Still Life with Robin: On with the Fringe!

Capital Fringe Festival 2016

by Peggy Robin

The Fringe is back! It’s Washington’s eleven-year-old theater festival, returning to stages and venues scattered around Downtown and Trinidad, with over 100 shows, running from now (it actually started two days ago on July 7) through the end of the month. Okay, it’s not quite in the same league with Edinburgh’s 69-year-old Fringe Festival, which has over 3,000 shows to choose from, most of them performed at impromptu theaters set up within a couple of square miles in the very compact historic center (or should I say “centre”?) of the old city.  For three weeks in August, you can spend each morning strolling along the Royal Mile, where you will encounter costumed actors handing out flyers for their plays and sometimes performing scenes or selected musical numbers. You could well be plucked from the crowd to join in an interactive skit. By the time you’ve gone a few blocks, you’ll have a good idea of what’s on that day, and then it’s easy enough to wander over to the box office and pick up tickets for whatever you’ve decided to see later that afternoon or evening. DC’s more spread-out nature and its typical summer heat makes the stroll-and-view-costumed-actors marketing method unworkable here, so you are well-advised to look over your choices online, indoors, with the air-conditioning on full-blast.

Start here:

https://www.capitalfringe.org/festival-11-2016

There’s a PDF booklet arranged by theater here:

https://capitalfringe.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/77/file.pdf?1466443840

Your online calendar guide is here:

https://www.capitalfringe.org/calendar

-- in chronological order, starting with today’s date.

Your A-Z guide is here:

https://www.capitalfringe.org/festival-2016

Names of shows are in alphabetical order, with tabs on the side to give you the shows by genre. Do you like serendipity? Try the "Random Show" tab and plan to see whatever pops up!

Too much detail? Then go for an overview of the venues, with a few select recommendations, courtesy of the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/theater-dance/follow-the-fringe-festival-is-still-in-trinidad-and-also-back-downtown/2016/07/07/ece61d14-3970-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html

And don’t forget your button! You will need a Fringe button to get into any show, so start here:

https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/store/125/pr/61316

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Still Life with Robin is published on the Cleveland ParkListserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.