Tag Archives: Cincinnati Fringe Festival

Applications accepted through January 18, 2013

Know Theatre of Cincinnati and The Cincinnati Fringe Festival are excited to announce that applications are now available for the high-school portion of the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, FringeNext. FringeNext will take place during the first week of the Festival, May 29 – June 1 and will consist of 5 Fringe productions created by and performed by local high school students. All FringeNext performances will take place at our FringeNext partner, The School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

“We’ve had great success with FringeNext in its first two years,” says Eric Vosmeier, Producing Artistic Director. “But it’s important to make sure we are reaching out and recruiting new applicants moving forward. We need to ensure that the program continues and I’d like to increase eventually from three productions to five.”

In order to participate in this program, students must be enrolled in high school for the 2012-2013 school year or are currently being home-schooled at the high school level. Each production will be produced by a student leader, with the assistance of a production advisor (over the age of 21) who can be a teacher, parent, or mentor in the theatre industry. High school students will fulfill all roles of these productions, actors, directors, designers, etc. and the adult acts a mentor to the process. Students will also participate in a workshop in April where they will meet with past Fringe Festival producers and the Fringe staff to learn more about the process.

Just like the Performance Fringe, FringeNext is not looking for a specific type of production, but the Fringe format still applies. All participants in a FringeNext production must be currently enrolled in high school. Participants will also be required to give back to the Fringe Community by volunteering for the Festival.

The applications to FringeNext will be juried by a jury of local theatre professionals and educators. Applications are due January 18, 2013 and students will be notified of acceptance by the first week of February 2013. More information and applications can be found at cincyfringe.com.

Know Theatre of Cincinnati is supported, in part, by the generosity of community contributions to the ArtsWave Campaign. The Ohio Arts Council helps fund Know Theatre with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. Know Theatre is supported by the National Theatre Company Grant from The American Theatre Wing, dedicated to supporting the most promising emerging theatre companies from around the country. Know Theatre of Cincinnati also receives support from The Carol Ann & Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation, helping to change our communities for the better through collaboration and innovation.

Our mission is to create evocative and explosive live entertainment.
Our vision is a world awakened to its collective possibility.
We value a playful artistic community where artists can collaborate and grow.

Sell out hit at the 2012 Cincinnati Fringe Festival returns for three encore performances

Know Theatre of Cincinnati is very excited to announce the return of the 2012 Artists’ Pick of the Fringe, GRIM AND FISCHER from The WONDERHEADS November 9 & 10, 2012. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, the WONDERHEADS perform in full-face mask, a wordless form that mixes European larval mask traditions with character mask styles, resulting in a craft rarely seen on North American stages. The production is family friendly, suitable for ages 10 and up.

“We tried to have the Wonderheads back for our Fall Mini-Fringe Festival, but they couldn’t quite fit it into their schedules for that week,” says Producing Artistic Director Eric Vosmeier. “We are thrilled to be able to present GRIM AND FISCHER to Cincinnati audiences again. There is not a great deal of mask work like this on local stages and this is beautiful example of how a simple story can be made into an extraordinary piece of theatre.”

Death meets his match in Mrs. Fischer, a tenacious granny not ready to breathe her last. An aging grandmother is pit against none other than the Grim Reaper and confronts the inevitable question: what is it to know your end is nigh? Can you ignore death? Can you escape death? Can you hit death in the face with a frying pan? A tender telling of an absurdly epic journey; one woman’s fight for survival takes fantastical flight in a showdown with Grim himself.

GRIM AND FISCHER is a new dish made of old ingredients. It is performed in full-face mask, a wordless, whimsical form rarely seen on North American stages which audiences have described as watching a living cartoon, or ‘live-action Pixar’. And like a cartoon, the power of GRIM AND FISCHER lies in its ability to step away from the sharpness of reality and offer a different lens though which to examine a deeper, darker universal struggle: our fear of death. In this distinct style of storytelling, with a rich soundscape, timeless slapstick and masterful physical performances, GRIM AND FISCHER takes its audience on a profound journey that is at turns both hilarious and heart-breaking.

