by Grayling Holmes / Photos provided by St. Louis Fringe

I was a virgin until last year – a STLFringe FEST virgin.  Apparently, I had been living under a proverbial rock.  Since I was a child in the 1960’s, I have been a regular patron of the theatre in St. Louis. I have seen many shows on our iconic St. Louis stages at The Fabulous Fox, The Muny, Stages-St. Louis, and The St. Louis Repertory Theatre. I thought I had experienced it all, and then just last year, I discovered the magic of St Lou Fringe, and their annual STLFringe FEST festival. STLFringe FEST is an interdisciplinary arts festival that takes place across multiple venues in the Grand Center Arts District every August for thirteen years, celebrating the work of the St. Louis Independent Arts Community. A whole new world opened for me; a kaleidoscopic world of theatrical delights that I now fervently embrace.

Recently, I sat down with St. Lou Fringe President and Artistic Director Matthew Kerns. Now I know why I had never heard of the Fringe Fest.  “Unlike a traditional theater such as the Fox, Muny, the Broadway Theater in NYC, and other proscenium theaters, STLFringe FEST productions encompass a multitude of art forms,” he said. A proscenium stage is one that seats the audience on one side of the stage and separates the stage and the audience with a proscenium arch. I’m sure everyone has seen this – at the movies, Fox, Muny.  Even though the Rep does theater in the round, the audience is still separated and not part the action.  “The work you see at those theaters are a more traditional form of theater making,” Matthew added.

During our talk, he hipped me to all things Fringe, including: The origins of the fringe movement, the history of St Lou Fringe as an arts organization, and to learn just exactly what is, “Independent Art.” My eyes were to be opened.  What a joy I was in store for to crawl out from under my rock and take the my theatrical blinders off.

Kerns began, “The Fringe movement began as a protest in Edinburgh, Scottland, some 80 years ago. A group of artists were invited to the Edinburgh International Festival to perform shows they had created and once arrived they were told that their work was not good enough to participate and they were asked to leave. The brave artists then decided to take up in venues on the outskirts of the Edinburgh International Festival to present their works and thus the Fringe was born.” 

Those artists went on to create a canon of tenants for the Fringe movement that would shape the world of the independent artist. All works participating in the Fringe would be uncensored, there will be no adjudication, and all festival presenters would be chosen via blind lottery. This bold movement burgeoned hundreds of festivals across the globe including St Lou Fringe, opening our doors in 2011.”

Kerns continued, “The mission of St Lou Fringe is to build community by nurturing diverse independent artists and producing a world-class multi-disciplinary annual festival where we champion uncensored work, connect artistic work-makers to audiences, and educate and engage the local, regional, and global cultural communities around the work of independent arts.”

He went on, “When you go see an STLFringe FEST production it is an intimate and visceral experience created by an artist or collective that is not affiliated with any particular company or style of artmaking, hence the independent artist. The houses are small, the actors are breaking the fourth wall between the world of show and the audience, and the experience is different than that of seeing a proscenium stage show at one of our St. Louis hub theaters, that said, STLFringe FEST offers those styles of show too. Most of the work across our stages is original and making its debut on our stages at the annual STLFringe FEST festival.”

Kerns went on, “STLFringe FEST is multi-disciplinary, which means, we feature all genres of art in our festival: Dance, Visual Art, Music, Film, Poetry, Creative Writing, Theatre, and Musical Theatre. The STLFringe FEST Headline Series features shows like: BIG MACHINE, a new musical by Fly North Theatricals, or Urinetown, a Tony-Award winning show being presented by Ignite Theatre Company, and even an original work titled, Fella & Dame, that is all about the fantastic comedic history of those comedy greats that came through St. Louis’ own, Gaslight Square.”

I first met Matthew last year when I was writing an article about famed St. Louis author, Chris Andoe, who was working with Kerns to transform his life story into a one-man show for the stage, The Final Performance of Midnight Annie, the life, times, and stories of Chris Andoe. From the headline acts of that year such as BARE: A Pop Opera, to the Final Performance of Midnight Annie, I was hooked.

