PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia Fringe Festival opens Thursday with some big news for the Philadelphia theater community.
FringeArts, the organization behind the festival, has announced new leadership. Nell Bang-Jensen will take over as CEO and producing director starting Oct. 15.
Bang-Jensen said this position is a full-circle moment for her career.
“It feels quite personal to me,” she said. “When I graduated college, I stuck around after graduation to make a show for the Fringe Festival. And I have circled around that festival and that building in the 14 or so years since, making shows for the festival, watching shows for the festival. And I think FringeArts has been this institution that’s been sort of the beating heart of the Philly artist scene.”
FringeArts hosts innovative, risk-taking programming year-round at its venue on the Delaware River Waterfront, but it is most known for the annual Fringe Festival every September. This year, the festival features more than 300 shows and experiences all around the city.
Bang-Jensen most recently served as artistic director at Theatre Horizon in Norristown. Over the span of her career, she has created five original works, in addition to producing and directing at FringeArts, People’s Light, Philadelphia Theatre Company, the Wilma, Pig Iron, and the Painted Bride.
Some of her goals in her new position will be to bring more people back to the theater and to help put Philadelphia on the map nationally and internationally as a place where new, creative theater is being made.
“I think Philly is such a gem in the arts and culture scene,” she said. “Shows made here … go on to have future life in New York, win accolades off-Broadway, travel the world. And yet, a lot of Philadelphians aren’t even aware this is happening in their own city. And so my focus is really going to be, how do we widen our doors to reach more people with this work, to find the art being made in the scrappy corners of the city, and to celebrate it for everybody.”
The kind of risk-taking work at the heart of FringeArts will be on display during the Fringe Festival this month. Programming Director Mikaela Boone said there’s something for everyone.
“You’ll see some circus, you'll see a whole bunch of comedy,” she said. “It really is genre-defying and also redefining.”
What makes the Fringe Festival different from other Philly theater productions throughout the year is that it draws adventurous artists and audiences together, she said.
“Walking into a traditional regional theater model, you kind of know what you're going to get from the brand of that company and a certain kind of style. And what we do is we break that mold. … You can expect to see the unexpected.”
Bang-Jensen is directing a Fringe Festival show called “Nosejob,” with the company Lightning Rod Special, about the dynamics of sex and power on a 2010 college campus and in medieval times.
Other Fringe highlights include “Ulysses” by Elevator Repair Service, a modern take on the classic James Joyce novel, and “Poor Judge" by Pig Iron Theatre Company, a “live music mixtape” using the songs of Aimee Mann. You can also see Philadelphia’s circus talent on display at the Cannonball hub.
Tickets and information on all of this year’s Fringe shows can be found on the Philadelphia Fringe Festival website.