The Tampa International Fringe Festival (TIFF)—Ybor’s open-access, uncensored performing arts festival featuring local, national and international acts of all varieties—will dazzle audiences for its third year May 2-11. With 10 days of improv, musicals, stand-up and live theatre for every taste, its third outing promises to be its most adventurous yet.
“This year our slogan is ‘Navigate the Uncharted,’” Festival Producer Trish Parry says. “The idea being that everyone can be the captain of their own creative experience, audiences and artists alike.”
Parry notes that attendance for the festival’s sophomore outing was up from their inaugural celebration, with roughly 2,500 patrons, and that TIFF expects that upward trajectory to continue in its third year. The festival will feature 26 shows with five performances each, with 50% of its programming from local entertainers within a 30-mile radius of Ybor, 25% from national performers and 25% from international talent.
As with previous years, artists choose a price for their tickets (up to $13) and retain 100% of proceeds. To support the festival and as recommended by 2017 audience members, a $3 surcharge applies to each ticket. Patrons are also given the opportunity to buy a festival button—available for $3 at any TIFF box office or at Gaspar’s Grotto, once again serving as Fringe Central—which aren’t required to see the shows but offers discounts on food, drinks and more throughout Ybor.
Performances will be held in five venues this year, including the popular LGBTQ hotspot The Honey Pot. “We finally have a venue on 7th Ave.,” Parry shares of the Ybor nightclub. “Teaming up with them could potentially set an example for the future. As we grow, I think there’s room for us to team up with many clubs in the area that are open late at night. We’re stoked about that.”
The LGBTQ locale and LGBTQ themes in general are perfect for TIFF because Fringe festivals allow artists to share their authentic selves, Parry adds. “Most of the shows are produced and written by the performers,” she explains, noting that she identifies as bisexual. “I think that queer people might be more open to experimentation; if someone is more open and accepting of themselves, that will likely bleed into their creative life. Fringe is an excellent platform for that.”
Watermark has highlighted seven selections from the third annual TIFF that feature LGBTQ themes and/or thespians from Tampa Bay and beyond. You can navigate the uncharted with them below.
“Dandy Darkly’s All Aboard!”
Presented by: Dandy Darkly (Brooklyn, N.Y.)
Venue: HCC Studio Theatre (1411 E. 11th Ave.)
Length: One Hour
Ticket price: $12 (+$3 festival support fee)
Performances: May 2, 8:30 p.m.; May 4, 9:00 p.m.; May 5, 9:15 p.m.; May 10, 9:45 p.m.; May 11, 4:30 p.m.
Entertainer Dandy Darkly returns to TIFF with his latest piece of supernatural satire—“Dandy Darkly’s All Aboard!”—to dazzle audiences with “a raucous uprooting of Deep South shame served alongside searing social commentary and howling humor.”
The show details a ghost story as told by the survivors of a tragic Halloween night in Georgia, “from the little boy chased by the ghosts that still haunt her as an adult to the cruel Colonel buried in his bunker, tinkering with his sinister toys.” It tackles racism, transphobia and “electoral insanity, all delivered via dripping earful of Southern Gothic grotesquery: redneck robots, African spider gods, beauty shop gossip, inbred family freakery—oh, and trains!”
“I think fringe festivals are inherently queer simply by fact that the Fringe theatre movement sprung from outsiders who weren’t allowed to produce their work under the existing model and had to make space for their art,”the entertainer explains.
“I’m a gay artist, but Dandy’s surreal, beautiful (often abrasive) storytelling falls far outside even the LGBTQ mainstream,” he continues. “Dandy Darkly carved a niche for himself in the Fringe world because so many queer spaces had been claimed by the more commodifiable RuPaul’s Drag Queen-of-the-Week.”
According to Darkly, the festival favors risk over reward, evident in his latest feature. “Fringe is a beautiful culture and I’m so proud to be a part of it,” he says. All aboard.
“Smutty Burlesque Nerd! Neo-Vaudeville by Vulva Va-Voom & Co.”
Presented by: Vulva Va-Voom (Tampa)
Venue: The Honey Pot (1507 E. 7th Ave.)
Length: One Hour
Ticket price: $9 (+$3 festival support fee)
Performances: May 3, 8:30 p.m.; May 4, 7 p.m.; May 9, 8:30 p.m.; May 10, 7 p.m.; May 11, 8:30 p.m.
