Stone Fruit Arts To Present Meta-Comedy LINES At The 2024 Hollywood Fringe

Stone Fruit Arts, a production company founded by a group of recent Stanford University graduates, will be making its festival circuit debut at the Hollywood Fringe Festival with meta-comedy LINES.

Written and directed by Stone Fruit Arts's Chief Artistic Officer Katie Dragone, the play revolves around a dysfunctional family as they wait for the matriarch to pass while attending to the mundane bureaucracy of dying: paperwork, packing up her things, long hours at the hospital-a real drag as they say. Until it isn't. All of a sudden the play splits in two when the jaded playwright takes the reins and decides the play's not worth finishing. What ensues is a fourth-wall-shattering, meta-comedy exploring life, death, family, and the creative process with cheeky irreverence and unapologetic sincerity.

"Inspired by the passing of my grandmother, I realized grief isn't just tragedy; it's mundane, funny, and filled with levity. In this show, laughter and irreverence become our tools to digest the melancholy. It's a story where death meets comedy, where mourning meets celebration," Katie Dragone, SFA Artistic Director or Lines Playwright and Director

The company's founding team, which includes LA-natives Marie Bland and Sarrah Hussain, launched Stone Fruit during their undergraduate years at Stanford University. Often feeling isolated and encumbered by the institution's STEM-centered initiatives, LINES's creative producer Marie Bland notes a severe lack of both arts funding and creative freedom as the catalyst in starting their production company:

"At an institution where the student body is often told that endless resources are at our disposal, Katie, Sarrah, and I learned to advocate and build the artistic representation we needed ourselves."

The cast includes Olivia Cade, Jordan Knapp, Evie Johnson, Jamie Gallo, Olivia Nicholson, Finn Slingerland, Amanda Yuan and Peter Winkelmann. The team also includes Nico Parducho as stage manager, Ginger Gordon and Kat Polyzoides as assistant stage managers, Holly Osborn as costume designer, and Grant Bishko as sound designer.

LINES performs four times through the month of June, with a preview on June 6th and opening on June 20th. The show will be staged at the Hudson Theatre Black Box located at 6539 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90038. Tickets ($12 for the general public) and more information on the show can be found on the Hollywood Fringe Festival site at https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/10450.

About Stone Fruit Arts:

Stone Fruit Arts entertains, excites, and challenges audiences with stories about pedestrian life transcending into the divine. We make plays and films that celebrate what it means to be human: the shit we deal with alongside the moments that feel other-worldly. At each Stone Fruit Arts performance, expect to laugh, to cry, and to be surprised.

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