The Atlanta Fringe Festival, a week-long event that begins Wednesday, stresses the importance of giving a platform to minority voices.
This year, Fringe will put 20 artists on five stages in one of the city’s most inclusive and, at times, strange theater festivals.
“The best thing about Fringe is that you’re casting this really wide net and asking for any medium of performance,” says Atlanta Fringe executive director Diana Brown. “So you get circus artists, solo artists, storytellers, puppeteers, dancers, anything you want to do.”
This year’s program features a number of Atlanta artists including Twinhead Theatre, performers from Thimblerig Circus, and regulars from the Carapace storytelling series. Artists from as far away as Maine and Portland are also set to perform. The festival features a number of LGBTQ-focused shows and work that explores disability, frank discussions of sexuality, as well as family-friendly stories about superheroes and Benjamin Franklin.
“We have a lot of people who say things like ‘I can never find a role for someone like me, so I wrote my role,’” Brown says. “You see some really incredible stories get told. I think it’s really important to have a place for emerging artists to have a professional experience. So [Fringe is] helping veteran performers get a place to tell what they want to tell, and new performers get a place to learn and grow.”