My friend Nick and I found getting around the festival footprint easy, as the Kranzberg Arts Foundation venues STLFringe FEST uses are all within a city of one another. Our first stop, the .ZACK theater, aptly named after Ken and Nancy Kranzberg’s grandson Zack. Ken and Nancy Kranzberg are the founders of the Kranzberg Arts Foundation and are responsible for the re-development of numerous properties across the district with the intended use of those properties being a local hub for artistic creation.

Why the name, .Zack?  Ken and Nancy Kranzberg decided to honor their family by naming their theaters and art venues for their loved ones – the Marcelle for Ken’s mother, and Sophie’s Artist Lounge for their daughter Sophie Marcelle are just two. “One day my grandson Zack came to me and said, ‘What about me, Grandpa?’ So, when I bought the historic Cadillac building, I named it the .ZACK in his honor and to make it sound fresh for the new age that we are in,” said Ken.

The Kranzberg Arts foundation hosts a myriad of artistic residencies, supplying infrastructure to their resident art organizations that makeup the collective. St Lou Fringe is one of the original Kranzberg Arts Foundation residents.

Thousands will attest to the fact that the Kranzbergs are the “connective tissue” for arts organizations not only in the Grand Arts District, but regionwide. It’s even been said that they help the St, Louis arts community fly — they are the wind beneath wings of the vibrant arts community. And the world is taking notice. In a 2023, article, Forbes.com proclaimed that “America’s Most Exciting Emerging Arts District Is In…St. Louis. St. Lou Fringe is a vital part of that emergence.

That August night in 2023, we experienced the .Zack for the first time and re-discovered The Grand Center Arts District as a whole. Although I knew that The Grand Arts District included: Jazz St. Louis. Powell Hall, The Sheldon, and the Grandel Theater, I was unaware that Grand Avenue anchors the district. The entire district is bordered by Vandeventer, Compton, Delmar, and Olive.  For the uninitiated it is pretty spread out. Remember that I am a child of 60’s and remember when the neighborhood had been forsaken. The Kranzberg’s have been a vital part of the rebirth of this part of our great city.

We walked up to the .Zack, and instead of finding the old-abandoned Cadillac building that had once succumbed to the neighborhood decay, we were seeing a gorgeous, artfully lit, symbol of our city’s history and future coming together as one. The lobby was bustling with the culturally curious enthusiastically chatting about the works they had experienced that day of at STLFringe FEST over craft cocktails and scrumptious munchies. I thought to myself, “The .Zack is, ‘Not your father’s Oldsmobile,’” as bespoke the classic commercial, but rather, a fresh, new Cadillac of modern theatrical venues right here in St. Louis.”

On this night the lens that cloaked this hidden world from me was about to be lifted.

My long-time friend Chris Andoe invited Nick and I down to see his world-premiere of, The Final Performance of Midnight Annie, the Late-Night Headline Act of STLFringe FEST ‘23. Although I knew a lot about Chris from reading his much-celebrated first novel, “Delusions of Grandeur,” I had no idea that this one-man-show would make what was on the written page spring to life. He told us that months-long prep with Matthew and his team breathed new life into his tome Much like a defibrillator pad jolts one to life, I would learn after seeing the show that the Fringe Fest production animated his life and times beyond all my expectations.

We opened the mainstage theater auditorium doors to discover a packed house, with every seat in the state-of-the-art room being filled with whispered expectations. Many of us knew Chris, and for those who didn’t, he and St Lou Fringe had pumped up the marketing volume so that everyone had heard that this was a not-to-be missed Headline-Act of the STLFringe FEST festival. Finally, the lights dimmed, the audience laughed, oohed, ahhed, and marveled at the sheer genius and stage presence that Chris demonstrated in his one-man performance. The show exemplified everything a STLFringe FEST production should. “Midnight Annie is artistic expression at its finest.” Kerns said.

Chris got a well deserved standing ovation. We were truly honored to have witnessed the late-night festival production.

A day later, Nick and I would see an STLFringe FEST show that had all those elements and one other hallmark of a St Lou Fringe production – unique staging.

This time it was daytime.  It was hot. Yes, the dog days of August showed no mercy; the brutal sun beat down on us forcing beads of sweat to trickle down our tank-top-covered backs. That sweat dried with a quickness as we were greeted with a blast of cold a/c as soon as we opened the doors to the Marcelle Theater on Samuel Shephard Blvd. Again, lifelong St. Louisan here and I had no idea that such a spiral of theatrical joy existed past the confines of Grand Avenue.

