Image Credit Marvin Walder, Oregon Fringe Festival
On the last weekend of April, SOU was overtaken by creativity and art through an amazing event that took the school by storm. Starting on Wednesday, April 27, the Oregon Fringe Festival began and the students were ready for a weekend filled with music, theater, visual arts, arts education and more special events. The purpose of the Oregon Fringe Festival is an effort to provide more accessibility to engage and interact with creative art, which SOU was happy to host.
The festival was kicked off with some opening ceremonies followed by a rock concert in the Stevenson Union basement put on by MUSIX. Music written by the students was performed and the show was purely amazing. At the end of the show, one of the singers, Katie Joos, announced that some of their music can now be found on Spotify with this link! The concert was an hour long and provided good music, refreshments and a rocking way to start off the festival.
I was able to attend the performance of “Into the Unknown” on Thursday evening. “Into the Unknown” was an immersive theater performance that looked at excerpts from Over the Garden Wall. They took us on a tour of the Stevenson Union to our seats where the show then began. It was a beautiful and creepy performance that followed two boys through an adventure into the unknown where they saw familiar faces while earning a stronger bond of brothers. It was well done and the actors received a standing ovation.
On Friday, I was able to attend a couple events. The first being a zoom event called “Waiting for the Meteor” where we watched a woman crocheting and making art and talked about what waiting meant to us. It was an enlightening experience to hear from so many what waiting meant to them.
The second event I attended was the creative writing workshop with Eric Braman. This event had the few people that attended digging deep into themselves to figure out what metaphors can be used to create poetry. We recounted our own experiences and chose a memory to create a moving metaphor with. It was a new approach to creative writing and a lot of fun.
I was only able to attend one event via livestream on Saturday, Eric Bramans performance of “To Myself, To Myself, To You, To Myself” which was such a moving experience and performance. I felt like I was right there with him even though it was over a livestream for me.
The Fringe Festival closed on Sunday with a performance from SOU’s own improv team, The Next Best Thing, and though I was unable to attend, the reviews say that the performance was phenomenal.
The Oregon Fringe Festival was a celebration of art, music, performance, and education that lasted from Wednesday April 27 through Sunday May 1. The archive photos for this event are up on the Oregon Fringe Festival website.
I am excited to see what Oregon Fringe has in store for the 2023 Festival!
