EDITOR’S NOTE: In addition to this summary of the slate for the 12th edition of the Great Salt Lake Fringe festival, please see this link for the curtain raiser.
The following is a summary of shows on the 12th edition slate of the Great Salt Lake Fringe:
Having presented some of the most memorable performances at GSLF, Interdisciplinary Arts Collective, which returns this year with An Undiscovered Room (July 24-26), in which the audience will maneuver through a maze in the performing arts space with sections segmented by poles and handmade curtains from upcycled materials. Dancers, musicians, poets and actors accompany the audience through the maze, as triggers and prompts cue the appropriate choreography. music and spoken text. In their program note, IAC explains the work explores “practices of orientation and attunement, in how we might move through the lost and hidden spaces where visibility and certainty twist back on themselves to blur into possibility. Formed in 2017, IAC is directed by Indigo Cook.
While past GSLF editions have offered slates of Fringe productions for kids, and this year’s presentation of The Emperor’s New…Everything! (Aug. 1-2) by Salt Lake Children’s Theatre might signal the return of a curated slate just for young audiences. A new 45-minute interactive children’s play set in the whimsical Empire of Oblivionia, the play features a gullible young Emperor deceived by a trickster posing as a trend‑predicting noble. Written by Mindy Curtis, the play, which has been on a local tour this summer, offers a moral about wise, compassionate and thoughtful leadership.
Returning after an excellent 2025 performance at GSLF, To Be Frank… (July 25-Aug. 1) will be presented by 11 actors in Salt Lake Community College’s theater program. The concept is inspired by the experimental theatrical underpinnings of The Neo-Futurists. The ideal originated in Italy during the heights of Verismo of creative works and literature during the early 20th century. Within recent decades, Neo-Futurist troupes have been established in Chicago, San Francisco, New York and London. As The Utah Review noted: The ambitious students did a marvelous job in introducing audiences to the three pillars of Neo-Futurists: honesty, rapid pace and brevity. The objective is simple. The actors play themselves and they created an impressively eclectic array of 25 pieces, none lasting more than two minutes, which are intended to be performed within the one-hour time limit of Fringe shows. Audience members, who also received a bag contained items connected to some of the pieces, dictated which piece should follow next in the sequence.
Under Observation (July 25–Aug. 2) promises to be one of the most intriguing avant-garde works this year, an approach that is most welcome at GSLF. Shaped for Sportive Tricks Theater Company will present a queer thriller dance theater piece written by Tony Trunnell and which is based on Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The program note reads: “Plagued by potentially prophetic dreams, recently disabled parasitic botanist Isaac races against the clock, his (loving?) boyfriend, and corporate bylaws to save the unobtrusive Dwarf fMistletoe from certain extinction, all while attempting to manage worsening symptoms.”
Dance has one of its most extensive representations this year in GSLF, including The Unseen (July 31) by Creators Dance Project, which was established in 2022. Their program note is well detailed: “The Unseen opens in rupture. A sudden emotional fracture disrupts control before it has time to form, exposing the raw, unfiltered edge of the human experience. From there, the work pulls inward—into the quieter, psychological terrain that follows impact, where thoughts loop, emotions settle, and tension hides beneath the surface. Through layered physical storytelling, moments of restraint are interrupted by flashes of unpredictability and humor, revealing the instability beneath even the most composed exterior. Patterns emerge, distort, and collapse as dancers navigate the constant push between control and release. The Unseen explores the full spectrum beneath the surface—where humor, pressure, contradiction, and vulnerability coexist—and where what is hidden continues to shape what is seen.
Keller has an hour to win an Oscar (July 25– Aug. 2) is a promising example of one of GSLF’s most successful formats, the one-person show. As Keller-Lee describes: “Every actor dreams of winning an Oscar, and Keller is going to be one of those lucky few that actually do. In an hour. From graduating to giving the acceptance speech, Keller is going to speed run the entertainment industry and accomplish every dream she’s ever had before the Concerta wears off. Featuring Kermit the Frog (unconfirmed), Stephen Colbert (unconfirmed), Emma Stone (unconfirmed), Sam Reich (unconfirmed), and more! (Unconfirmed).”
