HowlRound: Something different happened at the twentieth anniversary of the New York International Fringe Festival, which ended earlier this week. The festival is best known for such campy spoofs as Urinetown, the 1999 Fringe show that is still the only one to transfer to Broadway to date. Yet this year, some two dozen Fringe shows were given the African-American “cultural tag,” a designation selected by the producers of each show, which usually describes its subject matter, but can also indicate the identity of its characters and/or of the theatre artists involved. There were more such shows by far this year than in any of the previous nineteen years of the Fringe. Moreover, some of these African-American plays and musicals were the most heralded of the 200 shows in the 2016 festival, five of them singled out for Fringe Overall Excellence Awards.
1 comment:
When I began reading the article I came across the line “some two dozen Fringe shows were given the African-American ‘cultural tag,’”and I was then mightily confused at how there was the idea in the following paragraph of “experiencing a cultural shift,” but I think my confusion speaks to the point of the article commenting on the current state of theatre as an industry and its relation to race. After spending a year deeply analyzing literature for its race relationships, especially in relation to America, the African-American “cultural tag” is not really a “cultural shift” in the world of literature or even studio art; however, in theatre, this is a great step in the right direction which other forms of art have vanguarded towards a more equal working environment across racial lines. Theatre as an industry is lagging behind, but there has been a large push recently for more racial equality in theatre and I believe that the success of the productions outlined by this article are steps in the right direction.
Post a Comment