Every year during the Tucson Fringe festival, a range of artists have a chance to showcase unconventional, experimental work without censorship. It is modeled after the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where performances take place in smaller, more intimate spaces, outside of mainstream theaters.
Tucson Fringe will be held Thursday through Sunday, Jan. 8 to 11, at the Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre and the Historic Y.
Instead of having late shows on Friday and Saturday this year, they will offer Thursday evening performances.
The two theaters are in the same building, but the Historic Y is upstairs and is only accessible by stairs.
Along with in-person shows, the festival will offer virtual content on Zoom, YouTube and Vimeo.
Festivalgoers can support artists by purchasing tickets.
(The performers) receive $12 for every $15 ticket sold.
James Pack, the acting president for Tucson Fringe Festival Inc., said while artists are able to make some money, they often aren’t motivated by profits.
“As long as people are buying tickets, the artists are getting paid for their work. I believe the last couple years, the average artist payout has been over $500,” Pack said. “There are a few people who make a decent amount of money, but it’s still not enough to cover all of their travel expenses if they’re coming from out-of-state. Most people know they’re either going to break even or lose a little money, but they’re not doing it for the money. I think the only time people do really well is if it’s a local show, and they sell out every performance, which does happen sometimes.”
Attendees can also make donations directly to (the performers). A hundred percent of this money goes to the artists.
With the new ticketing system, filmgoers are able to reserve tickets for specific shows.
Keeping festivals like Tucson Fringe going can be a challenge, especially in difficult financial times. They weren’t able to obtain their usual grant funding and had to raise money through GoFundMe this year.
“One of them was funded through the National Endowment of the Arts. That went away. The other one we apply for, they just had an enormous amount of people apply that usually don’t. So, we were not selected to get the award,” Pack said. “We had able to raise enough money through many generous donors to keep the lights on.”
Pack said their festival is important because it allows artists to present their experimental and unorthodox works for audiences.
“The whole purpose behind fringe is to give people a space to perform their work in a way that they’re not going to be criticized on what that content is. The audience might have opinions, but we’re not going to stop them from their performance because it might be a little too extreme in certain cases,” Pack said.
The artists provide warnings ahead of time, to advise viewers if shows have strong language, violence or sexual or political content.
“We do our best to make sure audiences can make an informed decision and are not seeing something that might be upsetting,” Pack said.
(The performers) are chosen through a lottery system, in which names are drawn randomly out of a hat.
This year, the festival will have around 19 acts and over 30 shows. Some of the artists are doing two or three shows throughout the weekend.
“Usually, they do the same show three different times. There is one group that’s local to Tucson called ‘the Old Pueblo Playwrights.’ They’re a playwriting organization here in town. I believe they’re doing two different performances. For one, they’ll be featuring a play that’s a little under an hour, and then the second night, they’re doing three smaller plays that are different from that first one,” Pack said.
“Salt Patterns Shifting” is another piece on display at the tucson fringe festival. (Katrair Films/Submitted)
In recent years, more performers have started to incorporate projections and multimedia content into their performances.
Some artists also use props and costumes. Pack said in the past, one performance used a full mattress. Usually, performers don’t need a lot of props.
“Generally, we tell people that the most we can give them is a couple of chairs. You have to provide everything else yourself. Most of the time, if anything, people might ask for a music stand or something like that,” Pack said.
Many of the participants in the festival are storytellers who are sharing their own personal experiences.
Pack said sometimes, performances can have connecting elements that aren’t immediately apparent.
“A couple years ago, one of our virtual artists was from up in Phoenix. They were a Navajo storyteller. In one of the other shows we had that year, [the performer] mentioned a few old stories from Navajo legend. I didn’t know that was going to happen. We had this connection that you wouldn’t have noticed until you saw the performances,” Pack said.
This year, they will have a number of dance groups performing at the festival.
The festival draws people with a range of talents. In the past, they have had circus performers, musicians and stage magicians. Last year, a group presented an original rock opera.
Some artists will take their work to other fringe festivals and events after Tucson.
“We had a student that graduated from the University of Arizona from the school of theatre. It was his final year of school or second to last year. He performed in our festival, and then he went on to perform it at a few others. Just from experiencing all of these different festivals, he was able to polish it up and tweak it,” Pack said.
Performers present works at different stages, including pieces that are in their earliest versions.
“More often than not, people are either trying out new things, or they’re just trying to grow their audience. That’s the primary focus of a lot of these artists. Some of them are like, ‘This is a show I’ve done before. I just want to keep performing it.’ And others are like, ‘This will be the first time I’m performing this show.’ In my opinion, that’s what fringe is really about is putting on something new that may not work, but you gain the experience putting it in front of an audience to polish it up and make it work,” Pack said.
Sometimes, groups will make updates to their shows during the festival.
“This was maybe two years ago. We had a group from Florida who had never performed a show in front of an audience. After their first performance, they were like, ‘Okay, we have to change all of these things.’ They did that the day before they had to perform the thing again. They were workshopping it and changing things on the fly to clean it up,” Pack said.
The festival draws some artists from Arizona, but many are from other states, such as Minnesota, California, Illinois and Iowa.
Over the years, they have had people from other countries present virtual content, including a performance group from India and an artist from Singapore.
This year, one artist submitted prerecorded content from Saskatchewan, Canada, which will be available through Vimeo.
Pack said that people who are part of the fringe festival scene often know about other festivals, including the one in Tucson.
“There are about 200 fringe festivals all over the world. People that are familiar with fringe, they know where to look. They have a few up in Canada. Either they hear about us through another fringe festival, or somebody shares a link about our applications being open, Once you’re in the club, everybody starts talking to everybody,” Pack said.
Tucson Fringe
WHEN: Thursday, Jan. 8 to Sunday, Jan. 11
WHERE: The Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre and the Historic Y, 738 N. 5th Avenue, Tucson
COST: $15 for individual in-person tickets, $13 for virtual shows, $25 for two-show pass, $55 for five-show pass
INFO: tucsonfringe.org