@THISTAGELA THIS WEEK MAY 13, 2016

COLUMNS / MOST RECENT / ON THE FRINGE / MAY 13, 2016
This Week: Theatre and Chill, John Belushi Returns, Audience Members Get Naked

NEWS
After seven short years, Hollywood Fringe Festival has managed to garner what venerable Edinburgh Fringe (founded in 1947) has not accomplished in 69 years: financial recognition from the government. In its second round of arts grants for fiscal year 2016, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is giving Hollywood Fringe an Art Works grant of $10,000 to support the growth of Fringe Scholarship programs. Festival Director Ben Hill commented, “This funding allows us to sustain that growth by supporting artists and programming that is diverse, inclusive, and relevant to the local community. We are truly honored to have been selected a recipient.”

THE THING IS
Director TINKS LOVELACE discusses Theatre and Chill?, featuring three Raegan Payne dark comedy shorts on “life, love, hate and human imbecility.” Plays June 2-24 at The OMR (Complex Theatre).

“The playwright Raegan Payne has an incredibly contemporary and wicked voice. The three one act plays run an hour in total. The show evokes an ultra cool social media-inspired ‘Netflix and Chill’ environment infused with a soundtrack of Amy Winehouse, Kid Cudi and others. It is really an old-school setting of coming together to just relax and watch shows, but the modern life realities of human frailties, love, hate, innocence and stupidity do invade the proceedings. We are so happy to being this show to the Fringe.”