2nd Annual Tampa International Fringe Festival kicks off the Fringe season

The Tampa International Fringe Festival (TIFF), Ybor’s annual 10-day performing arts festival, drew an estimated 2,500 patrons in its inaugural year. For its sophomore outing, running May 3-12, organizers are promising even more rapid-fire theater—spotlighting everything from magic shows to heavy metal musicals.

“It’s an uncensored, unjuried performing arts festival,” TIFF’s producer Trish Parry says. “When we select the shows each year we do so completely at random out of a hat. Half of the shows are from around Tampa Bay and then a quarter of the shows are from all over the country. The last quarter of the shows are international.”

“We’re very, very excited for the second year of the festival,” TIFF’s executive producer David Jenkins of the Jobsite Theater adds. “The fact that it’s grown to a two-weekend event after just one year shows how hungry this area is for Fringe. We’re so pumped to welcome acts from as far away as South Africa and Japan, who join friends from right here in our own back yard!”

The second annual TIFF will feature 31 shows from a variety of genres, with six performances each that run an hour or less. “The time in-between [shows] is also much shorter, so a patron could hypothetically see four shows in one night on a weeknight. On the weekend they could pack in eight, if they were a little mad and didn’t eat. But I would recommend eating,” Parry laughs.

“You can go see your traditional theater,” she continues, “but also there’s a heavy metal musical, there are two kinds of magic shows… we have stand-up for the first time, we have political drama from South Africa. There are five different venues all over Ybor and we have a central location at Gaspar’s Grotto where we’ll be providing entertainment on our opening and closing nights.”

It’s Parry’s hope that the festival is community-based. “We’ll always have an information table there and people can come hang out between shows and talk about what they’ve seen,” she says. “For me and I think for the rest of the Tampa Fringe team, we very much want [people] connecting with other people and talking about what they like, what they don’t like, and helping to create a big collective experience.”

Tickets range from $5 to $13, with prices chosen by the artists who retain 100 percent of the funds. In lieu of the button system featured in 2017, a $3 festival support surcharge will apply to all ticket sales as recommended by Fringe-goers last year. Fringe buttons will still be available for purchase and “for swag,” Parry says, and will earn Fringe-goers discounts at local restaurants, bars, coffee shops and more.

Of this year’s shows, Watermark has gathered four Fringe selections that feature overtly-LGBTQ themes, local thespians, familiar Fringe faces or all of the above. So without further ado: get ready, set… Fringe!

God is a Scottish Drag Queen

Mike Delamont (Victoria, Canada)

Playing at: Venue #6, The Attic

Ticket price: $13 (+$3 festival support fee)

Genre/Length: Comedy, One Hour

Performances: May 3, 7:30 p.m.; May 5, 1:30 p.m.; May 9, 10:00 p.m.; May 10, 7:30 p.m.; May 11, 11:00 p.m.; May 12, 4:30 p.m.

Mike Delamont’s award-winning “God is a Scottish Drag Queen” is on its fifth part at the Orlando Fringe Festival, but Part 1 makes its debut at TIFF this year. The original show was created in 2011 and has since toured all across North America, Delamont says, “but I am excited to go back to part one. It’s what started it all!”

The hour-long production features God, dressed in a floral power suit, who descends from the heavens to “finally set the record straight on everything from Justin Bieber to gay marriage,” Delamont says. “It’s a fun, light and hilarious show and we have been so lucky to have, what might be, the most diverse audience in the world. From children to senior citizens, from drag queens to nuns, and everyone in between!”

“While the title might scare off a few folks,” the official synopsis reads, “those that come to see the show will see it is far from blasphemous or sacrilegious. It is a hilarious and irreverent show that celebrates life and pokes fun at humanity and pop culture alike.”

Delamont says he adores the character of God, noting that “if you had asked me when it started if I thought that I would still be playing the same character 12 years later, I probably would have said no. We have had sold out runs at the Orlando Fringe since 2013 and I am so excited to be able to bring this show to Tampa for the first time.”

The Gay Uncle Explains It All To You

Presented by: The Gay Uncle Time (Seattle, WA)

Playing at: Venue #1, Silver Meteor Gallery

Ticket price: $10 (+$3 festival support fee)

Genre/Length: Comedic Storytelling, One Hour

Performances: May 3, 6:00 p.m.; May 4, 10:00 p.m.; May 5, 3:15 p.m.; May 6, 2:45 p.m.; May 11, 11:00 p.m.; May 12, 9:00 p.m.

The Gay Uncle learned about life from absorbing pop, camp, gay, underground and trash culture of the ‘60s and ‘70s and now wants to share it all with you,” comedian and artist Jeffrey Robert says, warning that the show contains references to sex, drugs and disco.

