While it may cause vision-blurring cognititive dissonance just to think about anything related to the Captial Fringe Festival while comfortably wearing long pants (or maybe I’m just projecting), Fall Fringe, the seven-year-old DIY theater bacchanal’s cool-weather cousin, is upon us. The second of its three weekends kicks off tonight. The majority of the shows on offer are reprised from the summer festival. Here are a few of this weekend’s offerings that we can recommend on the basis of having written about them back in July on our Fringe & Purge blog. All shows are at the Fort Fringe complex at 607 New York Ave. NW, as is the new indoor bar. In chronological order:
Tent of Dreams: An Occuplay (tonight, 6:30 p.m., 60 min.): This original piece of thoughtful agitprop from Nu Sass Productions chronicles the various constituencies comprising the Occupy movement. It was written by Emily Crockett, a Campus Progress staff writer who covered Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park last year, then continued to follow the story as D.C.’s own Occupy protest began; the play was rehearsed during the “sleepful protests” in McPherson Square last April. Nu Sass took the show to New York City in September to recognize the anniversary of the Occupy protests. Read my story on Capital Fringe’s Occupy shows here; listen to a podcast featuring Nu Sass’s Emily Todd and Aubri O’Connor here. Or just buy tickets.
The Brontes (8 p.m. tonight and on Thurs.-Sat. nights throughout Fall Fringe, 90 min.): This latest offering from CapFringe stalwarts Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside review was enough of a hit last summer that shows were added to the schedule to keep up with demand. Writing about it for Fringe & Purge, Brett Abelman found this literary-bio-as-rock-‘n’-roll-tent-revival to be superbly entertaining, if not especially insightful or provocative, praising its creators as “alchemical rock n’ roll magic geniuses.” Tickets.
R.U.X.: Rockwell’s Universal seXbots (tomorrow 6:30 p.m.; complete times/dates here, 85 min.): This sci-fi comedy from playwright Maurice Martin was one of my favorite shows at CapFringe this summer. Martin and director Sun King Davis have restored a scene that was cut for time from its run last July, so now there’s even more of Aubri O’Connor’s performance as a brilliant artificial intelligence researcher who gets a little too close to one of her creations for you to enjoy. Tickets.
Eddie’s Bar (Friday, 10:45 p.m., Saturday, 7 p.m., Nov. 15 at 11 p.m., 60 min.): High-volume rock-and-raconteur Ed Hamell wasn’t in the summer festival this year, but this new show promises more of his trademark socially conscious “acoustic punk.” I profiled Hamell in 2010, when his This Is Your Brain on Rock and Roll was part of the Capital Fringe lineup. Tickets.
Colony (Sunday, 1 p.m.; complete schedule here, 50 min.): Fringe & Purge blogger Rachel Manteuffel—-by her own admission, not a connoisseur of The Dance—-found Melissa Krodman and Kelly Bond’s fourth-wall-ignoring dance show to be visceral and thought-provoking. Tickets.