CCM Artists Live on the Fringe

The Cincy Fringe Festival provides artists with opportunities to step out on a limb and try new things, and this year's event incorporates mediums of artistic expression from theater and dance to music, poetry, visual art, film and everything between and beyond. 

CCM drama and musical theater faculty, students and alumni will be featured onstage or behind the scenes in at least nine productions over the course of the festival, which culminates June 8.
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Events spotlighting CCM artists include

Anna the Slut and the (Almost) Chosen One

Written by Andrew J. Hungerford ('05 CCM Theater Design & Production)
Assistant director Sara Vaught ('06 CCM Drama)

Featuring current CCM drama students Stephanie Brait, Kellen York, Kyle Nunn and Jonathan Silver, with CCM drama faculty member Michael Burnham
Puppets by Julianna Bloodgood ('05 CCM Drama) and Dan Davidson ('06 CCM Drama)

A geek, a jock and the goddess of sex walk into a bar... A contemporary riff on ancient Sumerian legend, featuring gods, university students, blank verse, fisticuffs and naked puppets.
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Better/Worse

Written by and starring Stacey Morrison Vespaziani ('03 CCM Drama), Amelia Henderson ('03 CCM Drama) and Courtney Seiberling ('03 CCM Drama)

In a time when politicians, religious leaders and activists are fighting to change the face of marriage in this country, three women investigate their own relationships (and the relationships of strangers) to discover if matrimony leads to better or worse results in the individual's journey. Using live interviews, personal experience, multimedia and a bit of poetic license, Better/Worse examines the "I don't know" behind every "I do."
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Body Language: A Radical Truth

Collaborative effort by Julianna Bloodgood ('05 CCM Drama), Adrienne Clark ('08 CCM Drama), Shannon Faith ('00 CCM Drama), Kristin Orr Henderson ('95 CCM Drama), Lauren Carter ('08 CCM Drama) and current CCM drama students Alison Vodnoy and LoraBeth Barr

The True Body Project presents Body Language: A Radical Truth. The collaborative work was created with Cincinnati-area teen girls and women and is the result of a three-month research process where the creators met with a wide range of girls and women in the community to hear the complexities of how we experience our bodies and the secrets we might keep related to these experiences.
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Don't Make Me Pull This Show Over: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Parenting

Music and lyrics by Richard Oberacker ('93 CCM Drama) and Robert Taylor
Directed by Richard E. Hess (Chair, CCM Drama)
Starring Jessica Hendy (CCM Musical Theater) and Gina Valentine ('96 CCM Musical Theater)

There's no preparation for parenthood. It's a learn-as-you-go crash course in which we can all enroll, but from which we never graduate; a never-ending commitment to a high-wire balancing act. Don't Make Me Pull This Show Over: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Parenting is a wholly original song cycle — a series of musical snapshots taken from unexpected angles, unanticipated reflections in a mirror that at times appear fractured in both hilarity and intensity. Whether we choose to be parents or not, we can’t avoid questioning the choices all parents are forced to make.
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Giving Up Later

Music and lyrics by Adam Wagner ('05 CCM Musical Theater)
Additional music by Zachary Dietz ('03 CCM Piano/Music Education) and Ben Magnuson ('05 CCM Musical Theater)
Directed by current CCM directing student Ashton Byrum

Starring current CCM musical theater students Carl Draper, Chelsea Barker, Ryan Breslin, Melvin Logan and alumna Lori Valentine

Giving Up Later is the title of one of Wagner's songs and only sung once, "giving up later is the cost of today...that's the price we pay." To him it means giving up possible futures by the choices we make, sacrificing ourselves for love, offering our "laters" to those we wish would love us, and even very literally how Wagner's father's suicide affected his family. Surrendering our future selves for the sake of others is what every parent and lover has ever done.
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In Rehearsal
  
Written by and starring current CCM drama student Alison Vodnoy

This one-woman show will make you laugh, cry and realize why you keep screwing up relationships. Alison Vodnoy portrays Akiva, who recounts her exploits dating people ranging from a Repressed Republican to a Nice Jewish Girl. As she oscillates between addressing the audience and kibitzing with her shrink, she bounds back and forth between abstract and every-day movement. Then, Vodnoy transforms into each man and recounts the other point of view. After all, in relationships, there may be no right or wrong: but there are always two sides to the story.
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next to not

Written by and starring Michael Burnham (CCM drama faculty member) and Julianna Bloodgood ('05 CCM Drama)

next to not is a theatrical collage about extinction-biological, cultural and personal. Inspired by the writings of Terry Glavin, Chellis Glendinning, Derrick Jensen and Harry Harlow's attempts to study love by destroying it; next to not packs up movement and story, song and joke, umbrella and monkey-suit for a journey among the lost and left behind. Along the way, Bloodgood and Burnham expose parts of themselves they've had to kill to become the things they think they are. It's a good night out provided, of course, the dead can dance. During the Fringe, the creators will also host separate public discussion forums on the topics raised in next to not.
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(rsvp)

Conceived and written by The Satori Group, featuring Adam Standley ('07 CCM Drama), Anthony Darnell ('07 CCM Drama), Lindsey Valitchka ('06 CCM Drama) and Adrienne Clark ('08 CCM Drama)

Our stage is a table set for two, where the audience is also the star. After last year's sold-out, 'Producers Pick of the Fringe,' hit iLove:, The Satori Group returns with (rsvp), an exploration of pedestrian performance in day-to-day humanity. Participants wear headphones, which inform what you say and do, intimately combining reality and illusion until they are synonymous. Inspired by Rotozaza's Etiquette and based loosely on Ovid's tale of Baucis and Philomen, (rsvp) is an experience beyond description, erasing the line between audience and performer. You may be reserved, but you'll never have reservations again.
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Your Negro Tour Guide

Directed by Jeff Griffin (current CCM directing student)
Starring Torie Wiggins ('02 CCM Drama)

Based on the writings of award-winning Cincinnati-based columnist and commentator Kathy Y. Wilson, Your Negro Tour Guide is a provocative, solo performance piece on identity in modern America. Through scathing and thoughtful rants, letters, music and nightmares, actress Torie Wiggins steers us through the modern American landscape of race, gender and class.
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Performance times and locations vary. Single tickets to Fringe Festival shows are $10, and passes for multiple shows are also available. For a complete schedule and additional information, visit www.cincyfringe.com.