Participant Registration opens on February 1st. We’ve just announced the dates for this year’s Town Hall & Workshop series, a handful of events we’ve designed to assist you with all your Fringe endeavors.

The Town Halls are essential gatherings where we take you through all the information you need to know to produce a successful Fringe show; the Workshops are peer-led discussions with a panel of successful Fringe veterans who can tell you exactly what it’s like to be on the ground and making it count during the festival. We’ll also have informal social mixers at a local bar following each of these events. We recommend that you send a representative to each of these meetings— networking this early can be a big advantage!

• Town Hall I: Sunday, February 2nd, *12-2 PM at Hudson Theatres (Backstage Theatre)

• Workshop I: Tuesday, March 25th, 7-9 PM at Elephant Stages (Lillian Theatre)

• Town Hall II: Sunday, April 6th, 2-4 PM at Hudson Theatres (Mainstage or Backstage Theatre; TBD)

• Workshop II: Saturday, May 3rd, 2-4 PM at Theatre Asylum

• Town Hall III: Sunday, May 11th, 2-4 PM at Hudson Theatres (Mainstage or Backstage Theatre; TBD)

*PLEASE NOTE: The time for Town Hall I has been changed since our original announcement to accommodate those who wish to watch the Super Bowl!

Still have questions? Email us at [email protected].

photo by cindy marie jenkins

Thanks to everyone who attended the post-mortem Fringe Town Hall on Saturday afternoon! We had a lively discussion at the Asylum Lab. It was a very successful event for us, filled with great feedback and a number of innovative solutions for helping the Fringe better service artists and our community in the future. Special thanks to Matt Quinn for lending us the space for the meeting.

For those of you who missed it, we recorded the proceedings.

Enjoy!

Still have questions? Email us at [email protected].

Greetings, Fringers-

The 2013 Festival has come and gone. What a weird, wild and wonder-filled month it was.

The numbers we use to gauge the success of the Fringe tell a stellar tale: $258k returned to the Fringe community, 35,000 seats filled, 40% growth over 2012. And then there are the intangibles: the newfound fringeships, the cultural and artistic development, the countless feats on the stage and beyond.

And so we look to 2014 with hope, excitement and glorious anticipation of things to come. If only these qualities in their full realization powered a festival of this magnitude. Indeed our needs go beyond the full strength of our artists and the steely commitment of our staff: they require the financial support of our great community.

The Fringe is an expensive thing. Every year we are on the preverbal hook for printing, rent, insurance, advertisements, equipment, supplies and the myriad of services and goods required to serve and support this cause. As the Fringe expands year over year, so too does our overhead and we struggle to keep up.

Will you help us? Our Summer campaign is nearly done and we have a long ways to go to meet out goal. If we come up short many of our services and dreams of new outlets for promotion will be cut; every penny helps us stay afloat.

You can give to the Fringe at donate.hollywoodfringe.org.

If you truly feel the Fringe is a worthy institution then please spread the word to your friends and colleagues. The very nature of this festival is one of community and leveraging our collective strength to engender something great. Pass along this email, post on your social networks, wave the flag of fringe. We are all in this together, after all.

Your assistance is so very valuable and we love you all for helping us make this fantastic event a reality every year.

Ben

In the Interns’ final blog posts, they contemplate what they’ve learned and how they feel now that the festival is over. A big thanks to all our 2013 interns!

From Our Veteran Intern, Sammy:

I’m wearing my yellow 2013 Fringe shirt and my Christmas boxers in bed thinking of Hollywood Fringe and a time when I wore this shirt with pants and sandals. I’m thinking of the days when we strutted Santa Monica Blvd, read Moby Dick on Santa Monica Blvd., tapped danced on Santa Monica Blvd.

Hollywood Fringe 2013 was truly marvelous, invigorated with life and community. The Awards Ceremony last Sunday was thrumming, radiating heat and theatre- melting the Styrofoam bowls of Yoshinoya. Twas a party to be proud of. And not only that, all of the performances recognized, and all of the ones that should have been recognized, were so inspiring, original, awakening. I swear I left every play with a new epiphany.

