June Fringe Festival edges closer with sneak preview
Video by Nancy Fowler | St. Louis Beacon
St. Louis Osuwa Taiko drummers performed at the tease.
What’s the Fringe? Or WTF? as the folks at the St. Lou Fringe Festival like to put it. Tuesday night, a crowd of about 100 curiosity-seekers tasted a selection of performances on tap for the June 21-25 St. Lou Fringe Festival.
The event is five days of performing arts including theater, dance, music and other genres, taking place in the Grand Center and Locust business districts inside three venues and also spilling out onto the streets.
Starting off Tuesday’s one-hour Fringe Tease at Fubar on Locust was musical act Lux Ascension. After a series of sneak peaks into an unevenly talented lineup -- including a one-woman show, a traditional theater piece with a racial twist by Tesseract Theatre and a presentation by performance artist Easelmuse -- two final acts infused the room with a powerful energy.

We Be Jammin’, a one-man theatrical and musical tribute to Bob Marley, pumped it up with a rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff.” But it was the finale that drummed up the most excitement. St. Louis Osuwa Taiko Japanese-style drummers (taiko literally means “big or fat drum”) elicited energetic whoops and claps with their six-minute performance.
The Beacon is one of the Fringe Festival sponsors. To order an admission button and find out more, click here.
