Philadelphia FringeArts Festival features 4-week long, city-wide celebration of art

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Arts and entertainment in Philadelphia have been reinventing the process during the pandemic. Nearly every production, every company, has been forced to pivot, including one of Philadelphia's biggest and best-known events, the annual Fringe Festival, which kicks off Thursday.

For FringeArts, it's all admittedly a bit of an experiment this year.

Now in its 24th year, the non-profit's annual Fringe Festival is three weeks of contemporary, cutting edge shows.

"The bold and brilliant and amazing artists that we work with made an unbelievable, hard pivot from making work in real space on stages around our region and beyond," says Nick Stuccio, the president and producing director of FringeArts. "They are now making work for the digital space. It's a very brave thing they did, and some of the things we're seeing are pretty incredible."

More than 100 works will be presented during the festival. It starts Thursday and runs through October 4.

It's virtually all virtual, with 80% of shows happening in a digital space. Fifteen shows are taking place outdoors, with safety measures in place.

Kyle Dacuyan is the writer and creator of Legal Tender, a live assemblage of multi-media performances. Its debut was postponed because of the pandemic, but it was reworked for the current moment in a very 2020 kind of way.

"We've made a piece that we didn't expect to make, but it's been a piece that's surprised us in the revising process," says Dacuyan. "It has surfaced all kinds of new points of attention for us as a group of collaborators."

Click here for details and a full schedule.