Saturday Night Live's Jay Pharoah, Canada's Circus Orange tricycle show and Spoon River Rochester are among this year's First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival lineup.
The Circus Orange combines acrobatics with pyrotechnics, which involves an 18 foot tricycle which will weave it's through the crowd and then is lifted up on 60 feet in the air by a crane.
New highlight Spoon River is the biggest performance of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology - featuring 300 local actors reading monologues, complete with zombie garb, throughout the Gibbs Street area.
“Fringe is about constantly pushing boundaries and testing new work-whether as an audience meber or as a participant,” says Fringe Producer Erica Fee.
The 10-day event includes more than 380 shows in 28 venues in and round downtown Rochester. Returning acts include Future Point Dance, Bio Dance and Method Machine.
Fee says the festival is a catalyst for bringing the local arts community together.
"[It] allows them a platform on which to showcase themselves and also brings in all of our higher ed[ucation] institutions. We have many students who are involved, either as performers or audience members. It gets them downtown, makes the east end a little bit more bustling than it is. And just really brings everyone together."
Fee says the Fringe Festival has been hailed the largest multi-arts festival in the state.
"We have an audience base that is willing to try new things.”
The event runs from September 18 - 27.