The Philadelphia Fringe Festival is one of my favorite arts events in the fall. Still, I have to remind myself that the FringeArts organization and the building complete with a bar, restaurant and theater is hopping year-round. The Fringe bar is a great place to grab a drink under the stars with the beautiful Ben Franklin Bridge lit up in the background. They have various events to enjoy like their popular Quizzo nights every Wednesday, and special events like Rhythm & Beats coming up on March 21 or the Latin Vibes Dance Party on March 29. For something a little more queer, the Sip City women will be there on March 15. The theater is taking on a circus vibe (right up my alley) with “Sad Boys in Harpy Land,” “Sohrab is Bumbling Foriegner,” and “blckgoorue” and then they wrap up the month with Martha Graham Cracker and John Jarboe, and finally celebrating the music of Talking Heads. Helping with all of these events is this week’s Portrait, Simon Rabinowitz, the Independent Artist Program Manager for FringeArts and a major cheerleader for all things artsy. Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.
I’ve been a Fringe fan since way back and I love the fact that you have a home base in such an incredible location. What’s the best part of your job?
It feels like such a gift to work with such an appreciative artist community. I love the people of Philadelphia. I love the artists of Philadelphia especially. I think there’s a certain breed of artists that exists here that really have a vision and then fight to make them happen. I think it’s a very accessible arts community. I don’t think there’s anyone working in the Philadelphia art scene that I’ve encountered that won’t respond to your email or give you the time of day. I think we all care about each other so much at every level, and that lets people have control over their careers. The ability to do really cool, interesting things adds to the character of the city. I really love that in my job, that I can be a part of helping to enable that.
I think the Fringe Festival exists across a really interesting spectrum of artists. I get to work with everyone from someone putting on their own show for the first time — a dream they’ve always had — all the way up to people whose livelihood is putting on shows in the festival each year. It’s really exciting. You get to work with both of those spectrums and everyone in between who are moving through and navigating the gradient of making art your life. And I love that as a Fringe Festival, it’s never my job to say no to someone’s art. I wouldn’t enjoy that.
I hear that.
I come from a theater background, and a lot of theater is built on exclusivity. It’s built on a sense of separation and a sense of like, “Only this is worthy of stage time,” and this festival rejects that completely, which is a really incredible thing and leads to some really amazing, unforgettable art.
I like the fun, fringier stuff but it feels like I don’t see as much lately.
Hmm, I don’t know about that. One of the most memorable pieces from last year was “Ghost Ride,” a play that was staged on bicycles. You rode bicycles along MLK Drive, and the scenes unfolded in front of you as you biked and stopped. The tech that made it work was amazing, the crew working on it was amazing, really good. There was another show staged in an actual locker room. That was pretty cool too. Part of that is that we allow anything to be a venue, which is how we end up with streets and locker rooms as venues. We have the most venues of all Fringe Festivals in the country, so sometimes you really have to look to find what you want.
I stand corrected!
In fact, in 2023 we had a piece called “Privy,” where you entered a bathroom and there was a glory hole, and then out of the glory hole pops an ice cream cone. So I’d like to think there’s still a lot of fringy energy going on.
That’s hysterical. OK let’s get to you. Where did you make your stage entrance?
I was born in Mount Airy, and as I grew up, my parents split up, so I basically lived in Mount Airy, Chestnut Hill, Germantown — all parts of Northwest Philadelphia.
What did the folks do?
My mom was a teacher at Germantown Friends School. She taught English there for about 35 years. She was an extremely popular teacher, the sort of teacher that kids came out to. A very loving, loud and accepting woman. She also cursed like a sailor, which helped her to connect with students as someone who cared a lot about their learning and wanted to meet them where they were. She was very interested in overhauling the system and incorporating more women and authors of color into the curriculum. My dad is a pediatrician — so a pretty steady, stable job. He’s just a super friendly, nice guy. I’m very grateful that he’s also 0% toxic masculine. He loves babies and kids, obviously, and can talk to anyone.
How would your mom have described little Simon?
It’s a great question. I think from a very young age, I was pretty snarky, which I think she would take a good amount of credit for. I think from the time I knew what laughter was, I really liked to make people laugh. She would also say that I was always dressing up. I loved costumes. I loved characters. I loved Halloween. It’s where my love of theater started, just getting to fully be in this other world. I think she’d also say that I was a very nice, very sweet kid. [Laughing] She has a baby book and we’ll read back some of my quotes every so often, and I’ll be like, “Yeah, that was a good joke. I stand by that one.”
