Notes from Arden

The Hollywood Fringe Festival, 2014

By Steven Leigh Morris

HOLLYWOOD FRINGE, 2014

Our critics are all over Hollywood this weekend, for the first of what will be a two-week binge of Fringe Festival reviews and commentary.

Is all of L.A. theater really just as geographically expanded Fringe festival, as Don Shirley once suggested? What is the purpose and the result of curation? The Fringe festival is a famously come-one-come all event. Anybody who wants to put on a show can do so, at cut rates, compared to renting a venue for a traditional six-week run. There is no curation. It’s as democratic an event as any festival that can be imagined. The market is the judge.

Well, almost.

Stage Raw will be weighing in with 21 reviews by mid-week, not counting extra columns. Final details are being hammered out for a review-sharing program with the LA Weekly, meaning — if this works out — that all of these reviews would run on the websites of both the LA Weekly and Stage Raw. And then we’d do the same thing next week.

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Stage Raw is bucked and grateful by news this week of a contribution of $25,000 by an anonymous donor, to cover reviews, copyediting and web support.

POLAND ON THE HORIZON

Royal Castle Square, Warsaw

Stage Raw now has four plays in from Poland (thank you Joanna Klass) and four plays in from the U.S. (thank you Pier Carlo Talenti) for the launch of our first international, interactive play festival. You, too, can play a part in this! More details to come after the Fringe. We also have accompanying articles from Angelenos who have traveled to and worked in Poland, and the bridges they’ve crossed in doing so.