29th Annual CFA Fringe Festival Puts Women in the Spotlight

29th Annual CFA Fringe Festival Puts Women in the Spotlight

This year's offerings-two operas and two theater productions-run through December

The Boston University Fringe Festival, a nearly three-decades-old tradition featuring performances by students in CFA's School of Theatre and Opera Institute, rarely plans its repertoire around an official theme. The goal of the annual festival, whose name comes from the world-renowned Edinburgh Fringe Festival, is to uplift new, rarely performed, and reimagined works and offer emerging performers, directors, and designers a real-world exercise in stagecraft.

"We're looking at adaptations, old stories seen in new ways, and topics that have been in our zeitgeist for a long time, but are revisited by a new composer, lyricist, or playwright," says Kirsten Greenidge, a CFA professor of playwriting and School of Theatre director. "We have works that look at topics, time periods, or issues of social justice through a contemporary lens."

Sometimes, however, a theme may emerge accidentally, and this year's offerings-from a high-energy opera set at the end of World War II to a coming-of-age play where teenagers contend with growing up while raising livestock-are all written by women and feature women's stories.

"I would love to be able to say that we started with this theme, but sometimes we realize these things after the fact," says William Lumpkin, a CFA associate professor of music and Opera Institute artistic director. "There are so many layers to choosing our [annual] repertoire. In some ways it's surgical, because we want to make sure that every soprano gets a role and every tenor gets a role, and so on. But you can start to see a larger story among these pieces, and the program may evolve that way."

Ryan Hanger (CFA'25) as Mr. Pete in The Eleanors. The opera is set in Leopold's, a beloved century-old ice cream parlor in Savannah, Ga..

The festival begins with The Eleanors, a genre-bending opera by Jodi Goble, a former CFA lecturer in opera and former senior vocal coach and coordinator of opera programs for the BU Tanglewood Institute. Suffused with the irresistible energy of 1940s swing music, as well as needle-drop moments from the Great American Songbook, the story centers around the hopes, dreams, and fears of three women on the American homefront during the final fraught year of the Second World War.

"I saw The Eleanors at a convention last winter," Lumpkin says. "There's some lightheartedness to it, but there are also elements of being separated from loved ones and the strength of women who have found themselves in a new situation."

In contrast, the second Fringe Fest offering from the Opera Institute, Thumbprint, is a dark tale, inspired by the true story of Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani activist known internationally for bringing the men who raped her to court and making history in her country's legal system. The opera, with music by Kamala Sankaram and a libretto by Susan Yankowitz, is a melange of Western and Hindustani influences on both the storytelling and the music.

"It's about her journey to get past the harm of that attack," Lumpkin says. "A lot of people have said that they've heard of the story and want to see something that they have some familiarity with-a real-life story that is now realized in a theatrical setting."

Makenna Palacio (CFA'26) rehearsing a scene in Thumbprint, an operatic retelling of a real-life Pakistani court case in which activist Mukhtar Mai sought to bring her attackers to justice.

This year, the Opera Institute is putting a spin on its tradition of bringing in guest stage directors to help guide student productions. While past guest directors have been members of the broader theatrical community, this year's retinue consists of recent School of Theatre graduates-a Fringe Fest first. Grant Sorenson (CFA'25) directs Thumbprint, while The Eleanors is directed by Edward Sturm (CFA'24).

"I think it makes a big difference when you have people who know the systems in place, especially with the Fringe, where everything starts at the beginning of the semester," says Oshin Gregorian (CFA'99'05), managing director of the BU Opera Institute and opera programs. "There's a lot of quick-paced decision making that goes into it, which is part of the challenge for both the design students, in terms of coming up with concepts, and the singers, in preparing the music."

The last two productions are part of a packed School of Theatre season, in response to a recent influx of enrollment within the school's performance program.

"We had a beautiful thing happen last year, where we were able to admit a great many first-year performance students," Greenidge says. "With that comes a commitment to offering roles; we guarantee casting if you are a performance major."

This year's third Fringe Fest piece is Fefu and Her Friends, written by decorated Cuban playwright Maria Irene Fornés and first performed in 1977. Unlike most BU Fringe fare, the play has found its place time and again on stages across the country and in syllabi as a cornerstone of modern feminist theater. Fefu is set in 1935 in the title character's New England country home over the course of one tense day as friendships are tested and the eight female characters contend with restrictive societal roles.

Students in the School of Theatre scenography course chose Fefu for the Fringe Fest, says play director Liv King (CFA'26).

"A core focus of this class is discovering the value, purpose, and reason of a piece: asking ourselves what the play is doing and what we achieve by producing it right now," King says. "Fefu was written in the 1970s, set in the '30s, and was an examination of how advancements in women' s rights had not changed the overwhelming behavioral expectation that comes with living in a patriarchal society. Now, nearly 50 years after the play's initial conception, our production is doing the same thing.

"The security and freedom the characters in Fefu strive for, that Fornes writes for, are those which are in jeopardy today," she continues. "Life for women in the United States in 2025, 1977, and 1935 seems to be more similar than different."

The last School of Theatre production, Calf Scramble, is a darkly humorous, visceral examination of girlhood that sees five Texas teenagers wrestling with notions of God, expectation, and exploitation while raising their prize-winning cattle. In contrast with Fefu, Calf Scramble, written by Libby Carr, is less than two years old. Developed in 2023 and awarded the 2024 Dr. Kerry English Artist Award at the Ojai Playwrights Conference, it will debut off-Broadway in 2026.

While each performance in the 29th annual Fringe Fest serves as a platform for women's stories, Greenidge says that within the repertoire, all audience members will find things to connect to both individually and universally.

"The theater is one of the only places where we're all in the same place and can ostensibly see the same thing while taking away all kinds of different opinions," she says. "In tumultuous times, it can be really great to sit in the theater with others, breathing the same air, and seeing something together."

The Eleanors runs Friday, October 10, through Sunday, October 12, in Studio One, 855 Comm Ave. Showtimes vary. Purchase general admission tickets here for $22.50.

Thumbprint runs Friday, October 24, through Sunday, October 26, in Studio One, 855 Comm Ave. Showtimes vary. Purchase general admission tickets here for $22.50.

Fefu and Her Friends runs Friday, November 14, through Sunday, November 16, in Studio One, 855 Comm Ave. Showtimes vary. Purchase general admission tickets here for $22.50.

Calf Scramble runs Thursday, December 4, through Sunday, December 7, in Studio One, 855 Comm Ave. Showtimes vary. Purchase general admission tickets here for $22.50.

Discounted tickets are available for students, faculty, and staff. Email [email protected] for more information.

Explore Related Topics:

• Acting
• Arts on Campus
• BU Theatre
• College of Fine Arts
• Opera
• Performance

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