SoHo Playhouse 2024 International Fringe Encore Series Begins Tonight

SoHo Playhouse's 2024 International Fringe Encore Series begins tonight! The series runs Off-Broadway from January 4 - February 11. Join SoHo Playhouse and stars from global Fringe Festivals for a roundup of the best Fringe plays this season has to offer!

Annually, The International Fringe Encore Series provides opportunities to emerging artists who show exceptional talent at each season's Fringe Festivals both artistically and commercially. In recognition of their excellence, SoHo Playhouse offers these special shows an extended run Off-Broadway in New York City. This extended run gives these worthy shows a platform for future productions and success. Many previous productions featured in the series have gone on to extensive Off-Broadway runs and international success.

SoHo Playhouse is located at 15 Vandam Street in New York City. Tickets to all shows are $39. Student tickets are $20 (with valid ID) at the box office on the day of the show on a space availability basis. Schedule varies - for exact days and times, to purchase tickets, and for more info visit https://www.sohoplayhouse.com/ifes-plays.

2024 INTERNATIONAL FRINGE ENCORE SERIES SCHEDULE

From the Edinburgh Fringe Festival:

Bacon U.S. premiere runs January 4 - January 28. Opens on Monday, January 8.

Bacon, written by Sophie Swithinbank and directed by Matthew Iliffe, is an unflinching and unexpectedly humorous look at masculinity, sexuality and power, through the dizzying lens of youth. We follow Mark and Darren on Year 10's first day back at school. Mark is new and too scared to make friends; Darren is out of control and too scary to make friends. The two of them need each other - but neither would ever admit it. Following a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the multi-award-winning play comes to New York.

Starring Corey Montague-Sholay and William Robinson.

It's a Motherf**king Pleasure U.S. premiere runs January 4 - January 21. Opens on Tuesday, January 9.

Usually disabled people just want to do the right thing. But what if they don't? What if they were out to make as much money as possible from the guilt of non-disabled, anxious people (like you)? Hot off the back of their smash-hit run at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, multi-award-winning disability-led theatre company FlawBored present It's a Motherf**king Pleasure; a smart, scathing satire on the monetisation of identity politics that spares no-one. Written by FlawBored with Josh Roche, and directed by Roche.

FlawBored is co-founded by Samuel Brewer, Aarian Mehrabani and Chloe Palmer. They create meta-theatrical work with dark irreverence which aims to address complex and uncomfortable issues surrounding identity which no one has the answers to. "FlawBored aren't just breaking the mould; they are smashing it to smithereens," says Lyn Gardner.

Aberdeen U.S. premiere runs January 30 - February 11. Opens on Thursday, February 1.

After stunning reviews at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe as well as a coveted Scotsman Fringe First Award, multi-award-winning celestial comedian and storyteller Cassie Workman brings her extraordinary tour-de-force epic poem, Aberdeen, to New York. In the show, Workman has an in-the-round conversation with the late rock icon Kurt Cobain. Reflecting on grunge, life, death and salvation, this striking original work is performed entirely in rhyming couplets and is a deeply moving homage to one of our most beloved artists.

Australian multi-hyphenate artist Cassie Workman is known for her heartfelt and emotive storytelling, her incisive wit and brutal deconstructions of the status quo. In 2022 she won a Scotsman Fringe First Award for her UK debut of Aberdeen which received rapturous reviews for its season at Just the Tonic's Atomic venue. Previously she won Best Newcomer at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and Best Comedy Show at the Adelaide Fringe for her show Giantess, a comedy/musical/storytelling hybrid hit about gender identity. She is currently developing two TV series, one of which is an animated sitcom with Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix franchise).

From the Brighton Fringe Festival:

Esther's Revenge U.S. premiere runs January 6 - 19. Opens on Friday, January 12.

Esther's Revenge, written and directed by Kenneth Uphopho, and produced by Tope Sanni for PawStudios Africa, is an experiential play inspired by true life events of Esther who was reported to have murdered her white lover in 1953. The sentence is death by hanging. This participatory play as devised, explores themes around race, colonization, sexual abuse, violence against women, and political and social injustice. Esther takes us on a journey through time into the events leading up to the death of Mark. The jury, consisting of 12 audience members, is given the responsibility to vote in favour or against a stay of execution.

From the Prague Fringe Festival:

Jekyll & Hyde U.S. premiere runs January 16 - 28. Opens on Friday, January 19.

Award-winning writer/director JD Henshaw brings a new vision of terror with his take on Stevenson's science-horror classic, Jekyll & Hyde. With award-winning performer Heather-Rose Andrews playing the titular role, the play investigates class, terror and hypocrisy in Victorian London, as the search for self collides with the lure of the sensuous.

From the Catania Fringe Festival:

Uroboros/Akmé U.S. premiere runs January 21 - February 4. Opens on Wednesday, January 24.

Fresh from the Catania Fringe Festival, Sabino Barbieri and Nuria Argiles showcase their modern dance creations of Uroboros and Akmé. Uroboros empathetically brings to the stage moments of the cycle of life in which anyone can feel identified while Akmé exposes sensations close to the limit. They use their bodies to create images open to the viewer's interpretation. A stimulating choreography that transports you into the world of relationships, both those you share with a person, and those you have with yourself.

From the Hollywood Fringe Festival:

Wounded New York premiere runs January 24 - February 11. Opens on Saturday, January 27.

In Wounded, writer Jiggs Burgess tells us the story of a repressed nobody who thinks of himself as somebody, an addict, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf played out between hummingbirds, and a p*ssy eating dog. Following former university classmates Carrol and Robert as their personal circumstances have led them down two very different paths, director Del Shores brings to the stage the notion that "in the darkest of comedies, the bleak paths our lives can lead us down are on full display." Winner of the Pick of the Hollywood Fringe, Best of Broadwater Theatre and Hollywood Encore Producers' Awards.

Starring Craig Taggart and Shaw Jones.

From the Perth Fringe Festival:

Split Lip U.S. premiere runs January 30 - February 11. Opens on Friday, February 2.

Written, directed and performed by Blake Anderson, Split Lip tells the story of Ginava; a patient diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Pulling from over 40+ film and television references, split lip explores the experience of trauma, and how it affects mental health, all performed through the medium of spoken word lip-syncing.

Returning from the SoHo Playhouse 2023 Comedy Fringe Series:

The Movement You Need runs February 7 - 10. Opens on February 7.

In The Movement You Need, join Ted Lasso's Brendan Hunt as he presents a new solo show that comically explores his relationship with his departed mother, a fraught kinship that had one area of life-long concord: the music of The Beatles. A decent time is guaranteed for all.

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