N.Y. Fringe Festival reveals a Jersey side

Two dozen Fringe shows created by N.J. writers, directors, producers, actors and crew

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF-OFF BROADWAY PREVIEW

Nearly 200 shows from a dozen countries are up for viewing in the 14th annual New York International Fringe Festival, which begins Friday and runs through Aug. 29 among 20 smaller theaters downtown.

The Fringe's typically wild assortment of new plays, comedies, classics, solo works and performance pieces — all kinds of stage events both high and low in artistic aspirations — is likely to draw 75,000 people, making it one of New York's largest cultural events.

The $15 ticket price and 2 p.m.-midnight programming also make the Fringe a wonderland for adventuresome theatergoers who can attend several attractions without breaking the piggy bank.

Of course New Jersey artists and performers are swimming in the mix. At least two dozen Fringe productions boast Garden State roots among their makers, performers and/or content.

Longtime Demarest resident Debbie Slevin writes and directs a company of eight in "Gate B23," a comedy-drama about travelers stuck in a Palm Beach airport waiting for their Newark-bound flight.

"Oh, it's definitely a Jersey-flavored show," says Slevin, a journalist who grew up in Closter and partly bases her play on personal experience. "I spent a lot of time in airports flying back and forth to see my mom who was struggling with Alzheimer's in Florida. One day I looked around at all the other passengers and began to wonder why everybody was there."

An ailing woman and her adult daughter are among the play's characters as well as a Jersey guy trying to seduce a divorcee and a man on a mission with his sullen son. Slevin intends to expand her 65-minute work depending on Fringe reaction. Several of the show's six performances already are sold out.

Writer-performer Michael Hirstreet's "My Broken Brain" relates the Rutgers graduate's serio-comical adventures growing up as a boy in a gritty section of Elizabeth and his later times as a teen amid the suburban cul-de-sacs of Green Brook. Teaneck playwright Jeffrey Pfeiffer's "The Battle of Spanktown" is a bizarre historical pageant drawn from Rahway's Revolutionary War history.

Another Teaneck resident, Claire Porter, is a performer-choreographer-writer whose Ruth Draper-esque hour-long solo piece "Namely, Muscles" humorously depicts an anatomical expert giving a lecture-demonstration regarding six packs and similar points of interest. As the character writhes, she intones rhapsodic poetry about musculature.

"It's an extremely physical performance," says Porter, whose toughest feat involves snaking around a chair while illustrating the abdominals. "The first time I ever did the show all the way through I practically knocked myself out."

Originally seen at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton in 2008, "The Mad 7" is Yehuda Hyman's modern-day epic of an office drone's mystical journey of self-discovery in which the writer-performer morphs into a dozen characters. McCarter Theatre producing director Mara Isaacs stages the virtuoso one man show based upon a circa 1810 Hassidic saga by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Fresh out of Madison, a band of recent Drew University graduates have created and perform "3Boys," Livingston playwright Becca Schlossberg's darkly comical 40-minute allegory regarding masculinity as embodied by three talking dogs.

Five actors interpret a sorrowful tale of two women connected by an adopted child in "For the Birds," a new drama crafted by Irish writer-actor Siobhan Donnellan and New Jersey writer-actor Jen Browne, who grew up in Lebanon Township and graduated from Rowan University in 2005. The authors first met while studying in Belfast and began composing "For the Birds" last October in an unusual collaboration.

"Siobhan was in Ireland and I was over here," explains Browne. "So over six months' time we wrote the play using email and Skype." The authors take leading roles in the drama that Browne characterizes as "essentially a sad story, but like life, its emotions run the gamut from happy to sad."

Browne notes that while they were working together, she and Donnellan were surprised to discover they were related to each other through a great-grandmother. "That could be a whole other play," says Browne.

A complete schedule of these Fringe productions — and many more — plus ticket information is available at www.fringenyc.org.