After intense deliberation by our selection committee, we are proud to announce the 2017 Fringe Scholarship winners. Each production reflects Hollywood Fringe’s commitment to expand and diversify the pool of artists producing work at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
 
The Winners of the 2017 Fringe Scholarships are:

• Do You: Migration of the Monarchs
• Blamed: An Established Fiction
• Chatter
• La Casa de Bernarda Alba
• MexiKhan: Growing Up Mexican and Pakistani in America
• Hey Hollywood, My Hustle Has ADHD 
• Secret Identity Crisis
• Supa’Nova
• Unspoken: Shakespeare’s Personae in Peril
• Who You Calling A Bitch?!?

Fringe Scholarships provide each recipient with complimentary festival registration, three performances at a Hollywood Fringe Scholarship venue, a Fringe mentor, and marketing and networking opportunities as a member of the Fringe community.
 
This scholarship is partially funded through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The expansion of this program is also due in large part to the generosity of the Fringe Scholarship Venues: Complex Theatres, Lounge Theatre, Sacred Fools Theater, Studio/Stage and Theatre Asylum.

For more information visit www.hollywoodfringe.org/scholarships.

Here’s a list of this year’s Award Winners – announced just moments ago at the 2016 Award Ceremony, held at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre! Thank you all for joining us at the ceremony. Congratulations to all the winners!.

Fringe Freaks (Community-Voted Awards)

Top of the Fringe: My Big Fat Blonde Musical

International: MacDeth!

Fringe First (World Premiere): My Big Fat Blonde Musical  

Cabaret & Variety: Angel’s Flight

Comedy: Lamprey: Weekend of Vengeance

Dance & Physical Theatre: Office Beat – A Tap Dance Comedy

Ensemble Theatre: Night Witches

Musicals and Operas: My Big Fat Blonde Musical 

Solo Performance: Still Got It

Sponsored Awards

A Little New Music Award for Outstanding Songwriting: Thug Tunnel

Beyond Bechdel-Wallace Award: Disrupted

Cherry Poppins’ Cherry Picks: Ripest Show: Tilt & Here There Be Dragons

FPI’s Most Wanted Award:  Actors Company, Fountain Theatre, Lounge Theatre, Macha Theatre/Film, Rogue Machine @ MET Theatre, Sacred Fools TheaterStephanie Fuery Studio Theatre, The Hotel Cafe: Second Stage, The New Collective, Theatre Asylum and Underground Theatre

O Face Awards for Orgasmic Achievement: Keight Leighn from “(A)partment 8” (Most orgasmic performance), Will Michaels from “Night Witches” (Most orgasmic writing), “Kitty” Serial Killers – Sacred Fools (Most orgasmic production)

The Duende Distinction: Moving Art Collective: Metamorphosis (for overall production)

The Inkwell Playwright’s Promise Award: Vanessa Espino for “Odilia”

Lumpy-Cramp© Spirit of the Fringe, Never in the Box Award: Wheel of Invention

The Rogue Shakespeare Award for Artistic Excellence: Daniel Llewelyn-Williams for Writing/Acting Excellence in “A Regular Little Houdini” 

The Unleashed Awards: “Porn Rock” (Most Unleashed Show), Jessica Moreno in “All Aboard the Marriage Hearse” (Most Unleashed Performance), Elizabeth Dement in “Porn Rock” (Tracey Collins Funny Girl Award) 

The Encore! Producers Awards: 

Three Clubs: 30:30:60 – A Competitive Birthday Event, 50 Shades of Shakespeare, A Whole Newd World: Cherry Tales at The Knock Shop, Broadway Noir, Live From The Grave…It’s John Belushi!, MADLIB! The Musical, Nilbog: The Unauthorized Musical Parody of Troll 2, Ruby, Human Test Subjects

Actors Company: Amy Snowden’s Confessions from LA to L.A., Charlotte’s Shorts, F—- My Life, Freakout, Girls Together Always, Makin’ A Movie featuring the Mad Jackrats (LPNSImprov), The Gay Guide to, Tinseltown, Thirteen’s Spring, She Got Off the Couch, YOU

Asylum: A Horse With a View, A Regular Little Houdini, American Man Dream, Awkwardly Fabulous, Bin Laden: The One Man Show, BOUND, CRAFTSMAN, Einstein!, Happy Hour, How to Be A Virgin (in 13 morally ambiguous steps), In The Garage, Kill All Politicians, Las Garcia, Night Witches, Occupation, Voices, Bull, Smoke

