10 SHOWS I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO AT THE HOLLYWOOD FRINGE 2013 BY KAT PRIMEAU

WHITE HOT

It’s that time of year again, the season of anticipation and excitement before Hollywood Fringe begins, when savvy producers are rolling out cross-marketing deals and dweeby theatre journalists are sifting through press releases to find what can’t be missed amidst the wealth of theatre heading our way. Call us obsessed, call us nut jobs (thanks, Colin), but this year Ben Hill and HFF have made it even easier to geek the f&*k out, introducing a festival app which allows you to search shows and create a Favorites list on your mobile device. I cozied down with mine and was appropriately delighted to find some promising shows on the horizon, along with old fringe favorites I can’t wait to catch again. While I know I will discover more audience-worthy fare at the opening night party and through thorough tactile exploration of the printed Fringe guide, the following shows (in no particular order) have already tickled my interest.

WHITE HOT

I first caught the work of New York-based playwright Tommy Smith at Prague Fringe 2008, where his co-authored “A Day in Dig Nation” blew my mind and showed me what ambitious fringe theatre could be. I’ve followed him since, up to his most recent collaboration with Neil Gaiman and Reggie Watts on the hallucinatory audio-projection-fueled play LOTUS EATERS EP, and am consistently impressed as the writer explores new intersections of technology and performance. Producing company The Vagrancy didn’t win me over with their overwrought production of “Down in the Face of God” last year, but I have high hopes that Smith’s text will inspire an intelligent Fringe performance worth catching.