MKE Fringe 2024 Twinge of Fringe banner
Listen closely around the edges of the stages in town and you might hear the Milwaukee theater fringe slowly evolving. The Milwaukee Fringe Festival is taking time off from a full program in the interest of expanding to larger things next year, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t going to be fringe work this coming month.
This August, Milwaukee Fringe Festival presents a special two-show ‘Twinge of the Fringe’ event featuring performances by artists who have been featured on the festival in the past. In previous years, the festival has been a rather large affair that inhibited the area in and around the Marcus Center’s smaller stages for a week in August.
The plan had always been to expand the Fringe Festival, but with a small planning team working on everything led by festival producers Karen Raymond and Katie Rhyme, planning a full fringe for 2024 simply wasn’t attainable. This year, the festival welcomes audiences into a much smaller nucleus of an event that will breeze in and out of a small space on the East Side over the course of a single evening. “We decided we couldn't let a summer go by without doing something Fringe,” said Raymond and Rhyme, “so we decided to create a smaller event that still celebrates artists and art in MKE.”
Cozy Venue
The event will take place at UWM’s Five-0-Eight Theater on Prospect. The cozy, little space will play host to two programs. The first program featured the distinctive, little puppets of Angry Young Men Ltd. followed-up by a performance by Milwaukee theater veteran Don Russell. The delightfully weird, little puppets have made few appearances in the recent past, so it will be interesting to see what they’ve been up to lately.
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The second program features the grace and passion of Ballet Folklorico Xanharati. The contemporary Latin American folk and ballroom dance group should fill the studio theatre with a great deal of warmth. Also featured on the program is the perennial festival talent Walenty Speaks. It’s the heartfelt work of Chad Matuszak Piechocki whose performance “valentines” have been featured on the festival every year in the past. They’re multi-disciplinary mosaics fusing together the work of various artists. It’s an odd, little dream of a festival which will come to life for a few hours before returning to sleep for another year in preparation for bigger things later-on. Raymond and Rhyme are looking forward to it: ‘“We're excited to work again with artists who have participated in Fringes past and create two great shows in a new-to-us space!”
Milwaukee Fringe Festival’s “Twinge of Fringe” event takes place Saturday, Aug. 10 for programs at 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Both programs are held at Kenilworth Studio Five-o-Eight on 1925 E. Kenilworth Place. For more information, visit mkefringe.com.