Each cast member in “Smutty Burlesque Nerd!” is “100% USDA pansexual, overwhelmingly genderqueer,” Vulva Va-Voom says. The show is described as a gritty nightclub act, highlighting burlesque, comedy, song, dance and “frankly, filth—not unlike sodomizing Oscar Wilde with a rolled-up New Yorker.”
Performed for an audience that is “18+, very much R,” it follows Va-Voom and drag king sidekick Tony Tesla as they “delight in their antique smut collections.” Its lead, a “perverse arch-nerd,” is joined by a cast that “perpetrates alcohol-fueled debauchery in a disturbingly eccentric variety show.”
Va-Voom describes Tampa Bay’s cabaret scene as friendly to the queer, nerd and kink communities, but adds that it’s limited by the law of economics. “Our material is too intellectual and cultured for dives, but too outrageous and crude for upscale venues,” the entertainer elaborates. “I’ve seen hundreds of bar patrons tilt their heads like puzzled beagles when they realize I’m not doing straightforward singles covers … and that’s well before the tap shoes, nerd fandom references or phallic comedy props come out.”
At Fringe, “we’ve been careful not to be too obscure, shocking or self-indulgent for even a tolerant audience,” Va-Voom continues. “But we do know they have a much higher degree of trust in our choices than at an average gig, which is a priceless artistic freedom.”
“It’s Hard to Explain”
Presented by: Ed Wolf Presents (San Francisco, Calif.)
Venue: Silver Meteor Gallery (2213 E. 6th Ave.)
Length: One Hour
Ticket price: $10 (+$3 festival support fee)
Performances: May 2, 7 p.m.; May 4, 4:30 p.m.; May 5, 7:15 p.m.; May 10, 7 p.m.; May 11, 1:30 p.m.
Florida-raised storyteller Ed Wolf, featured in the award-winning documentary “We Were Here,” is proud to bring his first solo show home to Tampa.
Wolf says that creating the piece was satisfying and challenging, noting that storytelling is a very specific type of art. “I’ve worked hard to draw audiences into the worlds I have known and the people I have met along the way,” he explains. “Being able to create a container for the audience to both laugh and cry is one of my achievements with this show.”
The entertainer is known for detailing his experiences “growing up as a queer kid in Florida, attending the University of South Florida in the late 60s and living in New York’s Greenwich Village at the beginning of gay liberation and the early days of the AIDS epidemic.” Wolf believes that sharing the LGBTQ experience from different erashelps strengthen the community as a whole.
“The ongoing evolution of LGBTQ communities relies on our abilities to connect with one another,” he advises. “LGBTQ stories are most often not mainstream stories, so we need to work especially hard to find one another and share our history. How we came out, how we found love, who supported us (and didn’t), how HIV has affected us: these are the building blocks of our communities and we are the ones who need to tell them and hear them.”
“Chocolate Casi Amargo”
Presented by: Gomez/Goldfelder Present (E. Rochester, N.Y.)
Venue: Silver Meteor Gallery (2213 E. 6th Ave.)
Length: One Hour
Ticket price: $12 (+$3 festival support fee)
Performances: May 4, 10:15 p.m.; May 5, 5:45 p.m.; May 6, 10 p.m.; May 9, 10 p.m.; May 11, 12 p.m.
Playwright Candide Carrasco’s “Chocolate Casi Amargo” is described as “a bittersweet and hysterical romp through homophobia and conservatism in the Latino community.” It details the journey of an older Cuban couple as they confront their past, present, “the boredom of everyday life, the decline of aging and—most of all—their only child’s gay lifestyle.”
“To me, a narrative that only [addresses] a particular type of people cannot reach universal appeal,” Carrasco says of his production. “As a gay play writer, I want to give voice to LGBTQ characters, and make sure that we are not forgotten. ‘Chocolate Casi Amargo’ is a lovely, fun play but has a solid, serious message of love, understanding and celebration of diversity.”
The piece is dedicated to reaching Latino audiences and to building bridges between all people, the production notes. It addresses the needs and issues effecting women and the Latino, African American and LGBTQ communities in particular.
Carrasco adds that TIFF is the perfect fit for the production given that the play, which is presented in both English and Spanish, also takes place in Tampa. “Ybor City and Tampa in general has a diverse, rich population with exciting cultural abundance,” he says. “We would love to see how the people of Tampa recognize themselves on stage.”
“Sexy Sexy Murder”
Presented by: Hoof Arted (Tampa)
Venue: Silver Meteor Gallery (2213 E. 6th Ave.)
