Hollywood Fringe Festival Announces Winners of 2017 Fringe Scholarships

The Hollywood Fringe Festival is proud to announce the winners of the 2017 Fringe Scholarships. An objective and independent committee of former Hollywood Fringe participants reviewed over 150 applications for this award. The applications were evaluated based on how much impact the production would have on the overall attraction of audience and the production's potential to increase the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of artists and audience.

Fringe Scholarships provide each recipient with complimentary festival registration, three performances at a Hollywood Fringe Scholarship venue, a Fringe mentor, and marketing and networking opportunities as a member of the Fringe community.

Each winner reflects Hollywood Fringe's commitment to expand and diversify the pool of artists producing work at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

The winners of the 2017 Fringe Scholarships are:

• Biiiitch, What is your Purpose??? - CoCo Pebbles is a black drag queen who is always questioning her purpose, destiny, and fate. She sometimes wonders, "Can a drag queen even be purposeful?"
• Blamed: An Established Fiction - A new play from recent graduates of La Habra High School that combines text with live music and dance, to examine the girls and women throughout mythology, history, and literature who have been blamed for the ills of the world.
• CHATTER - A play about the voices in our head that belittle and berate us, portrayed by an ensemble cast primarily featuring black women. Each woman represents a different voice representing our main character's negative views of herself.
• La Casa de Bernarda Alba - This production, by a company of CalArts students and graduates, gives La Casa de Bernarda Alba a new form through multiple languages.
• MexiKhan: Growing Up Mexican and Pakistani in America - "MexiKhan" is a personal story of growing up with a Mexican Catholic mother and Pakistani Muslim father, in a Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood in Chicago, weaving in comedy and hip hop as a tool to find belonging and acceptance in a divided world.
• Mom? Dad? I have A.D.H.D...and other ways to let down The Indian Family - A playful, deep, audience-interactive heavy solo show, in which Mathur explores her A.D.H.D. diagnosis and the "model minority" stereotype - but it's a comedy!
• Secret Identity Crisis - A one-man show examining white-washing, Asian masculinity, power vs. race, and more--all through the secret identities of American superheroes.
• Supa'Nova - A solo performance that chronicles a personal journey as an undocumented immigrant, an artist in a family of lawyers and engineers, and a woman in a man's world.
• Unspoken: Shakespeare's Personae in Peril - Part One of a Trilogy on societal marginalization, enacted through Shakespeare's "lesser known" characters, presented by an ensemble including actors from Haiti and Ghana/U.K., two LGBT identified actors, and three teenage Los Angeles Drama Club actors from Los Angeles.
• Who You Calling A Bitch?!? - A solo reverie of a young African American actress as she navigates her identity through iconic African American characters and entertainers in Black History.

"The Hollywood Fringe Festival champions diversity and is especially honored to present these ten productions with scholarships," says Meghan McCauley, Hollywood Fringe Outreach Director. "We received a huge increase in applications for our second year and we believe that speaks volumes about the importance of this program."

This scholarship was awarded based on the following factors - the production features the participation of ethnically diverse artists; the production will enrich audience experience through the presentation of unique, underrepresented themes, and the production will increase festival attendance and participation by local Hollywood residents.

Fringe Scholarships, created in 2016, is open to first-time Hollywood Fringe participants. The inaugural program offered free registrations to five Hollywood Fringe productions, and the 2017 Fringe Scholarships program has expanded to offer 10 awards, thanks to a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. This year's scholarships also include three performance slots made possible by the Fringe Scholarship Venues: Complex Theatres, Lounge Theatre, SacRed Fools Theater, Studio/Stage and Theatre Asylum. Due in part to the success of last year's program, the number of 2017 scholarship applications increased 300% from 2016.

To learn more about Fringe Scholarships visit hollywoodfringe.org/scholarships.

ABOUT HOLLYWOOD FRINGE
The Hollywood Fringe Festival is an annual, open-access, community-derived event celebrating freedom of expression and collaboration in the performing arts community. Each June during the Hollywood Fringe, the arts infiltrates the Hollywood neighborhood: Fully equipped theaters, parks, clubs, churches, restaurants and other unexpected places host hundreds of productions by local, national, and international arts companies and independent performers.

Participation in the Hollywood Fringe is completely open and uncensored. This free-for-all approach underlines the festival's mission to be a platform for artists without the barrier of a curative body. By opening the gates to anyone with a vision, the festival is able to exhibit the most diverse and cutting-edge points-of-view the world has to offer. Additionally, by creating an environment where artists must self-produce their work, the Fringe motivates its participants to cultivate a spirit of entrepreneurialism in the arts.

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