FringeArts: The Mapping of an Arts Space
By Josh McIlvain

About FringeArts
FringeArts is Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary presenter of contemporary performance and cultural hub for artists and audiences. We present groundbreaking international and national works, commission new public art works, and nurture local artists through residencies and performances.

The Path to Home
October 1, 2013, we moved our offices into our first permanent home, the former (and impressively named) High Pressure Fire Service, built in 1903 to help speed water throughout the city to put out fires. At the same time, we opened our newly completed 240-seat theater within the building to begin an early foray into year round presentation. Near the base of the towering Benjamin Franklin Bridge, and across the street from the Delaware River and the new Race Street Pier, FringeArts aims to make our area, a new destination defined by excitement of art making and social engagement fostered by the arts.

As the former Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly fringe, we were a transient entity finding homes for a few years here, a couple years there, always on the lookout for an appropriate venue that we could one day purchase and call our own. As a festival that took place for 16 days every September, we survived and even thrived on spreading art throughout the city in new and surprising ways, changing—for 16 days at least—how folks saw the city and interacted with the arts here. Galleries, sidewalks, and vacant lots in additional to all the “traditional” theater spaces were transformed into performance spaces where artists pushed the barriers of their art.

Now as FringeArts, we continue to expand our Fringe Festival throughout the city’s many neighborhoods, but we have transformed ourselves into a permanent arts entity, with a physical space that gives us the ability to present and support work year round and to engage audiences at our home along the Delaware River. No longer is our contribution a “temporary” transformation. We are now a place to come to, and as our building becomes complete, soon to have an outdoor plaza and restaurant-bistro and additional stages and performances areas to compliment our theater and multi-purpose studio space.

We have only just begun our “year-round” programming, but already we’ve brought in a heady array of artists and shows, including The Room Nobody Knows, by the Japanese experimental theater company Niwa Gekidan Penino, “BLEED” by renowned New York-based choreographer Tere O’Connor, and most recently with two sold-out showings of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sam Green’s documentary “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller” with a live score performed by Yo La Tengo. Next we have highly respected Philadelphia choreographer Nicole Canuse presenting her newest work “Midway Avenue.”

As theater, dance, music, film and even architecture audiences have made their way to FringeArts, we’ve been able to observe how they interact with the building, an historic former pumping station that once helped push water throughout the city in a sophisticated piping system. We are eager for our large restaurant/bistro to open (slated for this August), followed shortly by an outside plaza and public space. Both the restaurant and the plaza, which is right across the street from the Race Street Pier, will be attractions in their own right, not addendums to whatever show we might have playing on a particular day. Why is this important? Because not only are we inviting people to come to this building and the surrounding area, attracted by the art as its central raison d’etre, but we are also allowing folks to engage in other social activities.

In the fall of 2014, we expect arts programming to be in full, continual swing. In addition to the “mainstage” performances in our theater, we will have many other performance spaces available for different types of arts presentation, including a stage in our restaurant, which will feature late night programming with everything from dance and cabaret to live music, and temporary performance spaces in the plaza. We can pull the walls back between the theater, the restaurant, and the studio so we can have entirely immersive arts experiences and social engagement.

FringeArts is destined to be a place for artists and the public to gather because it is a place where art happens, art that strives to break boundaries and look into the future—the kind of art, the kind of visions people like to argue over and discuss and be part of—to come to this space and the adjoining environs because it is identified with art making. We continue to attract artist with our history of presentation and as a platform for independent presentation during the Fringe Festival. Our history is one of creating spaces and events that inspire art making: the growth of this organization is directly linked to that of artists attending and participating in shows in the Fringe Festival, meeting, discussing and planning for the next artistic exploration.

By having an emphasis on the “new” we attract those artists seeking like-minded people. With a number of stages and performance platforms, we can vastly expand our programming to include a broader range of artists, provide visibility. Foster new work from area artists with our residencies. Our free, monthly Scratch Night performances showcase Philadelphia-based artists trying out new work.

By combining the arts and social space into one experience, we will be a natural gathering place for serendipitous encounters between art and artists. We also benefit from a location along the waterfront that has dedicated partners looking to entice visitors. (Read this recent article in the Philadelphia about “pop-up” park and art happening along the waterfront happing this summer.)We believe we are early enough on the scene to help define the revitalization of the waterfront, but timely enough that we benefit from numerous partners and organizations dedicated to making the Delaware River waterfront a vibrant community for visitors and residents. Take a walk along the river, come back and enjoy a beer, see a show, hatch up an idea for a next wave of art making.