The 14th annual Atlanta Fringe Festival has returned to venues across the city with unique performances spanning theatre, dance, comedy, puppetry, magic, and clowning.
Of the 51 shows in the festival lineup this year, 21 were produced, written, directed, and/or performed by self-identified LGBTQ+ artists, Chris Alonzo, the marketing manager for the festival, told Georgia Voice.
With multiple shows until June 7, there’s still a chance to see some of these queer-led, local and out-of-state performances before the festival closes this weekend.
Local shows
Herd x Sainwood: An Evening of Friendship and Fan Fiction (18+)
June 4, 10:30 p.m.
June 6, 5:15 p.m.
Metropolitan Studios
If you are (or were) a lover of fan fiction, this show from trans writers and best friends Billie Sainwood and Dani Herd is a must-see. The show is a powerpoint presentation, live reading, history lesson, and interactive performance all wrapped up into one wonderfully nerdy experience.
Herd and Sainwood detail the history of fan fiction, from its biblical origins to the drama with Anne Rice and gush over the community building of the art form that is the basis of their friendship. They both read pieces of their own fan fiction, different during each performance, which are all posted in an Archive of Our Own collection specially made for the Fringe Festival. The pieces span fandoms, from Star Wars and Good Omens to Batman and Jaws.
The best part of the show, though, is the interactive element. During the show, Herd and Sainwood spin a wheel chock full of fandoms. They both create an AU (alternate universe) for the fandom to exist in, and the audience chooses their favorite, which gets 250 words written and published in the Fringe Festival AO3 collection. During the opening performance, the wheel landed on Dolly Parton. Sainwood pitched a Dolly Parton x Star Wars AU in which Dolly must find her way back to Dollywood after waking up in space, but Herd won the audience’s favor with a Dolly Parton x Little Mermaid AU in which Dolly is an Appalachian lesbian mermaid in love with Jolene. Obviously.
I’m not a fan fiction reader or writer, nor do I consider myself a purveyor of nerd culture, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the show. Both Herd and Sainwood are deeply passionate about fan fiction, and their enthusiasm is infectious and delightful.
Still, Life (14+)
June 5, 8:45 p.m.
June 6, 10:30 p.m.
The Supermarket Black Box
“I think your presence is a blessing. If it bothers people, maybe they deserve to be imposed upon.”
“Still, Life” is a simple story: an anxious painter goes to what she thinks is an interview for a set designer but is actually an audition for the lead character of a new play being staged by the local community theater. She gets the part, and while being thrust onto the stage, she finds confidence and friendship. The show includes one of my favorite tropes – loser daughter, diva mother – and has an ending that delightfully subverts expectations by upholding friendship as just as meaningful and special as romantic love.
All the actors’ performances are solid – lead Callie Johnson even cries with real tears – but the star of the show is L.A. Winters, who plays both the aforementioned diva mom and the artistic director of the community theater (who is also a diva!). The show ends with a scene from the production the characters are in (meta, I know), and Johnson and her opposite Dylan Probert perfectly capture the hilarious melodrama of a community theater production.
“Still, Life” isn’t revolutionary, but it’s a funny and sweet love letter to the art of theatre that is sure to delight both nerds and novices alike.
Loser Bitches (18+)
June 6, 7 p.m.
June 7, 3:30 p.m.
Metropolitan Studios
“The world as we know it is ending, and all we’re doing is talking about it.”
Loser Bitches is a show about a podcast. The fictional podcast operates like r/AITA: listeners submit questions about whether they are the loser, the bitch, or the loser bitch in a specific situation, and hosts Zoe and Frankie share their hot takes. However, during a meta “live” recording in which the real Atlanta Fringe festival audience becomes the fictional podcast audience, we watch as Zoe and Frankie’s friendship falls apart; jaw-dropping drama and second-hand embarrassment ensue.