Length: 45 Minutes
Ticket price: $10 (+$3 festival support fee)
Performances: May 3, 11:30 p.m.; May 4, 7:30 p.m.; May 5, 3 p.m.; May 10, 10 p.m.; May 11, 4:30 p.m.
“Sexy Sexy Murder” is the first installment of Christen Hailey’s “Perilousverse,” the playwright and director’s “dark, sick, twisted, hilarious and totally wrong” vision of Tampa Bay. It introduces audiences to the Secret Queen of Tampa—the (mostly) benevolent monarch of Florida’s weird and fetid underbelly—and her longtime mortal enemy, the Reverend Taint Violator.
The latter “has a most heinous plan to foil the queen and destroy her long-sought plans for peace and cocktails,” the production advises. He plans to build a bible college beside her welcoming oasis before the queen enlists “the aid of her handsome henchman and the Ninja Bitch Lady Assassins” to triumph over her nemesis once more.
Hailey, a USF alum and novice nun for the Tampa Bay Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, also plays Rumpcrumpet Biscuitsnatch, one of the play’s assassins “involved in these shenanigans.” The playwright is driven by “creating and producing shows that are hilarious, giving local actors an opportunity to do something pretty wild or out of their comfort zone, enticing the local barfly/dirtbag community to get them to darken theater doors which they otherwise would never dream of doing.”
“PREACH! An Evening of Inappropriate Sermons”
Presented by: Scott Swenson Creative Development LLC (Tampa)
Venue: HCC Rehearsal Hall (1411 E. 11th Ave.)
Length: 45 Minutes
Ticket price: $10 (+$3 festival support fee)
Performances: May 2, 10 p.m.; May 4, 8:45 p.m.; May 5, 6 p.m.; May 10 8 p.m.; May 11, 5:45 p.m.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a minister, an improv comic and a “flaming liberal” walk into a bar—or theatre—then “PREACH! An Evening of Inappropriate Sermons” is for you. Scott Swenson, who studied with Chicago’s Second City and is a founding member of Tampa’s WIT Improv, is premiering his solo show at TIFF to give audiences the answer and take them to church.
“This is the first time I’ve done a solo show,” the entertainer shares. “It’s challenging, it’s exciting and it’s terrifying! The content will be suggested by the audience and selected by a spinning wheel. The show will be different every performance.”
Swenson says his main concern is that he’ll get so fired up in sharing his “twisted take on the world issues of your choosing” that he’ll “just keep going all night.” Luckily he’ll have his stage manager (also his husband) in the pews to keep him on track, he muses. “He’s done it for 30 years, why should this be any different?”
The production promises to be a “reverence free zone,” with no topic too taboo and nothing off limits. Each performance will be “unique and possibly horrendously offensive,” Swenson says. “If you have the guts to suggest it, I will have the guts to PREACH about it!”
“Re(union)”
Presented by: Unfilmable Productions (St. Petersburg)
Venue: Silver Meteor Gallery (2213 E. 6th Ave.)
Length: One Hour
Ticket price: $10 (+$3 festival support fee)
Performances: May 2, 10 p.m.; May 4, 12 p.m.; May 5, 10:15 p.m.; May 6, 7 p.m.; May 11, 7:15 p.m.
“Re(union)” is a dark comedy focusing on the societal and media reactions to tragedy on the micro and macro scale. It seeks to organically challenge the idea of what it means to become an adult a decade after high school.
Its story highlights a devastating event that forces an entire community to grieve, boasting the “power to engage its audience in an active dialogue of false happiness and outgrown friendships.” It features “old friends, crossed lovers, confusion and companionship” as its characters uncover their “true selves and the hidden darkness within.”
“We had a lot of happy accidents along the way of this production,” writer, director and “Re(union)” protagonist Gabby Cabrera shares, pointing to a character in the show who is bisexual. The part was originally written for a male, but she flipped genders after a successful audition.
“I was open to flipping genders for different characters because at the end of the day, as long as they’re human, the gender part is irrelevant,” Cabrera notes. “We have different characters not acting with specific gender norms, stereotypes or expectations.”
“One of the things I love the most about it is how inclusive it is,” producer Kate Sims adds. “It’s not about one person or one type of people. It’s about everybody involved in one community. No one is singled out and no one is left out … to me that is the future.”
The third annual Tampa International Fringe Festival will be held May 2-11 throughout Ybor City. For more information about purchasing tickets, venues, surrounding events or for a full schedule of shows and show times, visit TampaFringe.org.
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