Annually, The International Fringe Encore Series provides opportunities to emerging artists who show exceptional talent at each season’s Fringe Festivals both artistically and commercially. In recognition of their excellence, SoHo Playhouse offers these special shows an extended run Off–Broadway in New York City. This extended run gives these worthy shows a platform for future productions and success.
Lineup includes:
Bacon (Edinburgh Fringe Festival)
January 4-28
Bacon, written by Sophie Swithinbank and directed by Matthew Iliffe, is an unflinching and unexpectedly humorous look at masculinity, sexuality and power, through the dizzying lens of youth. We follow Mark and Darren on Year 10’s first day back at school. Mark is new and too scared to make friends; Darren is out of control and too scary to make friends. The two of them need each other—but neither would ever admit it. Following a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the multi-award-winning play comes to New York.
It's A Motherf**king Pleasure (Edinburgh Fringe Festival)
January 4-21
Usually disabled people just want to do the right thing. But what if they don't? What if they were out to make as much money as possible from the guilt of non-disabled, anxious people (like you)? Hot off the back of their smash-hit run at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, multi-award-winning disability-led theatre company FlawBored present It's a Motherf**king Pleasure; a smart, scathing satire on the monetization of identity politics that spares no-one. Written by FlawBored with Josh Roche, and directed by Roche.
Esther's Revenge (Brighton Fringe Festival)
January 7-19
Esther's Revenge, written and directed by Kenneth Uphopho, and produced by Tope Sanni for PawStudios Africa, is an experiential play inspired by true life events of Esther who was reported to have murdered her white lover in 1953. The sentence is death by hanging. This participatory play, as devised, explores themes around race, colonization, sexual abuse, violence against women and political and social injustice. Esther takes us on a journey through time into the events leading up to the death of Mark. The jury, consisting of 12 audience members, is given the responsibility to vote in favour or against a stay of execution.
Jekyll & Hyde (Prague Fringe Festival)
January 16-28
Award-winning writer/director JD Henshaw brings a new vision of terror with his take on Stevenson's science-horror classic, Jekyll & Hyde. With award-winning performer Heather-Rose Andrews playing the titular role, the play investigates class, terror and hypocrisy in Victorian London, as the search for self collides with the lure of the sensuous.
Uroboros / Akmé (Catania Fringe Festival)
January 21-February 4
Fresh from the Catania Fringe Festival, Sabino Barbieri and Nuria Argiles showcase their modern dance creations of Uroboros and Akmé. Uroboros empathetically brings to the stage moments of the cycle of life in which anyone can feel identified while Akmé exposes sensations close to the limit. They use their bodies to create images open to the viewer’s interpretation. A stimulating choreography that transports you into the world of relationships, both those you share with a person and those you have with yourself.
Wounded (Hollywood Fringe Festival)
January 24-February 11
In Wounded, writer Jiggs Burgess tells us the story of a repressed nobody who thinks of himself as somebody, an addict, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf played out between hummingbirds and a p*ssy eating dog. Following former university classmates Carrol and Robert as their personal circumstances have led them down two very different paths, director Del Shores brings to the stage the notion that “in the darkest of comedies, the bleak paths our lives can lead us down are on full display.” Winner of the Pick of the Hollywood Fringe, Best of Broadwater Theatre and Hollywood Encore Producers’ Awards.
Aberdeen (Edinburgh Fringe Festival)
January 30-February 11
Aberdeen is part fantasy, part biography, written and performed by multi-award-winning writer, comedian, musician and animator, Cassie Workman. In the show, Workman has an in-the-round conversation with the late rock icon Kurt Cobain. Grunge, life, death and salvation, this striking original work is performed entirely in rhyming couplets and is a deeply moving homage to one of our most beloved artists.
Split Lip (Perth Fringe Festival)
January 30-February 11
Written, directed and performed by Blake Anderson, Split Lip tells the story of Ginava; a patient diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Pulling from over 40+ film and television references, Split Lip explores the experience of trauma and how it affects mental health, all performed through the medium of spoken word lip-syncing.
Brendan Hunt: The Movement You Need (returning from the SoHo Playhouse 2023 Comedy Fringe Series)
February 7-10
In The Movement You Need, join Ted Lasso's Brendan Hunt as he presents a new solo show that comically explores his relationship with his departed mother, a fraught kinship that had one area of life-long concord: the music of The Beatles. A decent time is guaranteed for all.
