The New York Times Spotlights the Berkshire Fringe Festival

“Sassy and experimental,” writes The New York Times  of the Berkshire Fringe Festival performances in their Friday, July 18, 2008 article. The alumni run festival—which showcases new works by emerging artists in theater, dance, and film, and is hosted at the College’s Daniel Arts Center—is getting a lot of attention these days. Besides the Times preview, the Fringe was profiled in a five-page spread in the July issue of Berkshire Living magazine. In it, performer Josh Matthews praised Fringe cofounders Sara Katzoff ’97, Timothy Ryan Olsen ’95, and Peter Wise for pulling together “a safe testing ground for new work.” He explained, “Without places like this, you’d just be seeing revamped versions of old plays that once made money.”

Katzoff, Olson, and Wise have found that performers and audiences are starving for new work. In fact, attendance has doubled every year since the Fringe’s founding nearly four years ago. Of course, it helps to be lavished with critical praise. This year, the Fringe made it to The Women’s Times list of top ten cultural picks, and was showcased in the New York Capital Region’s urbanite Chronogram Magazine, which applauded its "genre-bending theater works."

Cofounder and alumna Sara Katzoff says the media attention and audience momentum reinforces the resonance of the Fringe’s core mission: to make high quality, cutting-edge theater and dance available and affordable to the general public.   

Check out the full schedule and purchase your tickets before it’s too late to get in on the Fringe.