September 10 – 12, 2021 at the
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
Learn About FW Fringe Buttons
Every ticket purchased at the FW Fringe comes with an FW Fringe button. These buttons can be taken to our FW Fringe Button Sponsors. Local businesses that have agreed to offer a discount to anyone who visits their business during the duration of the Fringe.
Where can I stay?
The FW Fringe has partnered with The Homewood Suites to reserve a block of rooms at their hotel at a rate of $149/night for King Sized Studio Suites. To book your room at the Homewood Suites, follow the button below.
Coming from out of town? You can find a list of hotels near the FW Fringe venue here.
Once You’re There
Parking:
Parking can be found across the street from the Fort Worth Community Arts Center in the Will Rogers West Parking lot. Parking is paid, with the cost capping at $10.
Additional parking is available at the Western Heritage Parking Garage, directly next door to the FWCAC. Parking is paid, with the cost capping at $11.50.
Picking up tickets:
Once you’re in the building, you’ll go to the Sanders Theatre lobby. Find the FW Fringe box office table to pick up your tickets, program and FW Fringe button.
THERE IS NO LATE SEATING:
Because of the layout of the two performance spaces, late seating would cause distraction to both the audience and the performers. Because of this, there is absolutely no late seating. Please arrive at the theatre at least 15 – 30 minutes before your show time to allow time for parking and picking up tickets.
When performance time comes:
When it’s time for each performance, ushers will open the doors and collect your tickets. In The Vault, the ushers will guide you down to the performance space as soon as the last performance in the space ends.
After the performance:
Ushers will guide you out of the performance space so that the next performing company may begin their setup. If you would like to visit with the performers after the show, please meet in the Sanders lobby.
Looking back/Looking forward
FW Fringe
The FW Fringe is an annual Fringe Festival co-produced by Texas Nonprofit Theatres and the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Featuring a variety of different acts ranging from rarely produced theatre, dance, storytelling, puppetry, poetry, and more; the FW Fringe welcomes performers from all over the state of Texas and beyond.
The 2021 FW Fringe took place from September 10 – 12, 2021 at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center at 1300 Gendy St, Fort Worth, TX 76107.
FULL FW FRINGE SCHEDULE
2021 FW FRINGE ACTS: THE SANDERS THEATRE
Headliner - Sweater Curse: A Yarn About Love by Elaine Liner
Elaine Liner – Dallas, Texas
Runtime: 60 Minutes
Performance Times:
Friday, September 10 – 7:30pm
Saturday, September 11 – 2:00pm & 7:20pm
Sunday, September 12 – 2:00pm
ABOUT THE PIECE – In “Sweater Curse: A Yarn about Love,” writer-performer Elaine Liner weaves bitterly funny tales of her obsession with knitting and great knitters in history, plus stories of her own unraveled romances. Critics in the UK and US have called it a “five-star purl jam” that will “have you in stitches.”
The play explains the old wives’ tale that says any sweater knitted for a lover will be “cursed” and he or she will split before the knitting is completed. Liner’s storytelling detours into literature’s famous knitters, including Penelope and her shroud in The Odyssey, Madame DeFarge and her busy needles in A Tale of Two Cities, and the many references to knitting in Shakespeare. (“Hey, Will worked nights,” says Liner, “so his wife had to be a knitter, right?”)
After three decades as an award-winning journalist, writing for magazines and newspapers, Liner found the dwindling print media biz left more time for making sweaters and making plays. “I’ve always knitted to relax between deadlines,” she says. “When I ran across the term `sweater curse’ on Wikipedia, the idea for the play was born.”
Liner premiered her one-woman play at the renowned Edinburgh Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world, in August 2013. She returned for a second run at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe, and has toured to the Theatre Crude Fringe in Oklahoma City, New Orleans Fringe, Dallas Solo Festival, Granbury Opera House, MCL Grand Theatre (Lewisville, TX), Henderson County Performing Arts Center and other venues. She recently performed for the Lake Highlands Book Review Club’s 60th anniversary luncheon in Dallas, the Rockwall (TX) Book Review Club, and for a special matinee audience in Sherman, TX.
