7th Annual Burlington Fringe Festival

Unjuried Celebration of Creative Performance! Thursday Oct. 10 (Blue Night - Adult Content), Friday Oct. 11, Saturday Oct. 12 - All performances at 7:00pm. CLICK "SEE MORE" below for the full festival lineup!

THURSDAY OCTOBER 10 - 7:00 p.m. Blue Night (18+, Adult content)

Jocelyn Woods  -  “SAPPHO and MNASIDIKA: a Lesbian Phantasy”

Visit the ancient Greek Isle of Lesbos via a French Romantic lens: the romance of the great Bardess Sappho with her student priestess Mnasidika as told in her own words, translated from Greek by Renée Vivien at the Belle Époque. Bilingual French/English nude production with sensual operatic chants, exotic dancing and of course, resplendent Vulvas celebrated as masterpieces of living art. Starring Jocelyn Woods, Brielle Barker, Scorpiana Bara, Katelyn Paddock, Josie Ramirez, Jackie Sage Longe and more! This show is a short preview of Woods’ full length semi-opera, Odes Sapphique: Isle of Lesbos to premiere spring 2020.

ETA-- Trigg, Anthony and Jenna 

Jenna Emerson, Anthony Apodoca, and D. Trigg (aka, “ETA”)ETA are totally reckless performers and Vermont’s, NAY - the world’s only improv comedy team with a “safe word”. They constantly do things that break “the Rules” of improv and no self-respecting improviser will play with them. So strap in and get ready to laugh because anything can happen when you’re watching ETA!

Rexy La Femme - Crazy Shade of Winter

Crazy Shade of Winter is a multi-genre solo performance mixing tragicomic improv, drag/burlesque, storytelling, singing, and digital projections. acting in the drag persona of Tonya Heartache, i explore my own story in connection with Tonya Harding's, working through issues of poor/working class femme identity, surviving abuse and trauma in family and relationships, the pitfalls of aspiration and "fame," and building role models out of anti-heroes. throughout, i shift in and out of my own story and Tonya's, our stories and lives intermingling, as a slideshow of photographs and visual + digital art play on screen.

Phinn Sonin  

Dance through time and watch evolution transpire before your eyes; a multimedia production including a live band performing an original score.  phinneus sonin is a local eccentric, shop provaror, and performer of ConArt. He’s using you as a guini pig for his experimental performance and is not to be trusted. I would run out of the theater and save yourselves before it’s too late...

Pierre Vachon -  Bruised and Tattooed: The Tila Tequila Chronicles1

Pierre Vachon is a pro wrestler with 20 years of crazy stories.. This time around he reveals all about his time on the show Shot of Love with Tila Tequila!

Kamikaze Comedy

Kamikaze Comedy is a quintet of middle-aged improvisers who are terrible at marketing. Founded in 1995 as a splinter faction of a perfectly lovely theatre company any normal person would have been proud to be part of, the troupe maintains buoyancy through a lazy form of haphazard self-government and sporadic performances. After years of simply appearing at a venue and making stuff up, the group recently deluded themselves into thinking they wanted to memorize lines again, and have written a small slate of sketch comedy. For tonight, though, buckle in for their forte, freewheeling “short-form” improv comedy.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 11 - 7:00 p.m. - fringe friday!

Ash Diggs - Bi-racial Angel 

In 25 years on this Earth, Ash Diggs has gone from country club lifeguard in Texas, to Marine Corps Officer Candidate in New Orleans, to stand-up comic in Vermont. His life has been a constant cycle of stops, starts, misdirections, epiphanies all lined with an undercurrent of confusion about his ethnicity. Join him as he explains himself, his actions, tries to make you laugh and feel better about himself at the same time.

Emily Kueppers and Maggie Phelan -  "The Adventures of the Anxiety Pals"

A short improv/comedy variety show. At the beginning of the show the pals ask for a non-geographical location (ex: Santa's Workshop, A Bus, Your mom's basement) from the audience. And based on that suggestion they start the show with a duologue telling about their adventures in this magical fictional world. They then create scenes based on the duologue spun at the beginning. The Anxiety Pals focus on character building, wacky situations, and audience suggestions. The audience will feel like they are a part of this crazy made up journey!

Nina Szenasi -  lying back in the lawn chair of my dreams:

there’s a place I go in my head when I’m feeling low. i’m big, i’m powerful, and my voice is just right. everyone I’ve ever loved watches me, carefully. everyone i’ve ever loved is in the same room. this is my funeral and these are my wishes. thank you for coming. I love you.  works in a variety of forms and media. Nina sews patchwork on clothing, cuts hair and performs under the name Stoof. This is her third year performing in Burlington Fringe Festival.

Joy Madden -  “I, Thou”

“I, Thou” is an excerpt from an evening length dance theater piece that will premiere in 2020. Mixing dance and storytelling, it explores and challenges our culture of conflict. This solo has grown out of many sleepless nights. Much of it was composed between 3-5am. Joy Madden is a choreographer and performer. Her choreography has been presented throughout the US and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2001 she co-founded The Moving Laboratory, an innovative arts incubator in Boston, MA. Since moving to Vermont in 2007 her work has been presented by The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington Dances, Arts Riot and UVM, among others.