The show is about a deteriorating friendship, but it’s moreso about the increasing pressure for people on the interview to transform every thought and opinion into Content. Writers Zach Tellez and Abby Folds never go too hard in either direction of championing or admonishing this pressure. Zoe gives a monologue about how tired she is of having to share and monetize opinions on things she doesn’t actually care about, but it’s couched in the exclamation that she also doesn’t care about what’s happening in Iran or Palestine, as well as the knowledge that she has the comfort of falling back on her husband (who it’s hinted at works in some kind of insidious tech industry). The characters are nuanced, thoughtful one minute and entitled the next, which is refreshing in a show critiquing the urge to have and share stark, black-and-white opinions about everything.
Complete with “ad breaks” satirizing GLP-1s and exploitative money lenders, Loser Bitches is a hilarious, unhinged, and honest look at the digital zeitgeist and the impact it’s having on our psyches.
From out of town
CHRONIC PAin au chocolat (18+)
June 4, 7 p.m.
June 7, 1:45 p.m.
7 Stages Backstage
I love clowns, and if there’s going to be some juggling, I know I’m going to be impressed. Even so, CHRONIC PAin au chocolat, from Maine-based clown Janoah the Jester, left me in more awe than I was prepared for. Janoah is a genderqueer performer who lives in chronic pain. Ze (Janoah uses the neopronouns ze/zir) experiences daily pain from the top of zir head to zir toes because of a condition which remains unnamed in the show, but only on zir right side. This bifurcation is the theme that ties together the entire show (including, as you can see, in the title): Janoah uses a cape to transform into a “nice” character (zir left side) and a “naughty” character (the right), ze shaves half of zir body, all costumes ze wears are made of two different pieces sewn together down the middle. The pain literally splits zir body in two.
Janoah’s show details the limitations of the human body: ze shares anecdotes and poetry all about (if I’m going to reduce zir message into a single sentence) how horrible it is to live with chronic pain. The show also exhibits the capacity of the human body, though. Janoah is a phenomenal physical performer: ze strips while on a unicycle, juggles (sometimes one-handed) balls and pins and swords with beautiful fluidity, and performs a movement piece with floating fabric that was so moving it made me cry. This dichotomy between extreme limitation and extreme ability mirrors the split of Janoah’s body, and while binaries like these are often treated as disparate – one OR the other, good OR bad – Janoah invites audiences to see the wholeness that can be found in the in-between space.
I expected CHRONIC PAin au chocolat to be silly and absurd – and it is. Janoah is funny and doesn’t take zirself too seriously. But it’s also deeply moving. Of the shows I’ve seen during this year’s Fringe Festival, I expect this one to stick with me the longest.
Guilty Pleasure: A Cumming Out Story (18+)
June 6, 7 p.m.
June 7, 3:30 p.m.
The Supermarket Blue Venue
New York-based comedian Amanda Melhuish transforms the Supermarket Blue Venue into the Y2K slumber party of your dreams. Their solo show details their journey to self-love – literally. In true sleepover fashion, Melhuish lets audiences in to all the TMI details of their quest to orgasm for the first time in their late 20s. The tale is told through a tour of their sex toys: two vibrators gifted to them by male partners who were determined to be the first to make them cum, and a strap-on, the tool with which Melhuish discovers true pleasure, without a man to pressure them into it.
Melhuish hilariously weaves together stories of awkward sex, discovering they were non-binary, grappling with same-sex attraction, possible childhood repression of sexuality, definite childhood repression of sauce-eating, and the shame that comes from any kind of desire that is deemed abnormal into a triumphant story of self-discovery. Interwoven throughout these stories are references to the early 2010s – the “pre-Pitch Perfect world” as Melhuish calls it – from the Bo Burnham vine they showed their partner when he asked how they masturbated to the exclamation that they must be a girl, because they wear Modcloth! What results is a show that’s part theater, part stand-up, part time capsule. It forces the audience, even the Straight Male Allies (who do get an award from Melhuish, don’t worry), to become nostalgic, to remember alongside Melhuish all they’ve discovered about themselves since then.
