of the first artists in the USA to present live, online, interactive content during the pandemic and was named “Creative of the Year” by the Younge-Howze Theater Awards. He created the role of bad guy Joules Volter in the award winning, Off-Broadway family show, “Pip’s Island.” Pete’s comedy “Show Up, Kids!” received rave reviews globally, and continues to play live online. His internationally acclaimed solo comedy “Desperately Seeking the Exit” chronicled the unmaking of his West End musical flop “Desperately Seeking Susan.” www.petermmarino.com

Michole Biancosino (Director) has had her work seen on stages across the country and abroad.  Recent projects include “Same But Different” (Christal Brown Dance), two seasons at Edinburgh Fringe of the sold out hit show “Trump Lear,” Peter Michael Marino’s “Show Up!” and “Show Up, Kids!,” and Lia Romeo’s “Connected.” Check out her recent digital theatre work at: https://www.youtube.com/user/ProjectYNYC

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May 20, 2021 · 11:50 am

TWITTERHATED, A New Play, Opens at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival June 5th

CFF21_TwitterHated with Fringe logoSand Catcher Collaborations is presenting the new play Twitterhated, which will open at the outdoor stages of The Know theatre on 1120 Jackson Street, Cincinnati, Ohio on June 5th at 2:45pm.

Show description: Reeling after a racist macroaggression by her boyfriend’s sister, Amelia finds herself lost in the Twitterverse. When social media bleeds into real life, she’s forced to reckon with who she wants to be – and how she wants to communicate. Twitterhated explores social media’s impact on in-person relationships and difficult conversations.

About the company: Sand Catcher Collaborations is Director Katie Baskerville and Actor/Playwright Julie Locker. Sand Catcher sees intersectional stories as grains of sand — try as theatres might to represent their entire communities, holding every grain of sand in their palms, some stories will inevitably slip through their fingers. Sand Catcher seeks to catch those grains of sand to see those who feel invisible, hear those who feel unheard, and boldly tell stories that go untold. Whether producing a series of monologues, a staged reading, a fully-produced play, or an immersive theatrical experience, Sand Catcher aims to grapple with topical issues affecting our community.

Twitterhated is Sand Catcher’s inaugural performance. Actor/Playwright Julie Locker pulls from her experience as a biracial woman, exposing the limits of the construct of race as it applies both to white supremacist and anti-racist movements when viewed through the lens of social media conversations. Not only is this heretofore an untold story in Cincinnati, but it is also presented in a style rarely seen in the city, using ensemble-based movement to create the world of the Twitterverse. Director Katie Baskerville built this world by asking, “How can we tell this story most authentically to the experience of the project?” For Twitterhated, the answer was using Viewpoints, a technique of movement composition that acts as a medium for thinking about and acting upon movement, gesture, and creative space.

Ticket price is $10. Detailed information, including show times and ticket purchasing, can be found at www.cincyfringe.com/twitterhated. Show art by Ellyn Broderick.

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May 14, 2021 · 1:35 pm

NKU’s MCRC Project Debuts Two Films at Cincinnati Fringe Festival

CFF_NKU Film Cover 2View the online story here.

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, KY—Northern Kentucky University’s Mourning the Creation of Racial Categories (MCRC) Project will present two new films at the 2021 Cincinnati Fringe Festival, the largest arts festival in Ohio. The films are part of the primary lineup and are available on-demand from June 4 to 19. The Cincinnati Fringe Festival presents over 200 performances of over 40 theatre productions each year.

Guided by Sociology Professors Joan Ferrante and Lynnissa Hillman, the Project partners with visual, creative and performing artists to open conversations around social unrest and racial disparities. MCRC’s new films, “Why White” and “I am White Like You, Right Mom?” tell the stories of how the Black and White Racial Categories came to be.

CFF_NKU Film Cover 1“Our country has never explored the emotional story of how the racial categories we check on application forms came to be,” said Dr. Ferrante. “As a country, we can never really address racial tensions until we know how and why the racial categories that define us all were made.  Our new films provide insights that allow people to see race in new ways. New ways of seeing spark new feelings about race, interest, hope and ultimately change.”

About the films:

Why White?
This film opens with a patient, who appears white, struggling to declare “White” as his race on a medical form. He asks, “why do my doctors need to know my race?”  and “why am I called “White” anyway?” which begins an exploration of how the labels “White” and “Black” came to be and opens the conversation of how White carries the weight of race.

I am White Like You, Right Mom?
In this film, a white-appearing mother must explain to her black-appearing daughter that “you’re not white exactly.” The conversation expands and reveals the story of why, in the U.S., parent and child can be labeled as different races and how race invades the family space.

The ongoing project began in November 2016 and has created five films featuring stories of how racial categories were born.   Earlier this year, MCRC collaborated with NKU’s School of the Arts to present an exhibition on the emotional force of race. MCRC’s 2017 documentary has been featured at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and streams on the KET-PBS website. In 2019, the project performed its production “Let Our Loss Be Heard” in the Aronoff Center for the Arts.

The MCRC Project draws artistic talent from NKU School of the Arts, Creative Writing Program and the surrounding community. Visit MCRC’s website for more information on the project and its two films at the Fringe Festival.

About NKU:  Founded in 1968, NKU is an entrepreneurial state university of over 16,000 students served by more than 2,000 faculty and staff on a thriving suburban campus nestled between Highland Heights, Kentucky and bustling downtown Cincinnati. We are a regionally engaged university committed to empowering our students to have fulfilling careers and meaningful lives. While we are one of the fastest-growing universities in Kentucky, our professors still know our students’ names. For more information, visit nku.edu.