Henri Blouin - Bunny

Bunny is a horror monologue about a girl who becomes haunted by a puppet. Henri Blouin is a mask maker and theater creator originally from Boston, MA. They’re thrilled to make their performance debut with the original monologue Bunny. Their first play A Mad Catfish was produced in 2017, a farce about two catfishers lost in a magical swamp. A graduate of SUNY Purchase College from the Playwriting Program in 2018, Henri moved to Vermont last year, and has since become a member of Vermont Stage. In their spare time, Henri is a mask maker and aspiring drag artist, and enjoys making visual art.

Ariel Zevon and Gahlord Dewald 

Lonely Boat that sails “Into the closet, and through the woods” to ponder the isolation of humanity’s pathologically empathetic interconnectivity. Ariel’s original songs tell a story of midlife existential crisis and bliss through melodies bent and re-imagined through Gahlord’s maelstrom of sound. Ariel Zevon released her first album of original songs in 2017 after several decades evading the music scene opting instead to pursue acting on stage and screen until the birth of her twin sons in 2003. She now homesteads off-grid in Peacham, VT, raising various livestock, vegetables, and, lately, a bunch of new tunes. Gahlord Dewald is a creative musician devoted to experimentation in acoustic, electric, and synthetic bass frequencies. He works across the spectrum of composed and improvised musical expression, often blending acoustic and synthetic sound worlds to create complex textures and soundfabric.

SATURDAY OCTOBER 12 - 7:00 p.m. - fringe saturday!

Dennis McSorley - What's It to You

Dennis is an actor and storyteller who has been a part of Off Center for sometime. He has debuted all of his solo work here in the spirit of the Off Center mission. He has twice been in the Spring New Artist showcase, many past Fringe line-ups and the XMAS Holiday gigs. This time he again is trying out something new: ‘What’s It to You’. Both audience and him will find out soon enough.

Medium Boy - Harry

Medium Boy invites you to meet Harry, a modified version of a classic improv form. With help from the audience we’ll draw from our real lives and yours to create a window into a world of comedy that has never existed and will never exist again. You’ll see quick scenes, long scenes, crossovers, and callbacks. Nothing’s been pre-written and it’s all made up on the spot so each show is unique to its audience. Come share a moment with us! You’re going to like the way you laugh, we guarantee it. Medium Boy is a long form improv team from Burlington, VT that will take you on a tour of all things strange and wonderful, building new worlds with a focus on relationships, character building, and absurdity. They’ve been featured in the Big Pond Improv Festival, Hartford Improv Festival, and can be seen during their fall residency at Vermont Comedy Club. Medium Boy is Emily Kueppers, Maggie Phelan, Lindsey Desrochers, Linda Biafore, Rachael Sherman, and Ash Diggs.

Martin Gil - Drum Speech

The Man and his conga will discuss the politics of money and power, displacement, inclusion, and social depravity. Perhaps a visitation by important persons will occur, perhaps not. 

Born in the mountains of the planet Mars, tempered in the heart of the sun, Mister Gil discovered writing expressively soothed the angst precipitated by his feelings of being an outsider here on Earth. Schooled in Vermont, Marty has traveled this planet in search for meaning, for an answer to the question of existence. For him, performance of his written word, is the icing on his cake, made with oat and rice flour; gluten free.

Eric Pachner

The history of man would be nothing without the enduring companionship of the Dog. Join me in exploring the questions surrounding our love for Dogs. Have you ever pet a dog that sees you? Knows you? Your lover doesn't know you as well as that Dog. Will the Dogs be our salvation? Or are we totally doomed!? See spot run. 

Erich Pachner is a dog wrangler and a human wrangler with a foot on the train and a foot up sh*t’s creek. He hopes to give offerings to a living god up the creek. But the creek is Niagara Falls. So he camps out on the maid in the mist.

Jessie Owens and Danielle Tekut - The Wet Frontier Between Me and Me

The Wet Frontier Between Me and Me is one part of They Say a Lady Was the Cause of It, an evening-length dance performance that is currently being created by Jessie Owens. The full performance, inspired in part by Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, and Undine Geht (Undine Goes), by Ingeborg Bachmann, will premier in February, 2020 at the Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center. Creator and choreographer, Jessie Owens and co-choreographer, Danielle Tekut will present excerpts of the material they have created for The Wet Frontier Between Me and Me. It explores the concepts of agency and identity, beyond the way society has written them, and beyond the roles we assume in our daily lives. The performance will include the use of movement, recorded music, and spoken word.

Lauren Costello - "I Fake It So Real I Am Beyond Fake" 

How do we navigate through tumultuous situations when our emotional response is at odds with, or detrimental to, our maintenance of a status quo that we value? If we suppress or hide our emotions for an extended period of time or with such triumphant accomplishment, can we lose our sense of self in the process? What if our inner voice fades behind that of a constructed self? This piece is a thematic exploration using music made with cello, guitar, vocals, tape, field recordings, and noise, along with interview clips from Courtney Love, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Nicole Kidman, Lars Von Trier, and many others, of the experience of fearing emotions when the dissociative process breaks down.Lauren Costello is a Burlington based multi-instrumental musician. She performs her solo music under the moniker 'ouzkxqlzn' and plays cello in the Wren Kitz band, the Dead Shakers, and occasionally with the Jessica Rabbit Syndrome.