What was your favorite costume?
I was a big Buzz Lightyear fan. I loved the colors. I didn’t love space in a science-y way, but I loved space in the abstract way. I loved Batman. I remember whenever I felt strife between my parents, I was like, “Well, Batman doesn’t even need parents, so I’m just gonna lean into that.”
Do you have any siblings?
I do. I have a sister, Lucy, who is eight years older than me. She lives in Atlanta and works in public health. Right now, she’s working at a place called Art Pharmacy that is working on trying to incorporate prescriptions for art, which I think is really fascinating. It’s a holistic way to think about mental health. My brother is older than me as well. He’s a lawyer and he just moved to Hawaii.
Nice!
Yeah! I look forward to having a free place to stay in Hawaii, and then I have three step-siblings who are all around my age.
What were some extracurricular things you enjoyed in school?
I did a lot of theater. I don’t think there was a time when there wasn’t a theater show that I didn’t work on in some way, but mostly acting. By the time I got to my senior year, I realized I didn’t want to be an actor so I started directing shows, but then I realized what I loved about directing was the producing element. I loved putting it all together.
There’d be times when I was directing a scene and an actor would ask me a question like, “Why am I moving over there?” I think a good director would have good, thoughtful answers but I was like, “Um, because you’re supposed to?” So I prefer producing, making the whole thing happen. Looking at a series of challenges and surmounting them. I was also one of the editors of the yearbook, which was another big project to work on. I really loved projects. I hated tests. I did not like taking them. I found them to be stressful. I liked my work to be evaluated for what I did over several months, rather than on how I did over two hours on a single day.
Well, you must have done something right to get into Yale. What was the biggest culture shock moving to New England?
I think that for me, I had gone to the same school growing up and was a fixture there for my entire conscious life. Yale is by no means a big school, but I think anywhere would have felt bigger. I felt not an identity crisis, but it was one of those things where I had to go from someplace I’d established myself year after year, where people knew who I was, where I had my friends, and going to a new place, especially a place like Yale where everyone was that person. So I spent the first couple of years at Yale feeling very much like, “Who am I though?” How do I fit into this context? How do I find my people? I felt a lot of social anxiety I’d never felt in my life before. And it was new to me to feel so unstable and not having my mom there. Otherwise, I enjoyed it. I like the cold. I like clam chowder. And it got better.
It seems like you’ve done everything from hosting Quizzo to facilitating bike lanes! What’s the strangest job you’ve done?
I worked for three weeks at a secretive crypto company. Even having worked there, their mission and their operations are still kind of a mystery to me. The second I found a theater job, I left that company promptly.
When did you come back to Philly?
I was working for a lawyer in New York in the spring of 2023. The lawyer sold the law firm, and thus began a summer of figuring out what was next for me. One of my friends, Michaela, worked at Fringe. She was like, “Simon, you’re from Philly and I know you always wanted to move back. They’re looking to hire someone to replace the Fringe Festival Coordinator. You should apply.” So I applied, got an interview, came in, and it was honestly a pretty quick turnaround because the festival was imminent. I’m extremely comfortable improvising and being thrown in situations where I don’t know what’s going on and figuring it out so I think that was a very appealing thing for them. I started working on the festival, and I really quickly fell in love with it. I loved getting to work with so many artists. I’ve been here for a year-and-a-half now, maybe a little longer. I forget how months work, but it’s been great. It’s gone quickly, because I’m getting to do what I love to do. I get to activate so many parts of my brain. On one side, I have to have people skills and talk to people. But I also get to work on a registration site and do technological back ends of stuff. And I find both of those things to be really intriguing. It’s very rare that one day of work looks like the next day. I love getting to figure out a new thing each day.
So tell me a little bit about your coming-out journey.
I’m very lucky that I came from an extremely supportive community and extremely supportive family. I think I first came out the day I heard the word bisexual, when I was probably, like, 7 or 8 years old. I heard the word and asked my mother what it meant. I think she said something like, “It means someone who likes boys and girls.” And apparently, I was pretty much instantly like, “Oh, that’s me.” Growing up, I just loved men and women the same way, often as friends and then also as romantic prospects.