Besides writing the script and playing the solo role (directed by San Antonio theater pro Tim Hedgepeth), Liner also knitted and crocheted all of her scenery and props, including “yarn-bombing” two chairs, a coat rack, some stools and other items. She’s made and sold dozens of hats and shawls to fundraise for travel expenses, and has crocheted more than 6,000 tiny hearts, given to each patron in her audiences. “I’ve been knitting and crocheting since I was 8. Giving every audience member a handmade souvenir just shares my love of the craft,” she says.
Performing this play “changed my life,” says Liner, who debuted as a playwright and actress at age 59. “And wherever I’ve done it, knitters, male and female, old and young, have found the show and connected with it. The message of the play is that some relationships just aren’t sweater-worthy after all – and people who knit and crochet really understand that. What tickles me is that even people who’ve never knitted a stitch get it, too.”
ABOUT THE PRESENTER – Elaine Liner wrote arts criticism for the Dallas Observer starting in the 1980s (till 2017). She was also a columnist for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Toledo Blade, and Boston Herald, and has won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, Dallas Press Club, and Women in Communications. A graduate of Trinity University, where she earned her degree in theater studying with Dallas Theater Center founder Paul Baker, she later got a master’s at SMU. Elaine was a critic fellow at the O’Neill Critics Institute in 2006, a two-time James Thurber Writer-in-Residence in Columbus, Ohio, and taught writing, media ethics and media history at SMU for many years. For the past eight years, she’s led a motivational workshop called “Mastering the Media Matrix” that helps artists, authors, performers, and other creatives navigate publicity without a publicist. Her four-character comedy Finishing School won the 2017-’18 NewPlayFest at the American Association of Community Theatres and was published by Dramatic Publishing. Her latest play, Dear Donald/Dear Hillary: Their Secret Correspondence, was scheduled at five festivals in the US and Canada in the summer of 2020 before the Coronavirus canceled them.
Brandi Pace & Geno Young
Brandi Pace – Fort Worth, Texas
Runtime: 60 Minutes
Performance Times:
Saturday, September 11 – 3:20pm & 10:00pm
Sunday, September 12 – 6:00pm
ABOUT THE PIECE – Pace and Young present an acoustic performance of jazz, brazilian, and popular music.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER – Brandi Waller-Pace is a singer, musician, and educator born and raised in Atlanta, GA. Brandi studied jazz at Howard University in Washington, DC, where she was a member of the critically-acclaimed vocal ensemble Afro Blue, sharing the stage with jazz greats such as Geri Allen and Bobby McFerrin. Waller-Pace taught music in the Fort Worth Independent School District for ten years and for the past twelve has been an artist-in-residence at Arts Fifth Avenue, where she
performs and teaches. She has performed locally and nationally in many styles, most often jazz, old-time, and neo-soul. As half of the duo Pace & Barber, she has performed at the Austin String Band Festival and the Austin Friends of Traditional Music Mid-Winter Festival. She is the executive director of the nonprofit Decolonizing the Music Room and the organizer of the Fort Worth African Roots Music Festival.
Dallas native Geno Young is a musician and fine arts advocate who influences many facets of today’s musical landscape. A
Grammy-nominated songwriter, he is a proud graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for the performing and Visual Arts, and a graduate of Howard University in Washington DC. Geno has toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe as a performer, musical director, producer, conductor and lecturer. He has served as musical director and producer for some of soul music’s most influential performers including Erykah Badu, Les Nubians, Leela James and many others. Geno served as one of the first African American Governors for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (Texas), and is a voting member
of the Grammy awards.
