If it’s September, then FringeArts is back to drop a few weeks worth of unpredictable, experimental and genre-exploring theater, dance and musical performance all over the city.
This year’s festival runs Sept. 9-24.
As always, there are a number of mentally and visually stimulating LGBT-themed shows and productions in this year’s festival that explore issues of love, stereotypes and self-acceptance.
SkyDance Philly is presenting “Grounded Autonomy,” the true story of two young lovers revisiting their former turbulent relationship through wise eyes, using aerial acrobatics. The former lovers are aerial artist and 2015 Men’s Regional Pole champion Sean Green and theatrical actor and ballet dancer Garrett Olthuis.
“Sean and I were first-time lovers of one another,” Olthuis said. “We met when he was 17 and I was 20 and had a whirlwind summertime romance situation. We’ve both grown up since. I’m 29 and he’s 25. This is the telling of our story as kids and the way that we interpreted it now that we understand things better. It’s a good way for us to step out of the situation, come back together, realize the good, realize the bad and realize the ways that we have changed, and sort of retell our story while keeping it what it was and changing it in ways that we see fit as we now go forward having one another in each other’s lives.”
Olthuis said they had to exercise some restraint in how much aerial acrobatics they put into the show for the sake of the narrative, but noted the show used the best aspects of both of their dance backgrounds.
“[Sean] has this really strong athleticism and a strong athletic background, so he’s known for doing a lot of strength-based tricks,” Olthuis said. “My background is in classical ballet and dance. I’m more about movement, lines and clean, clear vision. My background is also in musical theater, so I like the idea of storytelling. So we’re using aerial arts to tell the story. There are places where these crazy tricks and stunts that Sean is really good at could be really amazing, but they kind of take you away from that story. We’re trying to utilize all the aerial and circus skills that we’ve learned to tell the story and not have them distract but have them play the way that musical theater would, where you’re sort of telling the story and when the story escalates to a point where you can no longer just dance about it, we get up in the air and do some aerial tricks and connect with one another in the air to then bring us back down to the ground and tell the reality of the story.”
Revisiting a past relationship and its breakup could tread some unpleasant territory, but Olthuis said there’s part of revisiting that time in their lives that he finds enjoyable and rewarding.
“It’s been a safe place for Sean and I to explore that,” he said. “I was dancing when we met. He had always loved dance and I thought he was awesome. So we started getting to know one another. Now to revisit it from that perspective is very interesting. It’s a place of confidence. It’s a space where I know he genuinely loves me for this art of mine. Even though throughout time he does things to hurt me and I do things to hurt him, I still know and have confidence that this one part of my creativity is something that he thinks is beautiful. So to go to that space and create something when you know that person is going to be honest with you, it’s really easy to be there and get to know him and let your guard down.”
Guards are definitely up for Poison Apple Initiative’s “An Obviously Foggot,” an immersive production that shines the spotlight on the fetishized masculinity and internalized homophobia that people find in gay bars.
Poison Apple Initiative’s artistic director, Bastion Carboni, said the sometimes-difficult social climate in gay bars is a result of the stunted development and prejudices gay men experience in their formative years.
“The gay bar is essentially a social ghetto where you put the undesirables,” Carboni said. “It’s where they say all of these things and do what they do under the cover of darkness. As a result, you have all of these social problems that arise. Community? No! Competition? Yes! The gay bar is indicative of our social problems, and as things progress, I wonder if it will end up being necessary. I know that people will want the gay bar to continue because they want to be around people that are just like them. This is a group of people that haven’t had the same sexual trajectory of their heterosexual peers. They’ve missed out on years of dating experience that their heterosexual peers have had in adolescence. You’re fed all of this garbage about masculinity and how it’s important and attractive but, if you’re one of the queer kids, you are also told you will never have that. It builds this inherent inferiority complex and this tendency toward being reactive and defensive. That’s where shade comes from and that’s where the catty, sassy, snarky gay guy comes from.”
To illustrate the point, “An Obviously Foggot” puts the audience in the mix amid the sounds, images and the humanity of a happening gay bar.
“No one sits,” Carboni said. “It’s a standing piece. The bar is open when the show is going on. The audience follows that action through this portion of the bar. You’re crowding around to see these various happenings and the actors will just move you out of the way. Audience interaction is weird in this play, treating them like patrons at the bar.”
New Works hopes to fix the damage to your inner child with its production of “Sword of the Unicorn,” a sci-fi epic where space travel, dinosaurs and aliens show up in a battle against evil.
“The idea is to take ’70s and ’80s sci-fi and give it an LGBTQ twist,” show producer Harrison Stengle said. “The ’70s and the ’80s was this dawning into modern surrealism and there was a lot of extraneous imagery. A lot of fantasy sci-fi was ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Flash Gordon’ and ‘Thundercats’ and ‘He-Man,’ and they use symbols and subliminal messaging that is representative of a heterosexual coming-of-age story. I felt that in these stories they would be this demonization and bastardization of sexuality and ideology that wasn’t heterosexual. What I wanted to do with this piece is have that fantasy trope but with a positive and uplifting message for the LGBTQ community because I think that is missing.”
Stengle said younger audiences need LGBTQ figures and role models to latch onto that aren’t stereotypically eroticized, tragic or comedic.
“I wanted LGBTQs not only to look normal, but to look awesome,” he said. “I see a lot of things in the LGBTQ community that are either really sexual or they are very depressing. I feel as though if you were a little kid, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy that. If you were a little kid and you had issues self-determining your sexual identity, it would be overwhelming to go to these mediums. The show does utilize a bit of the camp but it doesn’t shy away from the realism. It talks about really deep and complex issues in a way that is non–threatening and non-sexualized.
SkyDance Philly presents “Grounded Autonomy” Sept. 9-11 at The Glass Factory, 1517 N. Baily St.
Poison Apple Initiative presents “An Obviously Foggot” Sept. 14-18 at ICandy, 254 S. 12th St.
New Works presents “Sword of the Unicorn” Sept. 9-19 at The Proscenium Theatre at The Drake, 1512 Spruce St.
For more information on Fringe Arts and a full list of shows, visit www.fringearts.com.