The fact that it was in the same location- that Fringe Central Station this year was the same Fringe Central Station as last year- created a parallel of the event for me. As someone who literally dropped out of LA, and returned just in time for Fringe, it felt like no time had gone by. Last year was a dream. I remember the first show I attended, ‘Texas Loves Lyla’, where the person next to me said, ‘Welcome to Hollywood’, and just like that I was immersed in the dream. This year was the dream realized. No longer did I feel like an observer, learning and mystified by the goings on in Fringe Central. I felt I belonged in it. Hollywood Fringe is a beautiful fish bowl of the dream; a perfect theatre community where everyone is so motivating, where everything is exciting, where anything is possible. On June 30th, they dumped the Hollywood Fringe fish bowl out into the great Ocean of Los Angeles.

Now that we’re out in the ocean, let’s keep Fringing. With extensions starting this week, there are so many plays to keep seeing and so many people to talk to. Let’s keep the party going!

Love,
Sammy

From Our Newbie Intern, Emilie:

When people asked me about my internship at the Hollywood Fringe Festival this June, I was at a loss to paint an accurate picture of what exactly my job entailed. However, now that time has given me some perspective, I have been able to articulate some of the important things my internship taught me. You might have heard somewhere that people from my generation have short attention—did you know that according to recent statistics there are 115,000 domesticated llamas in the US? Because Hollywood Fringe is so “with it” and we are “the cool kids on the block,” this blog post is coming at you in list format, to accommodate the ADD tendencies of generation selfie (See Ezra Koenig’s tweet: “Generation selfie needs to take a good look at itself in the mirror”).

10 Things I Learned From My Internship At The Hollywood Fringe Festival (No Cat Photos Included—Deal With It):

1. There is never enough popcorn.
2. When telling someone that you don’t have a t-shirt in his or her size, try and use the most tactful, euphemistic language possible. (IE. “They run very small” or “We’ve sold out of a lot of sizes”)
3. Be nice to people!!!!! This means remembering their names, what shows they are working on, and any other personal information they might have told you in the past. In an organization like Fringe that prides itself on building community, it’s important to show that you’re invested, and that you value what everyone has to say.
4. If you don’t know the answer to a question, find someone who does. Providing misinformation when you’re a part of a large organization hurts everyone involved.
5. Take pride in your space! Fringe Central Station served for many participants and show viewers as their first glimpse of what Hollywood Fringe is and what we’re about. The little things (throwing away cups, keeping the bathroom stocked) make a big impression and help the Fringe forge its own image and reputation.
6. Wait up for the Munchie Machine.
7. Have fun. If you have the opportunity to make your late-twenties, male coworkers sing Britney Spears’s “…Baby One More Time” for karaoke, you should probably take it.
8. Pretend your whole experience is an improv game, or that you are the heroine of a romantic comedy hell-bent on remaking her life in a positive fashion, and say “yes!” to everything. Put in extra hours, take the comped tickets, and make the Chipotle run. Not only does saying “yes” prove that you’re a team player but it also opens you up to all the experiences Fringe has to offer.
9. Talk to the people you’re working with! And not just superficial “how was your day” chatter. When you intern with an organization like Fringe, you are surrounded by people who, like you, are passionate about the arts, but who, unlike you, have spent time pursuing them in the real world. One of the most interesting parts of my job was seeing how people incorporate theater and their various passions into their lives, whether it be as their main careers or not.
10. One of the most fundamental lessons of acting classes holds true for those offstage at Hollywood Fringe: be in the moment. So many disparate personalities converge for this event, and it’s really wonderful to take it all in and enjoy everyone’s company. Savor the fact that despite the scary, dystopian darkness of our world people still come together to make and appreciate art!

Take that, Buzzfeed!

Here’s a list of this year’s Award Winners— announced just moments ago at the 2013 Award Ceremony! Thank you all for coming and congratulations to the winners!

