FRINGE FESTIVAL VII

Last week, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Literary and Performing Arts held their seventh Fringe Festival.

The Fringe Festival is held every couple of years, and features work made by students.

It is sponsored by the Kerry Kennedy Aspiring Playwright Endowed Fund. Kerry Kennedy was a UA Little Rock alum that wrote plays, screenplays, short stories and was working on a novel at the time of her untimely death in 2006.

To honor her life and legacy, the Kerry Kennedy Aspiring Playwright Endowed Fund was created.

The theme of this Fringe Festival was “Truth to Power.” The festival featured works from students from diverse backgrounds speaking, writing, dancing and singing their truth to power.

There were so many students that entered their work into the festival that they had to do an A and B program, with the A program being shown on Tuesday and Thursday and the B program being shown on Wednesday and Friday. I was fortunate to get to see both programs.

Program A opened with a film that I directed, “The Truth About Big Cookie.”

It was written by and stars Reign Venture. It is about a young man who has been laid off from work, and is offered a too-good-to-betrue job at a cookie corporation.

He soon realizes that he is in over his head and works to get free.

Next up was Jerry Henderson III’s “Tracking Mask,” a play about a high school track student struggling to overcome her insecurity about becoming a content creator.

This play had a cool mix of live performance and pre-recorded elements.

Program A also featured a podcast installment called “Perception: The Murder Mystery Podcast.”

I had no idea how the directors, Lance Beckman and Adelia Coleman, were going to pull off a podcast in a theatre space, but it actually worked well.

There was a dorm room set in center stage and they put together a video that essentially served as subtitles. The visual elements made it easier to understand what was going on.

Next was a very powerful play by

Kia Pennington called “What If You Understood.”

In this play, Pennington explores what would happen if White people were minorities, and if heterosexuality was vilified.

It opens in a courtroom, where everyone is given a chance to speak for their rights, and ends with a powerful spoken word element that gave me chills.

After that, Lizzie Schaefer took the stage with her dance installation “News Flash.”

It was about depression, suicide and gun violence, with news clips from KATV & CBS News, and clips from “When Life Is Hard- Powerful Motivation Speech” by Ben Lionel Scott.

The next performance was Myles Mitchell’s play “Blast From the Past.”

I heard about the concept beforehand, and I must admit, I was a little wary about him being able to pull it off.

The play is about a boy who falls in love with another boy and after a devastating break-up, leaves town.

He comes back when his ex-boyfriend is kidnapped to save him. Mitchell and the cast definitely pulled it off. It was a touching story about loving who you love without shame, with an over-the-top villain that was entertaining to watch.

The last piece was a rap written and performed by La’Shundra Ha’Maschiah called “Diary of a Prophetess.” In it, she tells the story of finding God, and her family’s role in helping her to do so.

Program B opened with Makayla Allman’s capstone project “Delusions of Reference.”

The theme of the project was grief. For this dance installation piece, the audience was divided into four groups with an usher. This was so that everyone would have a different experience than the person next to them, to represent how people deal with grief differently.

There was a mix of live and pre-recorded elements and it was executed seemingly effortlessly.

Next, Stephen Glass performed a dance to “Sinner Man.”

He brought incredible energy to the stage and made complex moves look easy.

After he exited the stage, Fantacy Mason came in and performed her spoken word piece “Silenced.”

It is a very vulnerable piece about growing up as a Black woman, and being told to “be quiet” because she is too “crazy, dramatic, ghetto, and you guessed it, loud!” She performed it beautifully.

After a quick costume change, Glass was back on stage again, performing “Concerto Six Twenty Two.”

This piece was much slower than the first one he did. Because each move was a little slowed down from before, you could see more of the precision he put into each move, and get more sense of the control he had over his body.

Pennington followed this piece with a spoken word piece she wrote called “Pride.”

In it, she lets the world know that she is proud to be who she is, and that societal expectations will not break her. It was truly inspirational.

During this, Glass changed costumes again and was back out on stage when Pennington finished. He performed “Pseudopodia,” which was different from the other two pieces he performed.

In this piece, he mostly showed his skill in floorwork and tumbling. The three pieces he chose showed his range of skill in dance.

Ha’Mashiach took the stage next, with a piece that she wrote called “Thank God I Don’t Look Like What I’ve Be” that began as a vulnerable spoken word piece about her struggles in life, and ended with an uplifting rap about her journey through faith, and how she was saved by Christ. She did an amazing job performing, and her energy was definitely felt in the crowd.

Next to take the stage was Shalonda Michelle Nelson, who performed a piece she created called “Cancer I’m Not Afraid Of You.”

It had audio, video and live elements. She pre-recorded a beautiful spoken word piece about her fight against cancer, detailing her anger, fear and ultimately her bravery and strong will to live.

Along with the audio of her