Hartford Fringe Festival: More than 20 live, local shows over 11 days

Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant
·4 min read

The Hartford Fringe Festival is back, offering theater, storytelling, standup, cabaret, hip-hop, youth theater, opera, improv and more from Oct. 20-30 at the Carriage House theater on Farmington Avenue.

The first Hartford Fringe Festival was in 2019, with around 20 live events, most of them drawn from the Connecticut’s small theater community. The 2020 edition was an online hodgepodge of local and national performances, many of them pre-recorded. The 2021 HFF didn’t happen at all. So the 2022 edition is a return to form, with 11 days of live performances of over 20 separate shows.

The Carriage House venue is overseen by HartBeat Ensemble, which is contributing two separate shows to the HFF, but the festival is the brainchild of Jeffrey Kagan-McCann, whose company Pearwater Productions is producing it.

The phrase “fringe festival” originally described festivals that sprung up on the outskirts of bigger festivals. The best-known example is Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which has long eclipsed the Edinburgh Festival which anchored it. Over time, fringe festivals began happening on their own and not as a “fringe” of another event. Kagan-McCann, a Connecticut native, got interested in fringe festivals when he lived in Seattle, Washington. When he returned to the Hartford area he brought a fringe theater consciousness with him.

One thing that’s common among most fringe festivals: the shows are short. With the exception of the 75-minute drama “No Pants in Tucson,” by the satirical New York company The Anthropologists (Oct. 22 at 4 p.m.), every event at the HFF is only 30 to 60 minutes long. Kagan-McCann says he made an exception for “No Pants in Tucson” because he thought the themes of the piece would resonate with audiences today: it’s about a 19th century Arizona ordinance that forbade women from wearing pants or men from wearing dresses.

The Anthropologists are also bringing a second piece, the hour-long “Artemisia’s Intent,” about 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, playing Oct. 22 at 2:30 p.m. and Oct. 27 at 6 p.m.

This year’s Hartford Fringe, Kagan-McCann says, offers over 20 acts, up from 18 in the first year. There are at least three artists or groups from the first festival who are involved again this year, including the hip-hop beatbox improv a cappella ensemble MOWFS (Oct. 29 at 5:30 p.m.), local writer Frances McAlpine Sharp (whose “Poetic Meanderings” happen Oct. 22 at 1 p.m.) and Hartford area playwright Jacques Lamarre, whose “catty” comedy “The Scratch Game” is performed three times by the Litterbox Players: Oct. 24 at 6 p.m., Oct. 29 at 1 p.m. and Oct. 29 at 7 p.m.

One act from the first fest that’s decided to forego this one: Kagan-McCann himself, whose play “Black Irish” was part of the inaugural event. “This year I’m trying to be more focused on the acts, and not on putting up a show myself,” the producer says. “It’s less stressful.”

Some acts, like the fatherhood-themed “Manologue” project and the Free at Last Players, are familiar to local audiences from other venues where they’ve performed. While the majority of the performers are from Connecticut (and most of those are local to the Hartford area), there are also visiting acts from Maine, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina.

Other highlights of the third Hartford Fringe Festival include:

  • Farmington’s New England Ballet Theatre, performing the mental health themed ballet “988″ on Oct. 23 at 11:30 a.m.

  • “Tale of Hoffman,” Dustin Wong’s retelling of the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention told through the eyes of one of the Yippie leaders, Abbie Hoffman and performed by Joshua Diorio, Oct. 22 at 6:30 p.m., Oct. 26 at 6 p.m. and Oct. 28 at 6 p.m.

  • Popular local standup comic Rob Santos with his one-man show about being the father of a Black child in a largely white school community, “Millennial Spigger,” Oct. 28 at 7:30 p.m.

  • “How to Be an Ethical Slut,” a one-woman “cabaret comedy” with music, written and performed by Brooke McCarthy of North Carolina, Oct. 21 at 9 p.m. and Oct. 23 at 7:30 p.m.

  • “Good Morning: A Preschool Play,” a musing on “the industry of childcare” for grownup audiences that includes art activities and audience participation, Oct. 20 at 9 p.m. and Oct. 26 at 7:30 p.m.

  • “Our first opera!,” Kagan-McCann exults: The 45-minute one-act “A Great Resignation” by Nathan Scalise has a two-person cast plus a pianist, and concerns the retirement plans of the Angel of Death. It’s heard Oct. 21 at 6 p.m., Oct. 23 at 6:15 p.m. and Oct. 25 at 6 p.m.

Tickets, sold separately for each show, are $13 per show, $10 for students and seniors. Kagan-McCann says he’s working on having all-access tickets for future festivals but that the festival needs to expand its roster of volunteers to make that happen efficiently.

The full Hartford Fringe Festival schedule is at hartfordfringefestival.org. The Carriage House Theater is at 360 Farmington Ave. in Hartford.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.