All tickets for this performance are $12. Tickets can be purchased by visiting knowtheatre.com or by calling the box office at 513.300.KNOW (5669).

About The Wonderheads
WONDERHEADS Theatre is a multi-award winning physical theatre company specializing in mask performance and exquisite visual storytelling. Their work is performed in full-face mask, a wordless form that mixes European larval mask traditions with character mask styles, resulting in a craft rarely seen on North American stages. Audiences have described the experience as watching a living cartoon – the whimsy and imagination of Pixar or Jim Henson in theatrical form. In this distinct style of storytelling, with rich soundscapes, fantastical puppetry, timeless slapstick and masterful physical performances, WONDERHEADS make it their business to evoke a spirit of awe in even the most serious and respectable of adults.

Know Theatre of Cincinnati is supported, in part, by the generosity of community contributions to the ArtsWave Campaign. The Ohio Arts Council helps fund Know Theatre with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. Know Theatre is supported by the National Theatre Company Grant from The American Theatre Wing, dedicated to supporting the most promising emerging theatre companies from around the country. Know Theatre of Cincinnati also receives support from The Carol Ann & Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation, helping to change our communities for the better through collaboration and innovation..

Our mission is to create evocative and explosive live entertainment.
Our vision is a world awakened to its collective possibility.
We value a playful artistic community where artists can collaborate and grow.

 Selections from Cincinnati Fringe favorites The Bengsons’
new experimental folk-opera

At the 2011 Cincinnati Fringe Festival, husband and wife duo The Bengsons, participated in a workshop as part of FringeDevelopment. Other artists participating in the Festival joined The Bengsons to rehearse and present selections of their new folk-opera, Hundred Days. Know Theatre of Cincinnati is excited to announce that The Bengsons will be returning to Cincinnati and will present an early showing of music from this new work. Performances will occur at Know Theatre of Cincinnati on August 10 & 12, 2012 at 8pm.

Hundred Days is the fierce, triumphant story of a young couple who fall in love, only to have their time together cut short by illness. They decide to reject treatment and take the one year they have left together and try to live it as though it were the 60 years they had thought they would have together. They transform their apartment into a world where they can try to literally condense time, to move through their 20’s, 30’s, 60’s, 80’s, and create the experiences of a full life.

Hundred Days has been developed through workshops across the country, including at the 2011 Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and a full production will debut at Z Space in San Francisco in 2014. The Bengsons also presented Ain’t That Good News at the 2010 Cincinnati Fringe Festival to sell out audiences.

About The Bengsons
The Bengsons, a musical duo made up of Abigail and Shaun Bengson, are the best in vaudevillian indie folk and young stars of the NYC experimental music and theater community. They have performed their original shows, performances pieces and original musicals, Ain’t That Good News and The Magic Show: The Story of the Barefoot Angels, across the country and around the world. The Bengsons are also activists and teachers, who have taught students with autism in NYC’s public schools and Cambodian immigrants in Massachusetts, as well as internationally at the Market Theater Lab of Johannesburg, ZA, the Tijuana Christian Orphanage of Tijuana, Mexico, and ASAPROSA, in Santa Ana, El Salvador.

All tickets for this performance are $10. Bring anything Fringe with you (t-shirts, passes, guides, etc.) and get in for just $5! Tickets can be purchased by visiting knowtheatre.com or by calling the box office at 513.300.KNOW (5669).

Know Theatre of Cincinnati is supported, in part, by the generosity
of community contributions to the ArtsWave Campaign.

The Ohio Arts Council helps fund Know Theatre with state tax dollars to encourage
economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

Our mission is to create evocative and explosive live entertainment.
Our vision is a world awakened to its collective possibility.
We value a playful artistic community where artists can collaborate and grow.