“Using brightly colored graphic novel style paintings and drawings on paper, cardboard and found objects, you will be taken on a whirlwind journey through the mind and experiences of a upper-middle-aged gay man which is part pop culture celebration, part LGBT history, part personal memoir and a healthy smattering of joy, laughter and a few tears,” the show’s synopsis reads.

Robert began performing it years ago when he created “The Gay Uncle Time” in Seattle, a monthly show featuring different themes. He says he’s “from a generation of gay men who did not all survive and many died well before their time. There seems to be a lack of connection between different generations of gays that has been filled with misinformation and misunderstandings.”

He says it’s his hope that the show will attempt to correct that for audiences, “if even in the smallest of ways. The stories need to be told and hopefully they will be told in a joyful, accessible and painless way. We are all more alike than we are dissimilar and we all thrive on community, laughter and love.”

“I’m looking forward to bringing it to Tampa,” Robert says. “My husband is from Tampa and will be joining me for part of the run and it will be the first time some of my in-laws will be able to come and see the show. Plus, I can’t wait to hit up La Teresita for Cuban food.”

Darren McCracken’s Big Bad Birthday Party

Starving Queen Productions (St. Petersburg, FL)

Playing at: Venue #5, HCC Rehearsal Hall

Ticket price: $10 (+$3 festival support fee)

Genre/Length: Comedy, One Hour

Performances: May 4, 9:30 p.m.; May 5, 3:45 p.m.; May 6, 9:00 p.m.; May 9, 8:15 p.m.; May 10, 10:00 p.m.; May 12, 10:00 p.m.

Joseph Alan Johnson’s one-man show stars Lucky Star Lounge bar manager Daniel J. Harris in the titular role of Darren McCracken, “a world-renowned party planner and legend in his own mind.”

“Darren is reluctantly turning 50 and decides to escape and celebrate alone in the tropics,” the show’s official synopsis reads. “In one hilarious, alcohol-fueled evening, he confronts his past, present and future, hoping to make peace with his demons.”

Harris says that Johnson, a local playwright and actor himself, “decided five years ago that he wanted to write a one-man show for me, with me in mind as being the actor. He wrote it thinking that the show’s got legs so I could take it on the road real easily.: shove a set in the back of a minivan and go do a show.”

“It’s a trip,” Harris adds. “Sadly there’s not much more I can tell you without giving things away. It’s a rollercoaster, it’s a comedy, it used to be a musical.”

While he’s performed the show in the past, Harris notes, participation in this year’s TIFF is his first Fringe experience. “My hope is to take this all the way to the mother of all Fringe festivals,” he says.

“This one’s a lot of fun. It’s a little bit based on Joseph’s life and then I get to throw some flare into it,” Harris beams. “We’ve worked together for so long he knows what I do when I get up there. It’s a hoot.”

Field Guide to the Gays

Logan Donahoo (Orlando, FL)

Playing at: Venue #5, HCC Rehearsal Hall

Ticket price: $10 (+$3 festival support fee)

Genre/Length: Comedy, Standup, Educational, LGBTQ, One Hour

Performances: May 3, 9:15p.m.; May 4, 7:00 p.m.; May 5, 6:15 p.m.; May 6, 6:00 p.m.; May 11, 6:15 p.m.; May 12, 8:30 p.m.

Logan Donahoo is a familiar face in Orlando, but enthusiastically describes himself as a “Tampa Fringe virgin!”

The actor asserts that he’s been involved in over 10 award-winning productions at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. It’s his brand of comedy and talk, stemming from his time as an on-air DJ, improv comedian, outspoken LGBT activist and the host of various “Rocky Horror Picture Show” productions that have led to the success of “Field Guide to the Gays.”

“I’m giddy and a little nervous to be finally taking my shows outside of Orlando,” Donahoo says. “But like a baby bird, they gotta leave the nest sometime. I’m hoping the buzz about how much of a hit ‘Field Guide’ was at the Orlando Fringe will bring people in.”

The show is officially described as “a multimedia safari of queer slang, history, subcultures and more.” It promises to offer Fringe-goers the chance to “learn everything in LGBT culture that you always wanted to know, but were too afraid to ask.”

While the show first premiered in 2013, Donahoo notes, “there’s been so many changes to our history in the last five years alone.” He points to marriage equality and Pulse as examples, which led him to update his TIFF 2018 offering. “[I] can’t wait to unleash my take on all of that on Tampa audiences.”

“I think straight audiences actually learn a lot from my show about the gay community; there’s a lot of stuff they hear from gay friends, but don’t know how to ask. I’m here to help them with that,” Donahoo says. “And then gay audiences love laughing at ourselves. We know how we are, and when you hold a mirror up there’s a lot to laugh about—and to be proud of.”

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