It’s taken more than a decade for the theater to become a year-round destination for the live arts.
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We Come to Collect: A Flirtation, With Capitalism / Photograph by Courtney Charles
There was much fanfare in 2013 when FringeArts opened in an early 20th-century pumping station — a massive $7 million renovation that included a sizable bar and restaurant and a 300-seat state-of-the-art theater. The vision for the space was clear: It would be the permanent headquarters of the beloved Philadelphia Fringe Festival, which had run (without a theater of its own) every September since 1997, as well as a destination for the live arts throughout the year. Alas, the venue had fallen woefully short of that latter goal. But that’s all changing now, thanks to Nell Bang-Jensen, who in September 2024 became the organization’s CEO and producing director.
In December, FringeArts announced its first-ever winter-spring season, which launches this week with a darkly funny exploration of American consumerism, We Come to Collect: A Flirtation, With Capitalism, from the mind of Obie-winning West Philly theater creator Jenn Kidwell (lauded as a “comic genius” by the New Yorker).
Later this month, local performer Lee Minora revives her saucy, satirical 2025 Fringe Festival hit Baby Everything, followed in March by an avant-garde work from Japanese choreographer Hiroaki Umeda.
And what would a Fringe season be without the gender-bending Bearded Ladies delving into the cult of American Girl dolls? They’ll present an irreverent world-premiere musical on the subject in May, closing the season.
Our responsibility at FringeArts is to create more opportunities for the next generation of Philly artists — shows that start at a grassroots level. In short, we’re all about new stuff.” — Nell Bang-Jensen, FringeArts CEO
“There are lots of amazing arts organizations in Philadelphia producing lots of great works,” says Bang-Jensen, a Swarthmore alum whose résumé includes stints at Pig Iron Theatre Company, the Wilma, and the late University of the Arts. “But our responsibility at FringeArts is to create more opportunities for the next generation of Philly artists — shows that start at a grassroots level and that we can hopefully get to travel the world. In short, we’re all about new stuff.”
Nell Bang-Jensen, head of the Philadelphia theater venue FringeArts (photo courtesy FringeArts)
Part of generating that “new stuff” includes a just-announced residency program: Fringe will offer funding and other resources to a number of artists each year, selected from a bevy of applicants by a panel of Philly artists. And then there are the monthly pay-what-you-can Scratch Nights, in which local performers are invited to present works in progress for theatergoers.
“It’s now more important than ever for people to see arts and culture,” observes Kidwell, who has been working on her show for several years. “People need to engage their imaginations. That’s the beginning of ending the politics of the moment – to spectate and to lean into imagination and to reflect.”
Bang-Jensen says she knows the audience is out there for year-round programming, based on festival turnout of late. “The last two years saw record-breaking ticket sales,” she says, “plus a record number of artists performing and a 17 percent increase in unique ticket buyers. And, for the first time ever, more than 50 percent of our audience was Gen Z and millennial — the new generation of patrons. Audiences are here for this. So we’re going to give it to them.”
Published as “Full-Blown Fringe” in the February 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
