Until now.
The Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe - 16 days and nights of sometimes experimental and risky, sometimes outré and bizarre, and frequently striking work - opens Friday, its organizers hoping this is its last nomadic season. The festival management has signed a letter of agreement to purchase a redbrick hulk of a building at Race Street and Columbus Boulevard, 10,000 square feet of space with a 30-foot ceiling that will allow high-flying circus acts as well as earthbound dance, theater, and other performances.
Moreover, the place will have what festival producing director Nick Stuccio has craved for some time: outdoor and indoor space for events, social interaction, and food and drink.
For all its constant growth in audience-building, fund-raising, and mentoring performers, Live Arts/Philly Fringe - now a $2.6 million annual operation known to just about everybody as, simply, the Fringe - has never had a fixed headquarters. Under Stuccio, its various physical components pop up here and there, maybe for a few years at a time, maybe not.
The box office for the festival - composed of Live Arts, with invited performances backed by the festival, and the Philly Fringe, a free-for-all of artists who essentially invite themselves - could be anywhere. (This year it's at the Prince Music Theater on Chestnut Street.) The popular after-performance festival bar likewise changes venues. (This year, it's at the RUBA Club Studios, 416 Green St., in Northern Liberties.) The 200 festival volunteers may or may not a have a place to stash personal effects, depending on where they are asked to turn up.
The festival also has no stage to call its very own. Its staff has built temporary theater interiors in rented spaces, as needed; its current main space, with one of those theaters and its offices, is on Fifth Street near Girard Avenue.
