Soapbox Special!! Philly Fringe 🥳 🫵

You’re celebrating! You!!!

Staff picker Lena Engelstein is shouting out three shows in the New York City of Pennsylvania, so we are highlighting them here in an ephemerally-instantiated adaptation of the staff picks format. You’ll never seen this again. Until you will.

Catholic Guilt: Kelly McCaughan
https://phillyfringe.org/events/kelly-mccaughan-catholic-guilt/

I bet you're like me and didn't go to Edinburgh's fringe festival this year. Instead, you followed your friends as they somehow did a show every night of August on haggis alone. I saw that this show made the best newcomer shortlist and heard that it was "brave, moving, and slutty." Now it's in Philly for you to see while you eat a cheesesteak.

non-binary pussy: Anh Vo and Kristel Baldoz
https://phillyfringe.org/events/non-binary-pussy/

Is wanting to see a dance based on the title the same as judging a book by its cover? I haven't seen this show so I will put the description as written on the website here: Part music, part dance, part propaganda, the work delivers explicit political and sexual language that is rooted in Marxist rhetoric and black female rap history. I mean... did you see that coming? What I can attest to is that Anh Vo has been pushing at the edges of dance work for years and we are better for it.

Das Sofortvergnügen (THE INSTANT PLEASURE)
https://phillyfringe.org/events/das-sofortvergnugen-the-instant-pleasure/

It's Philly's month: Philly Fringe and Cannonball are happening in Sept and this show can be how you kick that off. This show is a delightful, irreverent joy-scroll about insatiable desire straddling dance and theater in that rythmic-gymnast flexible way so dear to me. Travis and Cosimo are a pleasure to watch as they do dirty things like fuck up the serenity prayer.