Who was your first boy crush?
OK, my first boy crush that I can positively point to was…wait, I won’t say his name. He was an older boy at my school, and he was a ballet dancer. He was out as gay, and back then, despite it being a pretty welcoming community, there weren’t too many kids that were out publicly. He was just beautiful and sweet. I was obsessed with him. He was older than me and would just say hi to me and I would get little flutters. I also went to theater camp in the summers and I would say that almost everyone there was gay.
[Laughing] It was almost weird to not be gay there. If anyone would come in and say that they were straight, everyone — including the counselors — would be like, “Yeah, that’s not true.” That’s where I learned a lot about gay culture and gay vibes. We were all having crushes on each other. Sneaking behind the theaters and pecking each other on the lips. So that was very fun.
Sweet. Tell me a little about your partner.
We first met in grade school. We started dating our senior year of high school, and we were both like, “Are we doing this? Is this what we’re about to do?” And we did. They’re also from Philly. They are nonbinary, and we live together now, which is really awesome. We’ve been together for seven-and-a-half years, which has been really amazing and exciting. I don’t know. I just love them so much — like, a lot — [laughing] maybe too much!
All right. Let’s do some totally random questions. Any alter egos?
In high school, I would sometimes perform raps under the name, $igh Mon€y.
Go Simon! Three things you’re loving right now.
I recently read this amazing book called “God of the Woods” by Liz Moore. It’s an amazing book that spans decades and unravels two mysteries at once. It’s one of those books that is written in a way that is entertaining and captivating. And after I finished it, I found out the author’s a Philly person.
2025 is my year of trying to get good at basketball. So I’ve been trying to play basketball outside with anyone who I can text to say, “Hey, let’s meet up and play ball.” When I was a kid, I hated sports. I never appreciated doing athletics. And now as an adult, I’m like, “This is actually a really fun way to spend my time, hang out with people, and keep my body active in a way that is healthy.”
For my third, I’ll go for a food. Chef Ruby is doing this pop-up at Campar. I don’t know if it’s still going, but I went there for Valentine’s Day with my partner. And he had these quesadillas — sort of like a Mexican, North Indian fusion food. I think he called it the Hulk quesadilla because it was green. So incredible. It has not left my taste buds in the month since I’ve eaten it.
I know you say you were lucky that you lived in a supportive environment, but did you ever face any harassment?
One time, I think in third grade, I was wearing shoes that were pink and had hearts on them. And a kid two years older than me called me the word you might expect an older boy to call a younger boy wearing colorful pink shoes. It definitely hurt my feelings a lot. I think I cried. But I’m very lucky that that’s probably the biggest example in my life.
Best birthday?
I’ve never been a big birthday person but I’ll give the one that I remember the most. My mom’s gonna hate this answer. Growing up, I was not allowed to play with guns, so when I was 16, about 20 of my friends and I chartered a bus, and drove up to Jim Thorpe to play skirmish paintball, and it was extremely fun. I’m constantly trying to recapture that. It was so fun to have a pack of people strategize about something that’s happening. How are we going to overtake that castle? It was awesome. If anyone wants to play paintball, hit me up. I’d love to get a little paintball group going.
Make it into a Fringe show!
[Gasps] That’d be so good! The paintball Fringe show — I would do that.
Ever stolen anything?
In my teens, I probably shoplifted a couple of things. I think it was mostly for the thrill of it. I remember I was in a surf shop at the beach, and I stole a little waterproof wallet thingy. I used to keep my AAA card in there, and then someone stole it from my car. So I think that feels like perfect retribution from the universe.
If you went on a reality TV show, which one would it be?
I just finished this season of “Traitors.” I’m a big fan of that show, and I feel like, especially as an outsider, it would be fun to come in and navigate the dynamics. A lot of the people have pre-existing relationships, and I would have a lot of fun getting immersed in several different storylines at once.
Last question: Do you have a favorite motto or movie line?
I’m stealing this from a movie, but I’m sure it’s from something else. It’s from the “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” when Dev Patel says, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, then it’s not yet the end.” I find that to be extremely reassuring, really cool.
For more information on FringeArts, visit fringearts.com.