District Fringe Says “Hell Yes” to Carrying on the Fringe Tradition in Washington DC

Guest Post by Karen Lange, District Fringe

District Fringe is one of the newest Fringe festivals on the planet. We hail from Washington, DC. And yes, it’s a shit show here right now, but we’re doing our best to add some art and joy wherever we can.

District Fringe Keeps the Tradition Alive in Washington DC

You might be wondering: wasn’t there already a fringe festival in DC? The answer is yes, but Capital Fringe is no more. Here’s what happened and why we said “hell no” to ending a twenty-year tradition.

When Capital Fringe announced it was discontinuing in January 2025, a few of us veteran producers (Karen Lange, Tracey Erbacher, Aubri O’Connor) decided it was time to pick up the torch. We all got our start there, and with everything the theater community was losing in Washington, we knew something had to happen. We wanted to pay forward the opportunities we’d had to the next generation of producers. We were joined by area artists Samba Pathak, Sophia Menconi, Marley Kabin, and Sarah Wilson. With this mighty team, we did the impossible: we executed an entire festival in four months. From conception to production selection to presentation, we pulled it off.

We worried we wouldn’t find space, that people wouldn’t come, that artists wouldn’t apply to an untested festival. Thankfully, none of that was true.

We were fortunate to attract the attention of the Van Ness neighborhood in northwest DC. Their local council and business improvement group welcomed us with open arms and helped us secure space at the University of the District of Columbia. It was a dream come true and allowed us to do far more than we expected. We even created our own bar and community space, one of my favorite parts of a fringe festival. Artists gathering with audiences made it feel like a real community—something we hadn’t had in a long time.

It was all so, so worth it. In four months, we put on a three-weekend festival featuring 15 productions in five-night or one- to two-night runs. We also developed a free outdoor program in the university’s amphitheater, with local bands, puppet shows, readings, and a rollicking, blood-soaked Titus Andronicus by a comedic Shakespeare company.

To top it off, we serendipitously opened on World Fringe Day.

A Successful Inaugural Year

District Fringe Inaugural Leadership Team

We had over 2,000 ticketed audience members and made enough to flip the artist/festival split from 20/80 to 80/20. Of all the reasons to be proud, that’s the biggest one. Our eventual goal is to give 100% of ticket revenue to the artists, and I’m hopeful we’ll get there.

A big reason we succeeded is that an entire neighborhood embraced us. In its heyday, Capital Fringe had a consistent home with an outdoor bar near the venues. When they lost that space to condo construction (don’t get me started), they moved around. The pandemic only made that worse. Without a predictable home, it never fully recovered. Having a home in Van Ness let us establish a headquarters, for lack of a better term. The fact that we’re back there again this year—and hope to be for many more—means we’re building toward becoming part of people’s regular summer plans. They know where we are, so they’ll come.

The festival required a lot of sleepless nights and sweat equity from our small team and staff. And I do mean sweat: it was extremely hot last summer and, in true fringe fashion, our spaces didn’t have air conditioning. One of the improvements we’re making this year is to fix that.

But the audiences who showed up sweated along with us, making the festival brilliant. Every show got wonderful reviews. One went on to have a full production with a local company (okay, that was mine, Pinky Swear Productions), but it was such an amazing show—and I’d never have seen it otherwise. Another secured a slot in a different festival and was picked up by a local theatre company for development.

When we formed, we called ourselves Uninhibited, Unafraid, and Unstoppable. As we go into our second year, we still are.