Complex Theatres: Time Stands Still, The Art of Falling Down, Suicide LIVE, I am Vertical, Cockroach Dialogues, Julianne: Live from LA!, Lolita, Daisy, Ophelia: A Love Story, MacDeth!, Punch and Judy, Slightly Dramatic, Sticky-Fingers Monologues, Tony Danza’s Letterz 2 2pac: an evening with Tony Danza, Washed in the Blood

Lounge Theatre: All Aboard the Marriage Hearse, Aurora and Larry, Bloody Beautiful, Cold Tangerines, Fairytales Against Humanity, Feast of Snacks, MmHmm, Please Stand Clear the Doors Are Closing, SpiritWheel, Strap-On, The Creeps, Uterine Affairs, Whalefail

Sacred Fools: Theatre Thug Tunnel, Office Beat: A Tap Dance Comedy, Alien Vs. Musical, Still Got It, My Big Fat Blonde Musical, Mark Twain Answers All Your Questions!, Tilt, Lamprey: Weekend of Vengeance, All The Best Killers are Librarians, Paul Dooley: Upright and Personal, Up Down Stick Stuck, Thanks a Lot! My Gratitusical, Penny For Your Thoughts, The Princes Charming, Come Fux With Us, Tell Me On A Sunday, Nine Dresses: Sex, Death, Fashion.

• Disrupted
• Las Garcia
• Odilia
• Uterine Affairs
• Yuri Speaks Out 

At the Fringe we are dedicated to providing platforms for unique and underserved artists. We are proud to announce our newest initiative: Fringe Scholarships. We are offering free registration to five participants who meet the scholarship criteria.

We are looking for artists whose festival participation will:

• Increase festival attendance and participation by local Hollywood residents
• Increase arts participation of ethnically diverse and/or low-income artists
• Enrich audience experience through the presentation of unique, underrepresented themes and/or narratives

A special committee will select the recipients. To apply for the Fringe Scholarship, fill out the online application found here by May 11.

This scholarship is partially funded through a grant from the California Community Foundation.

From time to time, our Festival Director Ben Hill will share some stories about how the Fringe began as well as some insight into the direction and mission of our little festival. This is his first post. Enjoy!

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Every organization has its founding story.

Ours started in one of those crappy Hollywood apartments at the corner of Wilcox and Homewood. Anyone who lives in LA knows the scene I am setting: old carpets, ambitious roaches, curious smells, crumbling ceilings, bathrooms the size of linen closets.

Our little palace amongst the stars was our welcome mat when I moved to LA in 2007 with Fringe co-founder Stacy Jones (Hill) - my then-girlfriend, now-wife, forever soulmate.

I had come to LA as many do, eyes wide with ambitions of becoming a working actor in the city where actors worked. That ambition lasted about a week.

One ambition wouldn’t die so easily: starting a theatre festival in LA. But what kind of festival?

Our producing director and co-founder Dave McKeever and I had produced a festival in the past. It was a wonderful little event called “The Hatchery Festival” – three plays, three directors, three dramaturges, three weeks. There is nothing so pure as a festival of new works. As one actor put it, “I just love the way  the new words feel in my mouth”.

Still, it wasn’t enough. Even then I longed for artistic chaos framed in a well organized event. This couldn’t be achieved in the scope of a small festival of new plays, as noble and wonderful as it was.

Having witnessed first-hand the success of the Capital Fringe in my hometown of Washington DC not to mention that wonder-of-the-world that is Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I remember the first time I heard myself say it (it was in New Hampshire for the lore-curious): “Maybe we could do a Fringe in LA. They don’t have one right?”

And so there we were, drinking as we do in a shitty Hollywood apartment, no cares, no kids, no money; weeks into our LA experience and our lives gloriously changing all around us. We were happy as hell. 

I remember reaching for my laptop (half drunk). 

Browsing to GoDaddy.com. 

Seeing the words hollywoodfringe.org scrawl across the page as I typed

Clicking search. 

That infinite moment of quiet anticipation. The great wait.

“Hollywoodfringe.org is available, purchase now?”

Money was tight, but yes – I think we will purchase now. I like the way those new words feel in my mouth.

The date was October 10, 2007. For all intents and purposes, the Fringe was conceived in that moment. 

Things became a little more complicated after that. The shows, the artists, the tickets. Dreams born and crashed. Friends made, friends lost. That spirit conceived on a day in October – it was like a life placed in our hands that needed nurture. A calling, a responsibility, a joyful struggle. 

It all rose from that one pure moment where a magical name was shot into the universe: Hollywood Fringe.