Counterbalance & More - Dance Collaborators of DFW
Dance Collaborators of DFW – Fort Worth, Texas
Runtime: 60 Minutes
Performance Times:
Friday, September 10 – 6:10pm
Saturday, September 11 – 4:40pm & 8:40pm
Sunday, September 12 – 3:20pm
ABOUT THE PIECE – Counterbalance is the weight in which dancers balance one another in skill and artistry. The craftmanship and collaboration of dance educators, choreographers, and performers from DFW will come together for a shared balance of modern & contemporary dance repertoire. The collection of dance works presented in Counterbalance weave together the gritty, tender, and curious, embodying what it means to move through this world.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER – Dance Collaborators of DFW are educators, choreographers and performers from DFW
Suddenly, Last Summer by Tennessee Williams
Payten Brewer – Benbrook, Texas – FW Fringe Debut
Performance Times:
Friday, September 10 – 8:50pm
Saturday, September 11 – 12:40pm & 6:00pm
Sunday, September 12 – 4:40pm
ABOUT THE PIECE – Suddenly, Last Summer is not only a family-drama centering around the shadow self, but is also an exploration of social distancing and how isolation can impact your mental health, and therefore your judgement. It is a story of clashing egos, hysteria and dark truths resurfacing, but all wrapped up in your typical southern-belle fashion. A glass of iced tea in-hand, and a smile on your face – even when your intentions are decimating others. This story has a lot of subtext, a lot of depth, and can utterly intrigue audiences whether this is the first time they’ve seen the show or the twentieth.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER – Payten Brewer is an actor, producer and director. She first started acting at Theatre Arlington at fourteen years old. Because of her early exposure to theatre, she has an intense theatrical background and understands all of the intricacies that go into making a show successful. At seventeen years old, she was accepted into The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, LA – the oldest acting school in the world. She graduated in May of 2017 at the top of her class. After graduation, Payten decided to set her focus on film and start her own production company, Wild Heart Productions. WHP specializes in creating female driven content and creating more jobs and opportunities behind the screen for women in film. Last spring she made her film debut as a director in her short film, Sister. At the end of the year she jumped on to co-produce the feature film Erzulie. Erzulie has guaranteed distribution and will most definitely receive a limited theatrical release, as well as make a premier on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon. Both projects feature an incredible amount of female jobs behind the scenes, and are both female-driven story lines.
2021 FW FRINGE ACTS: THE VAULT
Headliner - Dear Serenity by Charles Jackson
Poetic Thespian Productions – Fort Worth, Texas
Runtime: 55 Minutes
Performance Times:
Friday, September 10 – 8:40pm
Saturday, September 11 – 3:50pm & 8:30pm
Sunday, September 12 – 3:10pm
A View From My Backyard by Sara Herrera
Sara Herrera – Fort Worth, Texas
Runtime: 30 Minutes
Performance Times:
Friday, September 10 – 10:00pm
Saturday, September 11 – 3:00pm & 7:40pm
Sunday, September 12 – 4:30pm
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
New Antiquities Theatre Company – Hobbs, New Mexico
Runtime: 55 Minutes
Performance Times:
Friday, September 10 – 7:20pm
Saturday, September 11 – 6:20pm & 9:50pm
Sunday, September 12 – 1:50pm
ABOUT THE PIECE – A lone actor rehearsing in an empty theater space transforms it before our eyes into the classical story of revenge by William Shakespeare. Hamlet, a Danish prince, discovers that his uncle Claudius murdered his father and took the throne; Hamlet’s mother has married the usurper. Considered one of the greatest plays in the English language, one actor tells the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark using minimal staging and an emphasis on actor, audience, and text.
ABOUT THE PERFORMER – New Antiquities Theatre Company seeks to create a momentum in their community by using the theatre arts as a platform to not only entertain but also invest and develop the culture of the surrounding area. Our mission is to produce new works that challenge audiences by examining the world of today and provoking conversation and discussion. Through production of classical works we also aim to examine the world of antiquity and it’s link to contemporary America.
The Glamorous Life: Parenting in a Pandemic by Sarah Powell
Sarah Powell – Grapevine, Texas
Runtime: 50 Minutes
Performance Times:
Friday, September 10 – 6:10pm
Saturday, September 11 – 1:40pm & 5:10pm
Sunday, September 12 – 5:20pm
ABOUT THE PIECE – Have you ever looked at your children and thought, my God I made that! And the next second think, MY GOD I MADE THAT?? You are not alone. Join local actress and singer Sarah Powell, and pianist Rebecca Lowery, as they present songs that capture the essence of parenthood: The Glamorous Life, I’m Breaking Down, Back to Before and many others. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it WILL be better than staying home with the kids, we promise.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER – Sarah Powell has performed in theatres all over North Texas, including Lyric Stage, Casa Manana, Uptown Players, and WaterTower Theatre. Favorite roles include Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, Ilona in She Loves Me, and Kate/Lilli in Kiss Me, Kate. Sarah has two children, a husband and a dog, all of whom she is raising in Grapevine, TX. Her daughter, Sophie, age 4, would like you to know that her mommy is the second best singer in the world (Sophie herself is the best). Her son Mason, 15 months, agrees with everything his sister says.
Thank you to our Media Partner
Thanks to the 2021 FW Fringe Sponsors
