{"id":243976,"date":"2026-07-15T13:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T13:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/243976\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T13:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T13:57:08","slug":"philly-fringe-fest-hits-the-big-3-0-this-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/243976\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly Fringe Fest hits the big 3-0 this fall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another unusual location will be a makeshift airport within a large commercial property at 444 N. Third Street. <a href=\"https:\/\/beardedladiescabaret.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Bearded Ladies Cabaret<\/a> will build a so-called \u201cHairport,\u201d filled with luggage that contain theater props from its 16 years of original performances.\n<\/p>\n<p>Company founder Rose Jarboe said the interactive performance will ask audience members to <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/bearded-ladies-cabaret-philadelphia-queer-theater\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dig through the Bearded Ladies\u2019 material history<\/a> to consider the longevity of queer theater.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis company has been a secret frog pond, where a bunch of queerdos and weirdos and misfits have actually been using art to become who they are,\u201d Jarboe said, \u201cand to make a space for other people to become who they are.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>The festival will begin with a production featuring a blast from the past.\n  <\/p>\n<p>In 1993, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, faced off against playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer during a live C-SPAN television broadcast debating the U.S. government\u2019s approach to the HIV\/AIDS epidemic.\n<\/p>\n<p>The verbatim transcript of that hourlong televised debate is the script for \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/nyuskirball.org\/events\/kramer-fauci\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fauci\/Kramer,<\/a>\u201d Daniel Fish\u2019s surreal play about health care, politics and the nature of disagreements. While Fauci and Kramer were committed to finding a way to manage the AIDS crisis, they vehemently disagreed on how to do it.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-747291\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2026-07-14-provided-fringe-arts-fauci-kramer-1024x695.jpeg\" alt=\"A scene from a previous production of ''Fauci\/Kramer''\" width=\"640\" height=\"434\"  \/>A scene from a previous production of \u201dFauci\/Kramer\u201d by Daniel Fish, a verbatim re-imagining of a 1993 televised debate about the AIDS crisis between Anthony Fauci and Larry Kramer. (Photo provided by FringeArts)\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany callers, and we hear this all the time, would say, \u2018Gee, if only the government did this we would get the answer,\u2019\u201d Fauci said during the 1993 TV call-in show. \u201cIt isn\u2019t as simple and straightforward as that. If it were, don\u2019t you think it would have been done?\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do,\u201d Kramer interrupted. \u201cI\u2019m going to break in right here and say: Tony, all of that is bureaucratic bull\u2013 and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Nell-Jensen said the historic debate is notable because, despite vulgarities and deeply entrenched opposition, Fauci and Kramer continued to engage with each other\u2019s ideas on and off camera.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s something quite radical about people disagreeing and staying in conversation with each other,\u201d she said. \u201cI think we are quick to write people off who we don\u2019t agree with these days. This piece, even though at times it\u2019s hard to watch because they\u2019re being cruel to each other in moments, it\u2019s a beautiful demonstration of them always coming back together because they both care so deeply about the topic.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>The 30th Philadelphia Fringe Festival runs Sept. 8-27.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another unusual location will be a makeshift airport within a large commercial property at 444 N. Third Street.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[30780,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-243976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-fringearts","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}