The same excitement we experienced at the .Zack was at the Marcelle. The place was electric. We soon found out why the space has been shape-shifted to a three-quarter thrust theatre style with audiences seated on three sides of the plays action, much like you experience when seeing a Rep show at the Lorretta-Hilton Theater on Webster Universities Wester Groves campus. The colorful cast of, BARE: A Pop Opera, presented by GCPA, was the STLFringe FEST ’23 Headline-Act. The dynamic actors marched out to greet the packed house and the show was underway.

The staging of BARE, a coming-of-age tale about a group of private Catholic high school students, transported the audience from dorm rooms to classrooms and from the school gymnasium to church – all by virtue of the creative staging and use of the interchangeable black box theatre. Ken Kranzberg’s mother’s namesake was also not our momma’s Oldsmobile either.

The whole thing lived up to its name, raw, raucous, unapologetically riveting. Nick was transfixed at one moment by the tender emotion from the protagonist struggling with his sexuality and the torment heaved upon him by his classmates. Then, Nick and the audience were cheering and clapping as Sister Chantelle belted out a big number or one of the male leads sang so sweetly that you could swear they were from Broadway.

I remember Nick sliding comfortably down in his seat with his flip-flop clad feet sticking out onto the “stage.” In this case the “stage” was on the same level as the actors, and Nick almost seemed a part of it when the large cast would move from one scene to the next passing him. Imagine 50 teenagers in plaid skirts and young men in starched blue dress uniform slacks moving past your bare toes. BARE connected with Nick, literally. Nick quickly moved his bare feet to keep his toes intact. Oh, and a stalwart Mother Superior in the row behind us metaphorically rapped his knuckles by whispering, “Young man, would you mind keeping your feet out of the way?  The children could trip, you know.”  I silently giggled. BARE really embodied the spirit of the fringe.

From my first experience last year I learned quickly that STLFringe FEST really lives up to its name. The works are raw, raucous, unapologetic, and riveting. It is simply an artistic experience like no other.

Although once driven to the fringes of town, now fringe festivals have taken their rightful place in the theatrical world.  One might even say they are trailblazers.

Case in point.  While the sting of Covid that crippled  or wiped out some proscenium theaters, the fringe festivals thrived.  In fact, during the height of the pandemic St. Lou Fringe spearheaded digital festivals. “We had people turning walk-in closets and living rooms in their apartments into theaters. They Zoomed to audiences across the globe. We even taught other festivals how to do it,” Matthew said, with a hint of pride in his voice.

And the beat goes on. 

This year, STLFringe FEST’24 is comprised of 40+ independent producers, 80% of the artists are local and 20% are national, presenting works of art across the artistic disciplines. The national artists are hailing from: Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, Illinois (Chicago), and Georgia. When you venture down to this wonderland August 12th through August 18th, you will be treated to works like: World-renowned aerial dance company, Newsam Aerial Dance at the .Zack; Original plays like, That Woman Play, a story about the women who were involved with JFK; Red Hot Patriot, the one-woman show about the incredible late journalist, Molly Ivins; and much, much more.

“In our history, we’ve presented, created, and produced more 600+ shows that have gone on to runs in local regional and national venues, including Off- Broadway” Kerns said.

St Louis Fringe presents works throughout the year as St. Louis’ original arts incubator. Their programming includes: STLFringe Pride Series, STLFringe New Works Series, STLFringe Holiday Series, and the flagship program of the organization STLFringe FEST. This year St Lou Fringe presented Shimmy STL, the history of belly dance in St. Louis, and Secrets of the Gold Queen, a new children’s opera about the game of chess.

Like the 60’s showman James Brown, Matthew truly is one of the “hardest workin’ men in show business.”  “It is the pinnacle of my arts career to have led St Lou Fringe for the last nine years and into the future.”  I’ve known Matthew for a solid year now as I write this article and he always has a smile on his face and in his voice. You will too when you experience STLFringe FEST ’24 for yourself.

