SPECIAL COVERAGE: Rochester Overture’s independent coverage of the 2026 Rochester Fringe Festival
Rochester Fringe Festival at 15: Embracing the Experimental and Spectacle
Now in its 15th year, the Rochester Fringe Festival is known for presenting a cross-section of shows that are wild, weird, and experimental. From the intimate to the spectacle, the festival features 715 performances in 45 venues over 12 days.
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Latest from Fringe:
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Tea as Pretext and Elixir: A Tea Party at the End of the World at Rochester Fringe
At Sunday’s Tea Party at the End of the World, creator and performer Jessica Creane introduced the 28-person audience in the Garden Studio to a pu-erh leaf tea aged 70 years. She described it as a tea that, as soon as it seems to be losing its flavor, surprises you. It’s a tea, she says,…
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Unconventional Sounds at Sunday’s Fringe
Rochester Overture caught two unconventional sonic collaborations at Sunday’s Rochester Fringe Festival, featuring local musicians.
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Comedic Interrogations, Axed Songs, and a Taste of the Big Easy at Rochester Fringe
From comedian heckling to a musical revue about baseball to Broadway songs that got the axe before making it to the stage, the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival had plenty to offer. Rochester Overture writers caught several shows on Friday and Saturday, some of which you can still see later today.
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The Many Sides of Circus at Rochester Fringe’s Circus in the City
Modern circus is more than red-nosed clowns with painted faces, buffoonery, and freak acts. At Rochester Fringe’s Circus in the City on Friday evening, circus was a profound social message, an interior experience, a whimsical journey, and even breezy fun.
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For One Night Only, a Rocking Good Time: A Young Man Dressed as a Gorilla Dressed as an Old Man Sits Rocking in a Rocking Chair for Fifty-Six Minutes and Then Leaves
The “Young Man Dressed as a Gorilla Dressed as an Old Man…” was an absorbing and amusing sociological experiment that proved that, in the end, we are more kind than cruel. Read more about the “most Dada entry” at this year’s Rochester Fringe.
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Altering the Fates: Anti-Gone
Sophocles’s drama “Antigone” is one of the great tragedies, time-tested, reworked, and revisited numerous times is its 2,500-year history. This edition, by Needs More Work Productions, offers the audience a chance to change the fate of Antigone, even if the actress playing her doesn’t want it. It repeats through Sunday at Rochester Fringe.
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Making Human Connection Visceral and Viable: BIODANCE’s 20th Anniversary
BIODANCE gave a 20th anniversary performance at the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival that made human connection visible, visceral, and viable. Read more about the performance, which repeats next Thursday, September 24.
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A Cruise-Ship Ruse and an Unsung Hero: Day One of the Rochester Fringe Festival
Day one of the Rochester Fringe Festival kicked off yesterday, Tuesday, September 15, with showings of some of the main fringe-curated attractions. Those shows proved both irreverent and heartwarming.