Charlene Baldridge | Downtown News

International Fringe Fest returns to San Diego for second year

July — time for the second annual San Diego International Fringe Festival (sdfringe.org) an 11-day (July 3 – 13) cornucopia of creativity — 400 performances presented by 80 companies and more than 200 artists in 400 performances in five-plus venues in and around Downtown.

Ticket revenues go directly to the performing artists. Admission is only $10 a pop, plus a one-time only charge of $5 for a mandatory Fringe Tag that allows access (along with your ticket) to performances and to Fringe Central, a rooftop-gathering place at Tenth Avenue Arts Center, 930 10th Ave.

Fringe itself has existed and proliferated worldwide since 1947, when a group of artists excluded from a festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, banded together and created their own festival “on the fringe” of the big one. Fringe affords an inexpensive, uncensored platform upon which artists may strut their stuff and brave audiences may see what would not be seen elsewhere.

The Fringe Festival offers possibilities ranging from puppetry and mime to theater, avant-garde opera, dance, and newly minted plays and musicals. Here are a few eye-catching opportunities created by individuals and companies known locally. Others feature yet-to-be discovered artists from as far away as England, Finland, France and Italy.

Actor Eddie Yaroch presents the West Coast premiere of his play titled “Nightbird,” which was written in 1988 and produced as part of a student showcase at the University of Minnesota. “I designed the set, featuring three 8-foot wings,” says Yaroch. “It received full production in New York City when I rented a space off Broadway.”

Beloved for numerous, wide-ranging roles at New Village Arts, most recently “The Miss Firecracker Contest,” Yaroch directs “Nightbird,” which stars Kristin Woodburn Wright, Max Macke and Elliot Vimel Sephus and explores his lifelong concern, why battered women stay with their abusers. Part of the proceeds benefit San Diego Domestic Violence Council. Performances of “Nightbird” will be at Spreckels Theatre, Fringe Off Broadway, 923 First Ave., Downtown.

Prolific and peripatetic, San Diego actor/playwright Tim West presents two plays in two venues, one, under the auspices of Scripps Ranch Theatre’s Out on a Limb Festival is “Ray’s Last Case” at Tenth Avenue Arts Center, and the other is “Olivia Bolivia” by the Trouble Dolls Collective at the Spreckels Theatre. West describes “Olivia,” which he is producing himself, as “a light satire with a slightly paranoid bent.” The play features the youngest festival performer, Maxine Sutton, 10, Betty Matthews and Danny Campbell. “Ray’s Last Case” features San Diego actors Charlie Riendeau and Jill Drexler, for whom their roles were written, and concerns the final days of detective novelist Raymond Chandler, who resided in La Jolla.

Dancer Erica Buechner, a resident of North Park who teaches at Malashock Dance, presents “The Red Shoes Revamped and Other Works,” a kinetic look at society’s view of women.

Bodhi Tree Concerts presents the San Diego premiere of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 1930s set satire, “Seven Deadly Sins,” a then-avant-garde one-act chamber opera that in Berlin cabaret style explores the lengths to which Anna 1 and Anna 2 go to provide for family in straitened circumstances. The biting critique of capitalism stars Laura Bueno, Kylie Young and Walter DuMelle, with musical direction by Mark Danisovszky. One hundred percent of ticket proceeds July 13 go to San Diego Opera.

Well known author/composer Rayme Sciaroni collaborates with Margee Forman to present a new musical, “The Gym: Love Lost and Found” presented by San Diego’s Breaking Waves Festival, new plays conceived, created and performed by San Diego actors, playwrights and directors.

Among the eye-catching productions sprung from San Diego and from elsewhere:

• British actor David Bottomley stars in “The Peacock and the Nightingale” set in 1953. Eccentric English poet, (now Dame) Edith Sitwell is in Hollywood working with director George Cukor on a film script about the Tudors. Marilyn Monroe is desperate to play Anne Boleyn. Will they let her?

• Well-known San Diego actor Jason Maddy is “advising director” of “Firsts,” a new work still in incubation. Written, composed and directed by two high school students, Annika Patton and Emily Laliotis, it is the story of two sisters, fascinated by the same cello-playing boy, and told through fable and song. One performance only, in the fifth floor Arts Incubator at Spreckels Theatre, July 9 at 6:30 p.m.

• Actor Brian Rickel, recently seen in Diversionary’s “Thrill Me,” who calls it “a parade of life, love, loss and the beauty of it all,” portrays 14 inhabitants of Judevine in his adaptation of David Budbill’s play, “Judevine.”

Other artists, with impressive, two-minute presentations at a Fringe preview (36 acts!) Monday night:

• Los Angeles storyteller Michael Kass in “Ceremony” playing at Tenth Avenue Cabaret Theatre.

• Seventy-something lyricist and songwriter Ray Jessel at the keyboard with “Life Sucks and Then You Die” — sexual content, very funny. Wonder what they’ll think at San Diego Central Library.

• “Genie and Audrey’s Dream Show” and Beau and Aero in “A Little Bit Off” are two commedia-informed “theatrical circus” acts that make serious physical fun with red noses! Both play at Tenth Avenue Arts Center, “Dream Show” in the cabaret space, and Beau and Aero on the Mainstage.

• Into dance? Don’t miss “Nu Bee” presented by Chard Gonzalez Dance Theatre at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center. Tickets can be found at sdfringe.ticketleap.com/nubee.

Stop by Fringe Central to pick up a T-shirt, get your Fringe Tag and a program, with content ratings, genres and a Fringe map.

Or, for an almost comprehensive list of shows and artists go to sdfringe.org. There you will find day-by-day schedules, artists and show listings to help you decide what will work for you, although the website is a little challenging to navigate. Purchase tickets. Otherwise, just surprise yourself and fly by the seat of your pants, but bear in mind that some attractions will sell out by word of mouth alone.

The best way to find any artist or those recommended above is to visit sdfringe.com/2014/artists.php and scroll through the list. A click on any of them will get the times and locations of their performances. To learn more about the venues, visit sdfringe.org/2014/venues.php. For direct links to the performances highlighted here, visit the online version of this article at gay-sd.com.

—Charlene Baldridge moved to San Diego from the Chicago area in 1962. She’s been writing about the arts since 1979, and has had her features, critiques, surveys and interviews included in various publications ever since. Her book “San Diego, Jewel of the California Coast” (Northland Publishing) is currently available in bookstores. She can be reached at [email protected].