For a complete list of shows, showtimes, tickets, passes, and more information please visit www.stlfringe.org.

Here’s what to expect in 2024

LOCAL HEADLINE ACT

BIG MACHINE by Colin Healy and Fly North Theatricals is the STLFringe FEST ’24 Headline Act. This gritty musical adaptation, directed by Bradley Rohlf, tells the story of  the lost potential of American youth amidst the degradation of the working machine that is the automobile during the industrial revolution. 

The Marcelle Theatre, August 2 – 18, 2024, Tickets $35.00 - Purchase Here

NATIONAL HEADLINE ACT

Broken Bone Bathtub: The Documentary by Siohbán O’Loughlin “Broken Bone Bathtub uses cleansing as a metaphor, invites healing both physical and emotional, and does so with an insistence that hugs you like warm bath water.— St Louis Magazine, 2016

Siobhán O’Loughlin, and her inspiring tale of using other people’s bathtub’s, return to St. Louis to share the experience of traveling the world performing the show in this St. Louis premiere documentary as the  STLFringe FEST ’24 National Headline Act. O’Loughlin, a veteran STLFringe FEST performer, will take a swim in the tub to perform the original show that started it all, Broken Bone bathtub for two benefit performances, Sunday August 12th 

.ZACK Theatre, August 12 – 18. Tickets $25.00 - Purchase Here

The Lemp Mansion, Broken Bone Bathtub Benefit Performance, Sunday, August 18, Tickets are limited Call for Tickets

LATE NIGHT HEADLINER (St. Louis Premiere)

Fella & Dame: An Ode to Mid-Century Comedy & St. Louis' Gaslight Square

 A new work from the hilarious comedic writing team of Kocher and Papavlasopoulos

 For their inaugural headlining performance they have created the original work, Fella & Dame: An Ode to Mid-Century Comedy & St. Louis’ Gaslight Square. The story focuses one a heartfelt exploration of friendship and the pursuit of dreams set against the backdrop of St. Louis’ lively entertainment scene of the 1950s-60s. It will feature some classic scenes from icons like comedian Lenny Bruce.

Stella Fella and Danny Dame are a comedy duo that have honed their craft alongside legendary acts. As the years roll by, Fella and Dame find themselves still at the same club in St. Louis while their peers have moved on to Hollywood success. When an opportunity arises for them to finally step into the spotlight of Tinseltown, they are faced with a pivotal decision. Will Stella and Danny seize their chance at stardom, or will they discover that true fulfillment lies closer to home?  Their journey is filled with witty banter, heartfelt moments, and a backdrop of mid-century charm, inviting audiences to laugh, cry, and reflect on the enduring bonds of friendship.

.ZACK Theater August 12 – 18, 2024. Tickets, $25.00 - Purchase Here

YOUNG ARTIST HEADLINER

Urinetown, the musical presented by Ignite Theatre

STLFringe FEST ’24 is excited to welcome back Ignite Theatre as our first ever Young Artists Headline Series.

Urinetown, the musical is a satirical comedy musical that premiered in 2001, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. It satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and municipal politics.

.ZACK Theater August 12 – 18, 2043. Tickets are $25.00.

The FEST will also feature Felia Davenport’s visual art show, Torn Mixology. 

Torn Mixology is a mixed media exhibition that explores the journey of identifying as a multi-racial female. The exhibit consists of 5 costume designs that begin with childhood through adulthood exploring key points in life where identity was created, challenged, and conquered. A tradition in African American culture, during the Underground Railroad, quilts acted as maps. Each of these designs will be quilted to map out the evolving journey and struggle with identity. To represent the outside force, each mannequin will be painted black, white, and grey to illustrate the American viewpoints on identity. Each design will be collaged with skin tones with the American viewpoint creeping throughout the design at times suffocating the design. By using textiles and spoken word, I want to invoke an emotional response and conversation with this exhibit. By removing the physical actor, the clothing becomes the character, and the words becomes the underscore to the clothing.  

STLFringe FEST ’24 will also include an improvised musical by the One Four Fives, a burlesque show titled, Neuospicy, and music from the Appalachian SongCatcher, Eric Keeney’s new country album premiere, and so much more.

Other Performances of Note