Madi Viterito and TJ Lewis perform in a 2015 pop up play in the downtown Boone Post Office
In/Visible Theatre in Boone, North Carolina, doesn't have a set season schedule, but it does have two upcoming scheduled events.
The first is the BOLO Festival this fall (or Boone Solo Performance Festival). The second is the In/Visible Dance Project. They are also hoping to have a winter holiday show.
"We've been a project-based theater, meaning that we've been fairly open about doing projects as they interest us, rather than having a season, but we're getting to a point where we're starting to codify our season a little.We typically have a larger summer show, and have done a pop-up play each spring. We're currently asking ourselves which projects are worth repeating, or at least having at predictable times so that our followers can start to make some patterns of coming to our shows," Karen Sabo, co-founder and producing director, says.
BOLO Festival is the High Country's first fringe festival. A fringe festival showcases art on the edge, new pieces and tested ones, plays, dances and stories from independent artists and groups, rather than from large, well-established, well-funded theaters.
Solo performers with pieces between eight and 120 minutes perform Sept. 6-8, at various locations in downtown Boone.
"We welcome pieces that are traditionally theatrical, or that have a theatrical bent.Performances that would be perfectly at home at an open mic night or a poetry slam are not what we're looking for, but we do welcome pieces that defy genre," Sabo says.
On Oct. 1, they hold the In/Visible Dance Project, where local dance schools, university clubs and community dance groups stage dances in locations all over downtown.The event showcases Boone's growing local dance scene.
Sabo and Derek Davidson, co-founder and artistic director, are looking for future projects, including adapting the work of Johnson City, Tennessee's Fred Sauceman.
"We are really excited to adapt Fred Sauceman's work into a stage play.We are just starting to put this together, but it will be an amalgam of stories from his books and DVDs.We're hoping to take a performance to Johnson City.Food is such an important and distinctive part of our local culture; we're thrilled to be able to showcase some of the people he's met by telling their stories through our play.
"We read a lot of plays (especially Derek), so sometimes we encounter plays we think are good for us.We just read one that the Appalachian State Theatre and Dance Department was considering for a future season. We don't think it's a good match for them at all, but we think it's a great match for us.And we're talking about doing a production we're calling "The Hotel Plays' where we have six or eight 10-minute plays that literally take place in hotel rooms, and the audience rotates from room to room, so that most of them see the scenes in a different order.But they all tie together.Derek would get different playwrights from across the region to write those short plays, and tie them together somehow, either with related characters, or themes," Sabo says.
For more information about In/Visible Theatre, visit www.invisibletheatrenc.org.
THERE'S MORE: Who is In/Visible Theatre
