KINDLING ARTS FESTIVAL 2023 Brings Counterculture To West Nashville From July 27-30

Kindling Arts unveiled the line-up today for its highly-anticipated 2023 Festival, a 4-day celebration of local Counterculture from Thursday, July 27 through Sunday, July 30, 2023 at five distinct venues across West Nashville. 18 performance-based projects were selected from record-setting application numbers earlier this spring.

Events include: a futuristic space opera with intricate fight choreography set to karaoke of 90s nu-metal music, a musical comedy send-up of Nashville's most popular social media page, an interactive late-night party featuring reimaginings of classic county fair activities, and a multiplicity of fascinating new dance performances. The dizzying array of often unclassifiable performance experiences will be held at OZ Arts Nashville, The Darkhorse Theatre, Nashville School for the Aerial Arts, The Barbershop Theater, and the Global Education Center.

Headlining the Festival will be two of the most innovative, interdisciplinary and interactive theatrical projects to be seen in Nashville this year. A follow-up to last year's break-out success (named "Best Wrestling Karaoke Crossover" by Nashville Scene), Bar Fight! 2666: Broken Vows (Let the Bodies Hit the Floor) is a genre-hopping, sci-fi space opera set in the distant future featuring a soundtrack of unmistakable 90s rock hits and showcasing high-octane fight choreography. The project is the brainchild of Jessika Malone & Daniel Carter, collectively known as Rabbit Effect, and has an all-star cast led by local icons Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva and Blake Holliday. Prior to both performances of Bar Fight! 2666, audiences can make an amazing double-bill out of the evening by catching Silver Platter! from theatrical comedy collective Amm Skellars. The farcical electro-pop musical set in the Baroque Era includes a gaggle of ladies in waiting, guillotines, electric guitars, and even a shocking pole-dancing number. Both performances will play at OZ Arts Nashville on Friday and Saturday, July 28-29.

Friday night's programming at OZ Arts will also end in an unmissable, interactive late-night party: The Cackleberry County Fair, from the minds of multitalented theater-makers Madeleine Hicks, Hayley Rose Maurer, and Kara McLeland. The fever dream environment evokes the nostalgia of the southern county fair aesthetic but seen through an unexpected and intersectional lens to reveal the horrors hiding in plain sight. Audiences can engage with lucid activities such as Milk the Mayor, the Husband-Dumping Contest, the Biggest Corn Cob Contest, and more. The Fair promises to be an unforgettable end to the evening.

OZ Arts will also be home to two dance showcases, featuring some of the brightest local choreographers, many making their Kindling debut. In Limitless, artists test their physical, spiritual, and creative limits to reach their full potential. The diverse line-up, which can be seen on Thursday night and Saturday afternoon, includes choreographers Emily Rizo Davis, Kourtney "Koko" French, Melissa Miller, Sandy Perez, Amanda Reichert, and Alexandra Winer. On Sunday afternoon, audiences can share in Embody: Dances Celebrating the Body & Mind, which showcases moving dance works from DancEast Collective, Jasmine Clark, Friends Life Community, and Kaylee Lane.

On Charlotte Ave, the Darkhorse Theatre will host two engaging theatrical productions: Emma Supica and improv musical troupe Cherry Bomb's East Nashville Facebook Page: The Musical, which promises to celebrate the city's most simultaneously beloved and despised news source in song; and Betty Vou Plaît + Back to Black Burlesque's Allison Underground, a modern, seductive reinterpretation of the literary classic Alice in Wonderland as told through the Black lens.

Festival-goers can also return to Nashville School of the Arts for popular aerial events. Kindling favorites Suspended Gravity will deliver their latest gravity-defying work Taboo, exploring the delicate balance between the sacred and the profane along with special guests from the worlds of drag and burlesque. Independent aerial artists will also have a chance to showcase their talents with new short works in Kismet, anchored by InFlight Entertainment's dazzling piece "Written in the Stars."

Additional projects in the Festival include:

• The Sleepover, a ritualistic devised theater performance set at a slumber party in the 90s from Kristin McCalley Landiss and The Party

• Country Hams Puppet Slam hosted by queens of the DIY Amanda Card + Madeleine Hicks with a special performance and free workshop by Toybox Theatre's Keith Shubert visiting from Asheville, NC.

• Audra Almond-Harvey's deeply personal solo show Invisible Ink, tracing her family history and heritage

• A special preview performance of Gardening, Not Architecture's moving multimedia music project Voyage with films by Dycee Wildman

• Visual artist LeAndra Crystal and poet Tasion Kwamilele collaborating on A Conversation in Pieces with featured paintings and spoken word

• A late-night rock concert with Not Your Nails following the Saturday night performance of Bar Fight! 2666

• The next installment of Dare to Fail Film Festival with specific response to the Festival theme of Counterculture, hosted by Steve Parnell

• A sharing of EmElise Knapp's The Octopus Girl, an interactive theatrical project exploring the vibrant inner world of an autistic woman

• A staged reading of a new play from writer and actor Josh Inocalla

"Kindling is all about celebrating Nashville's radically unique independent artists, and the performance projects developed in response to this year's Festival's theme of Counterculture truly showcase the brilliance and diversity of our local performance scene in all its iconoclastic beauty," said Artistic Directors Jessika Malone and Daniel Jones in a joint statement. "Audiences who explore the Festival programming are sure to walk away thinking about our city a bit differently - and we are thrilled to share these singular experiences with all of Nashville."

Individual Tickets, Wildfire Weekend Passes, and a variety of packages are currently on sale at kindlingarts.com. Individual tickets range from $10-$35, including some Premium Seating options for select events. The Standard Weekend Pass provides access to all Festival offerings for just $95, while a VIP Weekend Pass, including premium seating at applicable events and a Kindling T-shirt, costs $150. Other package options start at just $40.

To post a comment, you must register and login.