Valdez Theatre Fringe

After other Conference events are concluded, the Valdez Theatre Fringe takes place. It is coordinated and hosted by Rob Lecrone and Schatzie Schaefers. Each show runs under an hour, a fun and sometimes irreverent conclusion to the day. It includes:

Super Short Plays: Three to four short plays per night (from 1/4 a page up to 7 pages max), submitted prior to the conference.
Story Relay Teams (two teams total): Five writers per team, each writing one nightly episode (5 pages max) for their team’s continuous tale. Team members finalized by April 1.
Other short performances (up to 5 minutes) of any sort (puppetry, mime, music, dance, standup, or non-traditional theatre), submitted prior to the conference.

Submissions are accepted from any theatre artist attending the Conference.

A brief  history of the Fringe....

1998 –Michael Warren Powell, founder of the Play Lab, wanted to hear a play that hadn’t gotten into the Lab. The gathering of people that night in the student commons at the college was the seed from which the Fringe grew. For the first few years, it was very informal.

2001-2011 – Erick Hayden and Barry Levine took over coordination of the event in 2001, resulting in more regular scheduling and more support from the Conference.

2012-2014 – Bostin Christopher and Janna Shaw coordinated the event, with Bostin as host and Janna overseeing logistics.

2015-2018 –Rob Lecrone replaced Bostin as host. In 2017, Rob wrote the Fringe theme song, , and invited Schatzie Schaefers to sing it with him at the beginning of each night.

2019 – Schatzie Schaefers joined Rob Lecrone in co-coordinating and co-hosting the event.

2020 – In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, there was no Conference (except the online version of the Monologue Workshop), so no Fringe.

2021 to the present – The Fringe shook up its format, experimenting with a Story Relay event, five teams of five writers passing the baton throughout the week.

 Over the years, the Fringe has taken place in many spaces, including the Prince William Sound College, Totem Inn, Ernesto’s Taqueria, the Hotel Glacier, the Fat Mermaid, Magpie’s on the Fly, and the Best Western. Regardless of location, there is rarely an empty seat at this popular event. This year, the Fringe returns to the main atrium at Prince William Sound College.