For many artists and audiences, the arts are not only about self-expression, but about the world we live in, the world we want to live in, or the world we want to avoid. Here in Orlando, there are a lot of artists in town right now, as the annual Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival heads into its final weekend. Two weeks each year, 100 or so performers stage hundreds of unjuried and uncensored shows of all kinds.
The fabled “Fringe Lawn” is the Loch Haven Park green space between the main festival venues of Orlando Shakes and Orlando Family Stage, where you find just about all the artists when they’re not performing. As the arts are facing funding cuts at the federal level, and here in Florida at the state and local levels as well, I set out to ask artists one question…
Why do they think the arts are important?
Artists on art
If you time traveled to any year of Fringe in its 34-year history, the first person you’d probably find would be the first person I found. That’s director/producer/actor/former Fringe artistic director/theatrical personality Beth Marshall. This is her first year as an out-of-towner, though, bringing her show called “Beth and Josie Exposed” from her new home of Colorado. I asked Beth and co-star Josie Nixon – aka Juice the Trauma Clown, in full clown makeup – why the arts are important.
“The arts are breath,” said Marshall, “and so the same reason that you would say to a human that they need to breathe is the same reason that you would say to an artist, we need the arts.”
“The arts sadly have become political because people’s and artists’ existences are [now] political,” Marshall added, referencing the funding cuts. But, she noted, the experiences that art can address remain universal. “All of our stories have humor in them. All of our stories have trauma in them, and are relatable to many different types of people, all walks of life... Arts are breath, and Earth has ‘art’ in it.”
“I firmly believe that everything is created from a basis of art,” said Nixon. “Everything in our culture…fifty years from now, the world will be a different place because of the artists that are alive right now.”
A moment later, I bumped into someone who illustrated the diversity of Fringe at that moment by looking like the polar opposite of Juice the Trauma Clown: an aggressively clean-cut, former Villages political operative in a three-piece suit named Bobby Wesley. He is premiering his first show, “Apolitical,” this year.
“[Art] just makes you open to interacting with people that you might have never met before, different places, different cultures, and just finding beauty in everyday things,” Wesley said. “And there's nothing quite like a Fringe Festival. You'll see something weird, you'll see something beautiful, you'll see something fantastically brilliant, and all in an afternoon or an evening.”
Next up, I posed the “why are the arts important” question to longtime Orlando performer, director, and also a former Fringe exec, Michael Marinaccio. He’s producing “Cabaret of Legends” with Tymisha Harris this year.
“Art is about freedom, and it's about freedom of speech,” said Marinaccio. “More than anything in the world, it gives us a chance to voice our feelings in a way that connects with other people, particularly live performing arts that connect audience and artists together in the same room. We have a shared experience, and that's something you cannot replace.”
Across the lawn was Giselle Bellas, handing out flyers for her show “The Florence Foster Jenkins Schubertiade,” where dance, pop, and opera meet. Florence Foster Jenkins is apparently a historically bad opera singer. Bellas is not.
“Last year I was able to sing in India, Italy, in Mexico. I've traveled quite a bit over the last couple years performing,” said Bellas. “I think you can tell how a culture is doing based on their art, and the more art that there is, it's kind of indicative of how the world is doing. Sometimes, when you go to places and you see there's a lack of art, typically, you know what that means, that maybe the education isn't doing as great, the economy isn't as great. So having art, to me, is just a sign that people are doing well and taking it away, I think is just a recipe for disaster.”
And finally, hurrying across the lawn in a rainbow wig, boa, rhinestones from head to toe, and the biggest platform heels I’ve ever seen was Rob Ward aka P Sparkle, heading off to do his show, “Mr. Sparkle’s Gayborhood.” He had a unique take on why arts are important in Central Florida.
“The arts are so crucial in Central Florida,” P Sparkle said, “because if we didn't have them, think of how bored you would be!”
