We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.
Summertime is when D.C. theater gets extra bizarre. July’s Capital Fringe serves up the most obvious wellspring of dramaturgical oddness during the sweltering months, but let’s not forget Fringe’s weird stepcousin, the Source Festival.
The bonanza of new works, now celebrating its sixth anniversary, begins June 7 and runs for three weeks at 14th Street’s Source theater, introducing a combination of 10-minute plays, full-length works, and “artistic blind dates,” which match up artists from different media in order to create new works. Not every play at the Source Festival is wacked out, but if you go looking for weird, you will find it. Here are a few of the oddballs you’ll encounter at this year’s fest.
Supplication
Life is stressful and confusing. To cope, some people go into therapy. Others take up woodworking. The lead character in local playwright David Robinson’s 10-minute play Supplication opts to return to his mother’s uterus—where he finds “more than what he bargained for.”
Frosty: A Chilly Tragedy with Sexy Bits
In Krista Knight’s 10-minute play, a woman falls in love with Frosty the Snowman before he meets the drippy fate that all snowmen must.
Lake Untersee
In Lake Untersee, one of the festival’s three full-length plays, somebody (maybe an alien?) is trapped under the ice of the large Antarctic lake, and a troubled 15-year-old boy yearns to lead the rescue mission. Sounds like a plan.
Uncle Cory’s Secret Playtime
When we saw that this artistic blind date was called Uncle Cory’s Secret Playtime, we knew it was gonna be some fucked-up shit—and that was before we knew it involves clowns.