A basement, a garage, a vacant department store: Fringe continues to bring drama to unusual spaces

One of the very best things about the Philadelphia Fringe Festival is seeing shows staged in places without stages.

Personally, I’ve been to many warehouses, a mansion in Germantown, a bedroom in Fishtown, a rowhouse in South Philly, community gardens, a few former factories, and a mostly vacant church. It’s fun and just the right amount of weird.

Victor Fuller couldn’t agree more.

That’s why, for his virgin voyage as an actor, director, set designer, costume-maker, props guy and playwright, he’s staging his “Phantom of the Opera” twist in his basement in West Philly.

To watch “Incel of the Basement,” audiences will walk through Fuller’s front door, into his purple-painted, gold-striped living room, troupe through his dining room and kitchen, then head downstairs to his basement, otherwise known as The 1970s Fairy Garden Chapel Café.

“I was able to write the play knowing it was in my basement,” Fuller said, making it easier for him to imagine and configure the final product.

He “homed-in” on the idea of producing a house play inspired by a 2013 Fringe show, “Bathtub Moby Dick.” The actor’s performance – with and without costume, in a second-floor bathtub – was live-streamed to the audience seated in the rowhouse living room below.

“It was really cool how they did it,” Fuller recalled. “There were party hats and a punch bowl. It was kind of like you were coming to a birthday party.”

This year’s Fringe Festival has shows in churches, bars, a wooden tall ship, museums, parks, business offices, artists’ workshops and a recording studio. There are even cabaret performances in the former Wanamaker department store building, in a room once used to showcase pianos.

For his Fringe work, “Slideshow,” Josh McIlvain chose a rowhouse in Fishtown, a dance studio located in a garage down a driveway behind a house in Mt. Airy, and an event space on the grounds of the Wyck House, a historic Germantown mansion.

“Slideshow” intertwines 30 years worth of actual family vacation slides (not McIlvain’s family) with narration that winds in and out of stories about his family, and families in general.

“The show is pretty funny. It’s realistic comedy and it’s also pretty dark. It’s nostalgic in that you look at [many family pictures], but it’s not like a warm, nostalgic kind of thing,” he said.

“The cool thing is that you can do it anywhere, and I’ve done it in a lot of people’s homes.

“I like these nontraditional spaces that are different enough so that, as an audience, you are excited because you are going up this driveway and into a garage. To me, it has to do with the audience coming into something they don’t know what to expect. You transform that space into a performance space.

“If you can succeed in transforming a space that’s not typically a performance space — there’s magic in that,” he said.

Not that the magic comes easy.

“People think it’s cool to do a nontraditional space,” McIlvain said, “and it’s also the Fringe tradition. But it’s actually a kind of pain in the butt. A regular theater has the stuff you need, like lights and bathrooms and seats.”

On the other hand, for performers who BYOV (bring your own venue), all it takes is a $20 registration fee to be included in the Fringe guidebook, listed on the website and helped with ticketing. Fuller said the Fringe folks even gave him a trifold sign for outside his house to alert passersby to the artistry within.

“It’s a really great entry level and it’s great that they do all that to allow up-and-coming artists to experiment,” he said.

Fuller promises a burlesque, campy kind of musical, but the message is very serious.

From the time he was a child and saw “Phantom of the Opera” as a silent movie, he was intrigued. He read the book, a 1909 Gothic horror novel by French author Gaston Leroux, and saw both the movie and theater versions of the story.

But in the beloved musical versions, something felt off for Fuller.

“It left me feeling a little uncomfortable and it kind of confused me,” he said. “Here you have this tragic character that you are supposed to sympathize with,” he said. “But it’s not a romantic story. It’s a horror story,” involving kidnapping, murder and violence, by the Phantom, whom Fuller sees as evil.

“I don’t want you to sympathize with him. I’m trying to portray him as an unlikable figure. I’m trying to unmask the Phantom for the character he really is,” Fuller said.

And who is that? Fuller said he’s an Incel, an angry man who blames women for his inability to find a partner.

When that happens, Fuller said, Incels may use increasingly violent and aggressive techniques, as the Phantom does, to court the women they want. “I think it’s stories like this that groom men into thinking it’s OK to act like that,” he said, “and it’s not.” 

FYI

You can see Fuller’s play on Sept. 12, 13, and 20 at 8 p.m., at his home, 5516 Spruce St. McIlvain’s “Slideshow” performances are at 7 p.m. on Sept. 19 and 20 at the New Waves dance studio, 118 W. Phil Ellena St.; at 8 p.m. Sept. 22 at 1902 Waterloo St., a rowhouse in Fishtown; and Sept. 25 and 26 at 7 p.m. at the Wyck, 6026 Germantown Ave.

Here’s a (very) partial list of other shows at non-stagy spots, with some venues offering more than one show a night:

The Trestle Inn, 339 N. 11^th St.: “Family Vacation” on Sept. 10, 17, and 24; “Jazz Baby Love Club” on Sept. 18 and “5 Stagehands Fall Out of a Closet (the goose crisis)” on Sept.10, 17 and 24.

Elfreth’s Alley Museum, 126 Elfreth’s Alley, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) (Revised) (Again)” 6 p.m., Sept. 12 and 13.

The Wanamaker Building, 1301 Chestnut St.: “The Layaway,” from the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, 9 p.m. Sept. 13, 20, and 27 for grownups; 3 p.m. Sept. 14, 21, and 28 for families.

Cobbs Creek Park, 1338 S. 59^th St., “Clapping for Nature Together” on Sept. 20 and 21.

Tattooed Mom, 530 South St.: “Queers in a Thrift Store with Monsters” on Sept. 21.

Cobbs Creek Park, 1338 S. 59^th St., “Clapping for Nature Together” on Sept. 20 and 21.

Gazela Primeiro, a tall wooden ship at Penns Landing, Delaware River:  “Miss Angie Goes Nauti: Burlesque Bingo Aboard,” 2 p.m. Sept. 21.

dbt Labs office, 915 Spring Garden St., #500: “Deep Fake,” an immersive experience for one audience member at a time. Shows at 20-minute intervals Sept. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28.

Old First Reformed Church, 151 N. 4th St.: “The Queen in Purple,” 6 p.m. Sept. 27, and “My Body Your Eyes,”, dance, 5 p.m. Sept. 28   

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