Ahoy Fringeketeers!

Spectacle & Mirth was thrilled to produce a fringe arts festival in Staunton VA for 3 solid years.

Now, #ShenFringe is retiring. Will there be another Fringe in Virginia? Yes. #RichmondFringeFest 2020 is coming!

The Shenandoah Fringe Festival beckoned our region's diverse performers and makers to present bold, curious, and risky work. We aimed to foster a stronger sense of community and interconnectedness amongst the artists of the Valley and enticed you to make, create, and encounter the work at the festival not in spite of your many identities but in collaboration with them. We can all be waiters and students and refugees and baristas and mimes and mothers and vaudevillians all in one without invalidating the others. 

Art is an economic force to be reckoned with. Let us not shy away from embracing it as our daily bread and demolish its definition as a luxury good. We placed the festival on a Sunday and Monday to acknowledge how spongy a term "weekend" is for many of us. We hoped these days suit our service industry/ performer/ school aged participants better than the traditional Saturday- Sunday arrangement.

Thanks ever so much to the hundreds of patrons, dozens of artists, gorgeous crew of volunteers and staff who made #ShenFringe glorious.