Philly Fringe guide 2018: Dangerously interactive

For every quietly sublime moment of the Fringe Festival, there’s an equally uncomfortable one, because you bought a ticket and now an artist is expecting you to get out of your seat and do something, like ask questions, meet people, walk around outside at the mercy of strangers, or eat a thing you ordinarily might not have eaten. This is by no means a complete guide to every interactive show in this year’s fest, but it’s a start.

An official unofficial tour

Philly Parks & Rec is teaming with the Fairmount Park Conservancy for An Unofficial, Unauthorized Tour of LOVE Park from local comics Rose Luardo and Kate Banford. (If both Parks & Rec and the Conservancy are on board, I’m not sure how this tour is unauthorized, but all I know is what I’ve been told.) It’s “an interactive, questions-encouraged tour of LOVE Park with a completely legitimate, highly respected, and 100% real tour company.” The performers promise to bend reality and manipulate facts: “Maybe a bush will talk to you? And maybe that bush invented love.” The show is free and it’s running September 10, 13, and 15.

FEEL

Popular Fringe veterans Tongue & Groove are stepping up their familiar milieu of anonymous audience suggestions to a preshow experience that challenges you to make a personal connection. FEEL ($13 to $18), coming to the Playground at the Adrienne, asks attendees, “How are you really feeling?” You’re encouraged to express how you’re feeling (physically or emotionally) with one word on the card provided (T&G will have lists of some evocative and juicy words ready). And then, instead of simply delivering your card into the actors’ basket under the blessed cover of anonymity, you’re invited to mingle with other audience members and share your feeling with someone else — whether it’s your date or a total stranger (or both, because the two aren’t mutually exclusive).

The show is BYOB, but ticket-buyers on opening night (September 7) or at the late-night closing show (September 21) will get a free glass of wine or beer plus snacks. And for all performances, massage therapists from Hand & Stone Logan Square will offer free chair and hand massages 30 minutes before the curtain.

Fringe picks in Kensington

The fest is never complete without the chance to turn a ticket into an excuse to walk into a stranger’s house, and Jeffrey Evans, Nick Jonczak, and Devin Preston oblige with their Skills and Scars ($20), at Nick’s house in Kensington. It seems to involve more than a comfortable seat on the couch: “Some of us are getting together to play this game… You don’t need anything, just bring like, um…just like, any deep childhood trauma you have, or that fanfiction you’ve been working on.” A crowd-funding page from the artists promises a "collaborative performance that transforms your hidden insecurities into a playful adventure game!", a mash-up of a "table top roleplaying game" and an interactive performance. Be warned: The show is three hours long. It’s running September 12 through 18.

While you’re in Kensington, you could also check out the Renegade Company’s (Kensington) Streetplay, which gathers at the Allegheny stop on the Market-Frankford Line. The free show, directed by Mike Durkin, is a 90-minute, 10-block walking experience, developed over two years in partnership with locals who have personal perspective on substance abuse, addiction, homelessness, and community activism. The experience tackles the neighborhood’s past, present, and future, asking important questions about coexistence, common ground, and who controls the narrative. It’s running September 6 through 16.

Chocolate and R&J

Down in East Passyunk, Ultra V Theatre Company invites you to put on your comfy pants and join in at the Whole Shebang (1813 South 11th Street) for Death by Chocolate ($10). Conceived by Angela Longo and a team of women co-creators and performers, the show evokes being in the room while a music video is happening, with text, song, movement, and dance celebrating that pillow-soaking anthem of breaking up and moving on, Sia’s “Death by Chocolate.” “There will be chocolate,” the artists promise. It’s running September 6 through 8.

Finally, if you like to participate without leaving the house (or office), try Jessica Creane’s R&J, an intriguing digital event “based on the unmitigated emo clusterf*ck that is Romeo and Juliet.” Over the span of five days, participants partner one-on-one to play an interactive web-based game via text message, with fresh Shakespeare-inspired instructions each day. You can team up with someone you know to play, but it’ll be probably be a little more uncomfortable — I mean, better — if you go with the flow and partner with a stranger. It costs $10 to play and is available to launch throughout the run of the fest.