Thu 7/22-Sat 7/31
Like everyone else, the 2021 BorderLight International Theatre + Fringe Festival, which hosted its inauguration edition in 2019, is making some changes for this year. Luckily, the festival, originally intended to be annual, decided well before the pandemic that it would be biennial instead, given the complexity of pulling off such a multi-venue event with so many partners. So it was spared the worst of the pandemic impacts.
This year’s BorderLight VIRTUAL Fringe Festival features 33 live-streamed and on-demand virtual productions, interactive online experiences, and several self-guided “audio adventures,” available from Thursday July 22 through Saturday July 31. It will return in person in 2022.
The programming is diverse, featuring drama, musicals and comedy, kid-friendly and adult entertainment, short films and animation, solo performances, burlesque and drag, and even interactive performances in which the audience helps shape its direction. More than 100 artists from 13 states, as well as Canada, India, Ireland and Italy, are participating.
Among the works presented are two commissioned, self-guided audio experiences, which will be world-premiered at the festival, both available on demand July 22-31. BorderLight partnered with northeast Ohio’s Radio on the Lake to create Under the Sycamores, A Secret Path Audio Experience in Cleveland’s Historic Erie Street Cemetery. It invites you to choose your own path through Cleveland’s Erie St. Cemetery (located just south of Playhouse Square) and learn about some of the historic figures buried there in performances and photography.
The other commissioned work, The Walks, was co-produced with German company Rimini Protokoll. It offers participants audio-driven walks through special area sites, such as a park, supermarket or riverbank. “In every city, voices, sounds, and music turn familiar places into sites and landscapes into stages, step-by-step through storytelling, dialogical situations, choreographic discoveries, or musical and rhythmic variations on walking,” they tell us.
For a full schedule of the dozens of performances and times, go to borderlightcle.org. Single tickets range from $5-$12, including free and pay-what-you-can options.