What is KC Fringe Festival? A place to see a legend from Australia and much, much more
Raise your hand if you think you know what the Kansas City Fringe Festival is.
OK, now lower it if your impression is that it’s a bunch of off-the-wall shows by amateur entertainers. Or if you think it has anything to do with France.
When Audrey Crabtree took over as the KC Fringe Festival’s executive director a year and a half ago, she encountered people in both categories.
“It blew my mind when I moved here and I would talk to people, and they’d say, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Oh,’ I’m like, ‘I’m here to work on the Fringe Festival,’ and they’re like, ‘The French Festival?’ ‘No, the Fringgge.’ And they didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Crabtree continues working to raise the festival’s profile as it enters its 19th year July 14-30 with 54 stage productions featuring nearly 300 performances, six films and 35 visual artists. The slate includes 16 touring shows from around the country and the world.
“In Kansas City, I think there’s been this misunderstanding that fringe is a bunch of amateurs that have never done anything,” Crabtree said. “But the fringe circuit in general is filled with people who do this for a living.”
One of those people is comedian and storyteller Jon Bennett, who not only has been making his living on the fringe circuit for more than 15 years but has established himself as a fringe legend.
By his own calculations, the 2023 KC Fringe will be the 134th festival for the 43-year-old native of Adelaide, Australia. Among Bennett’s other appearances are four at the grandaddy of them all, the Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland, as well as fringes in Edmonton, the largest and longest-running in North America, and Orlando, the oldest in the United States.
Edinburgh dates to 1947 and annually attracts millions of visitors to its more than 2,000 shows and more than 32,000 performances.
By comparison, KC Fringe is small potatoes. But it impresses Bennett, who will return after making his KC debut last year.
“It’s not the biggest festival, but I had a really fun time,” he said. “I went to the museums and stuff. When it’s kind of a new festival that I haven’t done before, I try to look at it as kind of a working holiday. So I try to see all the things. I had barbecue.
“We have very different definitions of what a barbecue is. Ours is kind of like sausages in bread with tomato sauce. … Whereas you guys are chicken and sauces and all this kind of stuff.”
Bennett is adapting to the United States’ other cultural differences now that he resides in Portland, Oregon. That move was necessitated by the COVID pandemic, which forced him to return to Australia to live for two years after a decade on the road, then to be restricted to the United States after he ventured here.
The experience is the basis of his show “Ameri-CAN’T,” which he will perform five times at The Black Box in the West Bottoms.
“It’s sort of a love story to the U.S. and how after COVID happened I was forced back to Australia,” he said. “Then I decided I wanted to come back here and had to jump through all the hoops and everything of dealing with being an immigrant, which I never thought I was. I don’t picture myself as an immigrant, but now I’m officially an immigrant to this country.”
Among his immigration tribulations was being detained for nine hours in the Portland airport, where officials interrogated him and downloaded files from his phone and computer. His attempts at humor fell flat.
“They were a very serious group of people,” he said.
Not even photos from Bennett’s signature bit — “Pretending Things Are a Cock” — swayed the Portland airport officials.
After beginning as a gag among friends, his “Pretending” idea went viral and essentially launched his career. Just as the title suggests, he and eventually thousands of others are photographed or video recorded while incorporating objects of all sorts — from fire hydrants to the Eiffel Tower — into phallic representations.
It’s not exactly high-brow humor, but it led to Bennett’s first show at fringe festivals throughout the world as well as a coffee-table book and a photo exhibition.
“Pretending” is such an international sensation that Crabtree asked Bennett to do a special one-time engagement at KC Fringe after another act pulled out (sorry). He will stage it July 22 at the Arts Asylum.
“We’re pretty lucky this year because we have one of his biggest, most well-established, most-awarded shows,” Crabtree said. “We also have a brand new show. We’re hosting both of those.”
Bennett’s “Pretending” show is much more than a series of semi-offensive pictures. In fact, he calls it “possibly my cleanest show” among the nine that he tours with at fringe festivals.
“It’s about this viral thing that happened to me,” he said. “It started when I was 26, 27. Now I’m 43 and still … doing it.
“It’s kind of like, ‘What am I doing with my life? What are people going to do to my tombstone?’ But I kind of like it. I still enjoy that it’s such a puerile, stupid thing that I have taken to the nth level.”
What is fringe?
Fringe festivals (so-named because they originated on the fringes of larger, more serious festivals) are wide-open affairs, with performing arts ranging from family friendly to decidedly risqué and from simple storytelling to experimental theater. The shows are generally about an hour and feature small casts (frequently just one) on unadorned sets.
The KC Fringe Festival, like most others, is not juried, censored or curated, meaning it’s first-come, first-served for would-be artists and performers.
Kansas City Fringe Festival
July 14-30 at 13 venues from the West Bottoms to Brookside.
Details: A Fringe Button ($5) allows the purchase of tickets ($12) to any Fringe show as well as admittance to Fringe After Parties and other free events. Find schedules and tickets at kcfringe.org.
Jon Bennett: “Ameri-CAN’T” at The Black Box: 7 p.m. July 21, 2:30 p.m. July 22, 5:30 p.m. July 23, 8:30 p.m. July 28, 10 p.m. July 29. “Pretending Things Are a Cock” at Arts Asylum: 6 p.m. July 22.