Fringe Freaks (Community-Voted Awards):

• Top of the Fringe: Absolutely Filthy
• Fringe First (World Premiere): Me Rich You Learn
• The International Award: Take Me To The Poorhouse
• Best in Cabaret & Variety: The Devil and Billy Markham
• Best in Comedy: Absolutely Filthy
• Best in Dance & Physical Theatre: Me Rich You Learn
• Best in Ensemble Theatre: White Hot
• Best in Musicals & Operas: Exorcistic: The Rock Musical Parody Experiment
• Best in Solo Performance: (no static at all)

Sponsored Awards:

• The Vagrancy Duende Award: Michael Kass from Ceremony
• DOMA Theatre Company Award for Best Musical: The Pokemusical
• Orgasmico Theatre Company Awards: Best Production: Butt Kapinski, Best Performer: Michal Sinnott from White Hot, Best Writer/Composer: Blake Abramovitz from Double Bind
• LAFPI Venue Award (for venues who hosted 50% or more productions by female playwrights): Actor’s Company, Art of Acting Studio, Celebration Theatre
• A Working Theatre Design Awards: Best Lighting: Ric Zimmerman from White Hot, Best Costumes: Lea McGowan from Now Leasing, Best Props/Set: Meghan McCarthy from Me Rich You Learn, Sound: Fugitive Kind Theatre of The Fire Room
• Four Clowns, Lost Moon Radio & Big Guns Tobacco Virgin Award: Fancy! A Southern Gothic Camp Parable
• Theatre Unleashed Award: It’s Important to Leave as Well (Feed Your Fringe)
• Bitter Lemons Outrageous Award for Theatre (BLOAT): The Devil and Billy Markham
• Trailer Park Award (for Best Video Trailer): White Hot
• Ezra Buzzington’s Spirit of Fringe Awards: Best Performance (Male): Brendan Hunt from Absolutely Filthy, Best Performance (Female): Leslie Murphy from Ryan is Lost, Best Writing: Nathan Wellman from Ryan is Lost, Best Show: The Devil & Billy Markham
• Combined Artform’s Best of Fringe Extensions: [Title of Show], 25 Plays Per Hour, Baby, Bobbywood, Butt Kapinski, Ceremony, Daddy Didn’t Die Did he?, David and Leeman: How to Convincingly Fake Honesty, Define Dif-fer-ent, Delilah Dix: American Showgirl, Dick & Jayne Get a Life, Double Bind, Fancy! A Southern Gothic Camp Parable, Fathers at a Game, Frank & Ava, Gracie & Rose, Hersheme, Kill A Better Mousetrap, King Phycus, Listen Can you hear me now?, Marshall’s Law, Meant to Be, More Bigger Masses, No Static At All, Philosophy in the Boudoir, Pokemusical, Rodeo Town, Ryan is Lost, Sewer Rats at Sea, Sunny Afternoon, Take Me to the Poorhouse, The Baby, The Devil and Billy Markham, The Interview, The Real Housekeepers of Studio City, The Spolin Players, The Third Date, True Hustle, Unmoderated, Wet the Hippo, White Hot

The Sillies:

• The Intern Award: Emilie Pass, Rebekah York, Ariana Howell, Amber Avant, Sammy Evans & Victoria Steger
• The Wrench (most valuable tech player): Matt Richter and Rebecca Schoenberg
• The Sweet Sweet Neil Award (the sweetest fringer in the fringiverse): Benny Lumpkins
• The Ivo (most talented youngster at the Fringe): Meghan McCauley
• The Evil Kenevil (for the best stunt): Wet the Hippo (Runner Up: Theatre Unleashed)
• The Bar Rat (most omnipresent at the bar): Jacquetta Szathmari
• The Sasafrass (sassiest staff member): Liz Steele & Abbie Wagoner
• The FOMO (fringer who never misses out on the action): Kan Mattoo
• The Tweet Master/Mistress (most active on the twitters): Theatre Unleashed & Real Housekeepers of Studio City