Construction of the Sound Mandala (Luke Harbor)
It’s July in Kansas City, which means the KC Fringe Festival is back at theatre spaces and other venues across the city. From July 19–27, theatergoers can choose from more than 50 shows across the entire spectrum of genres. This year’s festival features historical dramas, satirical comedies, stand-up, storytelling, live music, movement-based performances, immersive auditory experiences, and much more.
With so much to choose from, here are five shows we’re especially excited to check out.
The Sound Mandala
Fringe festivals are designed to showcase creative, unique productions but The Sound Mandala might just take the cake in terms of originality. Devised and developed by UMKC professor Tom Mardikes along with a team of sound designers and other specialists with connections to UMKC’s sound design program, this immersive experience promises to be “a new way of listening to recorded sounds.”
In a room of intricately mapped out speakers playing music, recorded sounds, and even a dramatic performance, The Sound Mandala is a full-body experience creating movement with sound—imitating the trick that convinces us a series of images is actually motion on film, but for our ears.
You can read more about The Sound Mandala and the process of bringing it to life here.
David Copperfield
In this adaptation of David Copperfield, writer and star Will Porter centers the queer subtext of Charles Dickens’ classic novel. Directed by Vanessa Severo, the play (which features “a few props, much chaos, and zero top hats”) focuses on the relationships between Copperfield and the “FABULOUS women” who raised him.
I love a personal, passionate spin on a classic work—especially one that may seem outlandish but is actually grounded in the original text. Porter’s take on David Copperfield seems like it could scratch that itch well.
Black Man, Missouri
If you’re a regular theatergoer, chances are good that you’ve seen Terrace Wyatt on a Kansas City stage before. The young prolific actor is at Fringe this year as a playwright and producer, though, with his play Black Man, Missouri.
Black Man, Missouri centers on the death of a young Black man wrongfully accused and murdered by a police officer, and examines the aftermath of that tragedy via a sit-down between the officer and the young man’s mother, letting us bear witness to that extremely personal, painful conversation.
Pivot
Last year, Circus Scorpius’ Here Be Dragons!: An Underwater Circus Adventure made KC Fringe’s “Best of Fest” list. This year, they’re back with another emotionally charged circus show, titled Pivot. Featuring aerialists, contortionists, acrobats, and jugglers, Pivot follows a figure called The Artist “as she writes a new story while reflecting on her own.”
Pivot looks to be a visually gripping meta examination of the process of creating physical art. “Art is messy and rarely takes a straight path,” the synopsis reads.
The Compleat History of Women, Abridged
Described as “a mad dash through the broadest subject of all time,” this show, written and directed by Wendy Thompson, invites comparisons to The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s beloved classic comedy The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). That’s a high bar to set for the Kansas City-based Thespiation to set for themselves but if the show can make audiences laugh while also possibly teaching us a few things, that should make the under-an-hour-long show a success.
The Kansas City Fringe Festival runs through July 28 at various venues city-wide. For more information on these and other shows, visit kcfringe.org.