A certified crowd pleaser in 2024 and 2025, Puppet Karaoke (July 26-Aug. 2) by Puppets in the City returns, which gives audience members not only the opportunity to select the songs but also to become puppeteers. The mix of songs includes recent and classic warhorses in the pop and rock catalogs.
Last year’s Park Bench Royalty, produced by Salt Monster Theatre Co., was well received and this year, the company returns with Replacements (July 25-Aug. 2). The program note for the one-act play, written by A.B. Harrison, reads, in part: “Replacements is an original, dark absurdist play exploring obedience, labor, and a system that demands perfection and explains nothing. In a world where worth is measured by alignment and strict obedience, two workers must decide what matters most: following instructions or knowing when not to.”
In 2025, a monologue show, Second Grade Problems, by Cache Dexter, won a Fringe Pick award as picked by the GSLF staff. This year, Dexter returns with The 2,045,148,705th Most Interesting Person in the World (July 24-Aug. 1). As Dexter explains in his program note, The person one spot ahead of me is named Baby Satan. You think: He does sound interesting, with a name like that. But he’s just an average accountant from Ohio, and it’s a crime that he is more interesting than me. This show is my attempt to become more interesting than Baby Satan.“
Of course, what would a bona fide Fringe be like if it didn’t have a few shows connected to Shakespeare in one form or another, Dramapocalypse (July 25-Aug. 2) fits that bill. Written by Arthur Thomas and directed by Owen Briggs, the play is produced by Foolish Endeavor Theatre Company, operated by college students. Shakespeare veterans will relate to the premise as described in the program note: “When one of them says The Word, (You know, the one word you’re not supposed to say in a theatre that starts with ‘M’) the members of a dysfunctional high school drama board are locked in their auditorium by the ghost of William Shakespeare himself. Telling them he promises to only kill the person who invoked him so long as they fess up, the group must figure out who among them would be dumb enough to say the word. Will these idiosyncratic kids manage to find the culprit, or will heightened tensions be the death of them?”
Written and directed by Annabelle Willes, Helen (July 30-Aug. 2) is, as the playwright explained, “inspired by ancient and contemporary tragedies alike, Helen is an original play firmly rooted in the storytelling traditions of Ancient Greece, seeking to highlight the humanity in all of its characters—for better or for worse.”
It Could Be Any One of Us (July 25–30) by Jack Bell and Max Rhineer is described as “a hilarious play about the crushing inevitability of progress and the death of humanity as we know it. When three friends discover a member of their party is a robot in a not-so-distant future, they will stop at nothing to root them out. Will it be one of the two humans, or the metal puppet who talks through a speaker? There’s no way to be sure. After all, AI is so lifelike these days.”
THE HISS (July 24-Aug. 2) by Lark & Loon is set on New Year’s Eve in 1999 at a house party of six people where one of four people who aspire to be the next Kurt Cobain is likely to succeed. As the program note describes, “The golden boy, the riot grrrl, the goth, the watcher, the painter, and the transplant. Malcolm is trying to figure out what exactly happened that night, and why no one wants to talk about it. Within all of the haze and the grunge basslines, THE HISS is a drama told through music, movement, and spoken word … about what it means to live the truth.”
Another case for bringing a Fringe Slate for kids, The Quest of the Dragon (July 25 -26) is a Silå Productions show entirely written, produced, directed and performed by kids, including original songs. The Quest of the Dragon is an adventure of epic proportions where nine kids embark on a quest to save their town.
Daisy Voo’s Juggling Debut (July -Aug. 2) is a one-person show to note for this year’s GSLF. With 18 years of performing experience, Daisy has won the Boulder Circus Arts Award and multiple championships at the World Juggling Federation, broadcast live on ESPN. Previous clients include SLC Busker Festival, Snowbird Resort, University of Utah, FamilySearch, CES Las Vegas, and many others.
