It’s a theater festival where anyone can tell a story and share art: The 2023 Capital Fringe Festival will feature 300 artists, most of them from the D.C. region, putting on one-person shows, stand-up comedy acts, live music and dance performances.
Capital Fringe founding director Julianne Brienza said the two-week festival is first-come, first-serve for as many artists as the festival’s venues can hold.
“There is no pedigree; there is no gatekeeping.” Brienza told WTOP. “We haven’t curated any of the stories, so they’re coming raw, straight from the people who are creating them.”
Among this year’s offerings is the solo production #Charlottesville, a performance by D.C. artist Priyanka Shetty, incorporating interviews from Charlottesville residents affected by the events surrounding the 2017 Unite the Right rally.
If you want to laugh, you can catch “Big Dad Energy” from stand-up comedian Jamie Campbell, who bills the program as “a show about fatherhood from a guy who doesn’t have children.”
The performances will be spread among three venues, two of them in Georgetown and one at the Edlavitch DCJCC in Dupont Circle.
The festival runs from July 12-16 and July 20-23. Tickets are $15, with 70% of ticket proceeds going directly to the artists.
Brienza said this year’s theme is “lemonade,” as in making lemonade out of lemons.
“It’s been pretty challenging coming back from COVID as a theater organization,” she said. “In general, it’s kind of hard to be a human on the planet right now with all of the changes and adaptions that we have to do.”
A number of Georgetown restaurants will be offering lemonade on their menus to celebrate the festival. Theatergoers will also have access to discounts at retail, restaurants and bars in the D.C. neighborhood.
Capital Fringe is an offshoot of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of the world’s largest experimental performance arts festivals.
