As the San Diego International Fringe Festival turns five LGBT Weekly profiles two of this year’s participants
This summer from June 22-July 2 the San Diego International Fringe Festival, celebrating their fifth year, will set up shop in nine different theaters including some in Tijuana, Mexico.
As the largest performing arts event in San Diego County, the festival will showcase roughly around 100 productions with over 500 performances.
According to Fringe associates the Fringe is different every year. The biggest change for Fringe this year is the addition of the Centro Cultural Tijuana – The CECUT and the Pasaje Rodriguez that means that Fringe has a cross border program allowing Fringe audience members the chance to see performing artists in San Diego and Tijuana.
As for the groups that will perform, many tend to tour from festival to festival, with new artists, adding to the diverse tone of the festival.
Participants are selected on a non-juried, non-censored basis. The breakdown of accepted artists comes to 50 percent local, 25 percent national, 25 percent international with around 50 percent of the participants selected on a first-come/first-served basis. The remaining 50 percent of participants in each category are selected by lottery.
There are also new and different venues every year along with new public performances, known as busking, that bring artistry to the streets and public spaces.
One of those “busking shows” is a piece based on true events entitled Jane the Crazy written and directed by Dylan Joseph Murray. As Murray explains the show’s main character is the daughter of Spanish nobility.
“My show is based on the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain,” Murray said. “They are the pair that funded Christopher Columbus.
“Their daughter known as Juana La Loca, traveled around Spain with the corpse of her husband Filipe the Handsome.”
One might not think of comedy hijinks when they think of Ferdinand and Isabella, but that’s the route Murray has taken with his story.
“Jane, the Crazy is a mad-cap physical comedy,” Murray admitted. “It explores the blurry lines we all draw between reality and fantasy. Spain’s Princess Queen, Juana, flees the capital with her dead husband, but that’s not gonna stop her from a lovely second honeymoon. With the help of a carriage driver, with his own personal baggage, they have to travel and resolve their problems together.”
Murray came up with the idea for Loca after studying abroad in Madrid when he was in college some 20 years ago.
“On the face, Juana was simply crazy,” Murray said. “She faced some serious political problems. She was the official monarch of Spain. Her father was reluctant to give up his reign as king and it was rumored he killed her husband and branded her as crazy to maintain his control. So, if she wasn’t ‘crazy’ her own father might have found a way to get rid of her as well.”
Murray cast his show with actors he felt would take risks and who would be willing to perform on the unpredictable streets of San Diego, dealing with the general public as well as patrons who come to see the show.
One of those actors is Michael Lundy who has spent most of his acting career in New York City. He moved to San Diego in the summer of 2016 and has performed at Ion Theatre in Normal Heart and Coronado Playhouse in 39 Steps.
“I wanted people with a mix of traditional theater and improv,” Murray added. “Casting, for me, is less about a reading of the part and more about the actor. We have a huge undertaking as a group of people, and we need to work well together. The best actor on Earth might not always be the right fit for my show and my cast.”
Murray’s show will also have a less than traditional schedule like most Fringe shows.
“As a Busker/BYOV producer, I can pick my own dates and times,” Murray said. “We will be performing six shows between June 22 and July 1 in the evenings. I will be working with other Fringe performances to schedule my show to fall in line with their shows so we can cross promote.”
Another show being presented at Fringe this year has the distinction of having the stamp of approval from singer and musician Joe Jackson.
Jackson had a string of hits (“Is She Really Going Out With Him”, “Steppin Out”) in the late ’70s and early ’80s. He also won five Grammy Awards over the course of his musical career.
His album Night and Day became Nick Williams’ inspiration for his show Night and Day. Williams was given full permission, by Jackson, to use the music for his show.
“When I was a kid growing up in Arizona, my parents had like three cassette tapes that they listened to a lot,” Williams said. “Joe Jackson’s Night and Day was one of them. I remembered the album cover with the drawing of the piano and the Manhattan skyline. A couple of years ago, I downloaded the album and gave it a listen. I was really instantly hooked. There is something so ethereal and cool about the music. [It] has this way of transporting you to another world. That place is a little scary but it’s somewhere you want to be. It just feels different. I do not think Joe wrote the album to tell a cohesive story, per se, but he definitely put some good bones in there to tell one. So, it just started coming together in my head and it has been going full force ever since. I am obsessed with it.”
The show took Williams about four years to write, but it wasn’t until just recently the piece started to take shape. Until then it was just an idea that took up a lot of space in Williams’ head.
“I wanted the show to exist on stage just like the album does, in one continuous piece. It was hard,” Williams admitted.
The story Williams came up with involves a musician who leaves his girlfriend for another man. The path to that decision is not as easy as sounds here. There are many things in between him making that decision and finally making it a part of his new life.
“I’m a gay man, so it hits close to home,” Williams shared. “I didn’t set out to write a musical with gay characters, but it is what I know. The driving force was the song “Real Men”. You can almost hear Joe spitting at homophobic people on the record. You can’t deny the power of that song and I did not want to hide from it. As a gay man I identify with some of the themes Joe sprinkles throughout the piece. The album is very paranoid. There are feelings of being watched and judged. It feels dangerous like the city itself and wants you to fail because you don’t fit in. That’s something I have dealt with in my life, not feeling safe because of who I am. There are also several mentions of gender assimilation. The whole album, to me, is a rejection of mainstream popular, and in this case “straight” culture. (AKA Trump’s America – it’s amazing how relevant the themes are to today’s climate of us vs. them).”
Night and Day will be performing at The Geoffrey Theatre in the Spreckles Theatre downtown between June 23-July 1 with two matinees and three evening shows.
For tickets and more information on Jane the Crazy and Night and Day visit the San Diego International Fringe Festival at sdfringe.org