Written by Cameron Parke and directed by Trust Fall, Happy Birthday Mr. President (July 24- Aug. 1) is described as follows: “This ordinary office party becomes a very unordinary day in the lives of the party-goers, challenging them to engage in themes of friendship, humanity, purposeful-existence, and to let go of the clock. Happy Birthday Mr. President is a cautionary tale, and a reminder of the simple joys of life. And, if you don’t like it, you only spent an hour of your time–but you did spend it.”
in my room (July 25-Aug. 2) by Laura Elise Chapman is expected to draw solid audiences. Chapman is returning to GSLF for the third time since 2022. As playwright, Chapman’s @all Times, All Things, All Places, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, struck as embodying some of the original’s most earnest sentiments while enriching the experiences of the characters with the concerns of homophobia and sexism. In 2024, taking the Best FFF award, Chapman presented one of the best cabaret shows in the Great Salt Lake Fringe’s history. As The Utah Review noted then: The Funeral Potatehoes!!! built on its creative premise Moments that Made Me Question Everything with biting resonance and sharp relevance. The duo of sisters — Loaded (Anna Chapman) and Baked (Laura Élise Chapman) — captured the more-familiar-than-we-even-know dynamics of growing up in a socially awkward, sexually repressed culture of Mormonism, while music, pop culture, movies, stories become the real soulful touchstones that allow our true expressions of sexuality and gender to emerge. This year, Chapman describes the latest show as: “a romp! a cabaret! a charcuterie of laura through the ages! come sneak a peek into what this gal has gotten up to in her room over the years, not in a perv way sicko, just a cheeky sampler of moments and songs and tears and cheers from behind her bedroom door. Come on in!l”
A monologue, Ophelia is STILL Drowning!?! (July 25-Aug. 1) by Sandra Detweiler riffs on one of Shakespeare’s most familiar characters. Detwiler’s description reads: “[It] is a one-person play that mixes Shakespeare with smart phones and rock music, asking us to consider some of the most fundamental questions of our time—How are women still limited by the expectations of society? Is tragedy inevitable, or is a celebrity football player all we need to save us? How do patriarchal power structures undermine bodily autonomy for everyone? And, what if Ophelia knew how to swim?
Likewise, the one-person Shakespeare’s King John – A Solo Performance (July 30-Aug. 2) is directed by Macedonian director Damjan Dimovski which features an unforgettable cast of characters, each meticulously embodied by actor Matthew Windham. Produced by The Giddy Round, the show’s premise is described as: “Shakespeare’s bold, strikingly modern King John is one of his sharpest critiques of unconstrained power and its abuses—an unflinching portrait of the bloody price that a whole society must pay for a few men’s political ambitions. Yet even in his jagged narrative, he finds poignancy, humanity, heartbreak and humor shimmering through a darkly cynical vision that feels startlingly, urgently familiar.”
The Unanswered Questions of a Post Religious Girl in Her 20s (July 25-Aug. 1) by Tabitha Whittekiend is summarized as follows: “Like many others in Utah, a girl was raised to believe that there were certain, unalienable, truths about what was good and what was bad. But as she leaves the religious bubble she has always known, she must navigate the life that comes with. She learns to cope with the help of a woman’s best friend, her journal. Come along as we explore (but perhaps don’t answer) questions such as: ‘Am I allowed to say fuck?’, ‘At what point can I mark yes on sexually active at the gynecologist?’ and ‘Will I get schizophrenia if I smoke weed?’.”
In 2023, Method: Theatre Company presented Wildflowers / A Play, an experiment in improvisation, prepared scenes and songs performed along with improvised pieces. At every performance, the cast will create a new play or musical for the audience, with no show resembling a prior performance. This year, There’s Only Two Left (July 24-Aug. 2) opens as two members (Trinity Medina and Conrad Carter) of an acting trio preparing for their debut performance find the third member dead. As the company notes: “Follow their journey through an improvised performance, where we learn the hidden secrets of their relationship and the lengths they would go to protect their innocence. The story ends differently every night–even the actors on stage don’t know what’s going to happen next! “