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May 11, 2021 · 11:10 am

Hit the Lights! Theater Co. Presents HORSETALE at Cincinnati Fringe Festival

CFF21_Hit the Lights logoStreaming online June 4th – June 19th, 2021
For tickets visit cincyfringe.com/horsetale/

Hit the Lights! Theater Co. (HTL!) is pleased to stream its original shadow musical as part of the 2021 Digital Cincy Fringe Festival. In HORSETALE, two musicians share their story of love and heartbreak through the adventure of a horse and its tail that become separated and in their search for each other, find themselves. HTL! weaves together handmade shadow puppetry, six vintage overhead projectors, original folk/rock music, Looney Tunes homages, and American iconography to tell a story as wild and expansive as the West itself.

HIT THE LIGHTS! THEATER CO. is an award-winning company created out of an artistic agreement to tell simple stories in unconventional ways. Hit the Lights! follows the motto ‘Less Talk, More Rock.’ This motto drives the creative process, culminating in work that is hyper-theatrical in nature: performers multitasking onstage in real time to create the technical, musical, and narrative components of a story simultaneously. Believing that motion, color, sound, and atmosphere are more evocative and experiential than spoken text, a heavy emphasis is placed on dialogue-less, action-oriented storytelling. Consequently, this allows the work to connect with audience members of varying theatrical experience, physical ability, cultural background, and age.

Past highlights include original works DUNGEON (Audience Pick of the Fringe at the Cincinnati Fringe and Editors Pick at the Minnesota Fringe), WHALES (nominated for three New York Innovative Theater Awards including Outstanding Innovative Design, Outstanding Original Music, and Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play, Artist Pick and Venue Award Minnesota Fringe), an original site-specific immersive theater experience in collaboration with the Know Theatre of Cincinnati THE OTHER RHINE, developing original shadow puppets for Vogue Magazine’s March 2021 cover shoot featuring Gigi Hadid, a live cinematic puppet adaptation of Gimlet Media’s hit podcast The Habitat, a collaboration with New York Botanical Garden’s Spooky Pumpkin Nights; a live music video for Grammy Award-nominated Sammy Miller and the Congregation, and being nominated for an Off-Broadway Alliance Award for “Best Family Show” for their theatrical adaptation of the book TASTE THE CLOUDS commissioned by New York City Children’s Theater. HTL!’s Off-Broadway credits include performances at Dixon Place, La MaMa ETC, New Victory Theater Lab Works, The Flea Theater, Franklin Stage Company, and Ars Nova in NYC where they were Company in Residence in 2018 and 2019.

More info: hitthelights.org

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May 5, 2021 · 1:22 pm

MO-TO-THE-ONCLE at 2021 Cincy Fringe

CFF_mo-to-the-oncle2

Melissa Cole. Photo by Svetlana Kim.

National Fringe hit makes its Cincinnati Fringe debut

Cincinnati, Ohio – MO-TO-THE-ONCLE (pronounced MO-to-the-AWN-uh-kuhl) debuts at the 18th Annual Cincinnati Fringe Festival (Friday, June 4 – Saturday, June 19) via cincyfringe.com. MO-TO-THE-ONCLE will be available to be viewed on-demand throughout the 14-day theater festival. Tickets are now on sale for $10 at cincyfringe.com, where more information is also available.

MO-TO-THE-ONCLE is a satirical one-woman comedy play about a Bronx teenager who must wear a monocle to school after his dad loses their vision insurance. The story unfolds through a series of bold monologues performed by writer and actress Melissa Cole, who portrays at least a dozen different characters throughout the show. “People always say that they just can’t get into solo shows,” says Cole. “My background is in improv and sketch comedy, so my perspective as a creator comes through that lens. MO-TO-THE-ONCLE is really fast-paced and fun, and I think it’s a real standout in the solo show category.”

CFF_mo-to-the-oncle1

Photo by Anthony Velez.

Since MO-TO-THE-ONCLE’s 2016 premiere in New York City, Cole has taken her wild solo performance on the road to Fringe stages in cities across the country, including Rochester, Orlando, and Pittsburgh, amassing great critical acclaim along the way.

Last year, as many Fringe festivals made the pivot to presenting online offerings exclusively, this Cincy Fringe newcomer says she welcomed the “challenge” of recreating her show for virtual audiences, who she says could be even more discerning. “I’ve never been to Ohio before, and I certainly would have really loved to have been there in person,” Cole explains. “But this is my second time doing a virtual festival, and I’ve worked really hard to ensure that the virtual showing of MO-TO-THE-ONCLE is just as fulfilling–if not even more so–than its live counterpart, especially for Cincy Fringe’s loyal audience.”

More about Fringe: The Cincinnati Fringe Festival is produced by Know Theatre of Cincinnati as our final presentation of each season. All year-round, Know Theatre staff work on the Festival. We also bring in part-time staffers and hundreds of volunteers to help make the magic happen. A 14-day celebration of theatre, art, music, film, dance, and everything between —  that’s Kinda WEIRD. Like YOU! Now in its 17th year, Cincy Fringe (as its succinctly known) presents over 200 performances of 40+ theatre productions each May and June, plus art galleries, screenings, concerts, workshops, classes, and nightly parties.

More about Melissa Cole: Melissa Cole (writer/actress) is a New York City based actress, improviser and writer. In 2017, Cole was the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival’s Best Actress winner for her performance in Mo-to-the-oncle. In 2016, she performed as a Top 7 finalist in the NBC & Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre Diversity Scholarship Showcase, a high-profile showcase featuring rising sketch comedy actors. A Long Island, New York native, Cole is a graduate of New York University.

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