Fringe festivals are built on abundance. They sprawl, they zigzag, they resist easy categorization. For three days this month, that anarchic energy will animate downtown Newburgh as the inaugural Newburgh Fringe Festival (October 24–26) takes over Safe Harbors’ Ritz Theater, Lobby at the Ritz, Safe Harbors Green, the ADS Warehouse, and The Wherehouse. The festival promises more than 70 performances ranging from puppetry to improv, staged readings to magic shows, music, dance, and late-night oddities.
For co-founder and producer Shane Killoran, the Fringe is both a culmination and a beginning. Her friendship with Ken Martinez, now Safe Harbors’ director of performing arts, goes back to a children’s theater production in Arizona—Killoran as Snow White, Martinez as the Mirror Prince. “It’s this weird and lovely symmetry,” Killoran says. “We started on stage together, and now we’re creating stages for others.” The pair joined forces with Gloria Bonelli, Patricia A. Cornwell, and John Hartzell to launch the festival with Safe Harbors and Hit House Creative.
A Festival with a Newburgh Accent
While the lineup features regional and New York City talent, the festival has a distinctly local accent. Puppeteer Carli Rhoades, whom Killoran dubs “the star of the Fringe,” is presenting multiple works, including “Mastodon Country,” a short puppet play about the history of Newburgh. Liberty Street Writers will run a generative playwriting workshop, while Hudson Valley Improv and Space Bar Improv bring unscripted chaos. Musician Patricia Santos anchors the Lobby at the Ritz with sets of original songs, and LotuZ leads a spoken word showcase.
The programming, Killoran insists, wasn’t engineered to be “about Newburgh”—but that’s what emerged. “When you set up something and try to force a theme, it doesn’t usually work. But here, it naturally evolved into the world of Newburgh,” she says.
Highlights from the Fringe
With more than 36 productions on the slate, a comprehensive preview is impossible. But several works illustrate the festival’s range.
- “Rebel Yell”: A Jim Crow–era play by Ted Swindley, best known for Always…Patsy Cline. The one-act drama explores the fraught relationship between a father and son in the segregated South. Cast with predominantly actors of color, Killoran calls it “powerful, intense, and timely.”
- “Air Pirates Radio Theater”: Conceived by Paul Ellis, this production has the distinction of being the first show in the Ritz Theater Stagehouse in more than 50 years. The raw space, brought up to code and fitted with a new floor, will once again host live performance.
- “Woman(ish)”: An all-female improv troupe whose high-energy sets offer a comic counterpoint to the heavier fare.
- TÉA Artistry Workshop: A Saturday morning deep-dive into the company’s “Insight Method,” adapted from conflict-resolution training into a collaborative theater-making process. Participants will learn how the company creates performances based on community dialogue.
- The Uncanny Valley Puppet Slam: A recurring Safe Harbors favorite—puppetry after dark, for adults only.
- “Rocky Horror Picture Show”: A late-night screening with live performers stepping into the roles of Frankenfurter, Riff Raff, and more. Audience participation kits included.
That eclecticism—the serious beside the silly, the polished next to the raw—is what makes a Fringe a Fringe. “It’s down and dirty,” Killoran says. “It’s about giving independent artists a stage when commercial theater keeps edging them out.”
Accessible and Bare-Bones
Tickets are a flat $12, a price Killoran and her collaborators insisted on. “We wanted to make sure anyone who wanted to get in could,” she says. Performers keep their box office proceeds, while modest grant support covers essentials like stage managers, mics, and lights. The shoestring approach isn’t a liability, Killoran argues, but the Fringe’s ethos. “The culture of a fringe fest is bare-bones. There’s not this expectation of polish. That lets the quality of the content shine.”
Who Is It For?
Everyone, in theory. Killoran hopes longtime theatergoers will mingle with curious locals and high school volunteers. She imagines the adventurous hopping from a puppet show to a spoken word set to a staged reading, sampling genres they might not otherwise buy tickets for. “The diversity of the programming will hopefully attract people who normally wouldn’t spend money to see a play,” she says.
Success, Defined
Asked what success would look like for year one, Killoran jokes: “Sanity.” But then she turns earnest. “It’s really about joy. That artists feel supported, that audiences feel welcomed, that volunteers feel engaged, that local businesses feel included. If we can make sure every artist feels acknowledged and every guest feels seen, that would be success.”
The inaugural Newburgh Fringe Festival won’t be neat, and it’s not meant to be. It will be messy, joyful, inclusive, a stage for anyone brave enough to step into the light. And for a city with Newburgh’s scrappy cultural DNA, that feels like a perfect fit.
