Pop-Up Theater

Thinking about the pop-up gallery idea, I remembered I helped the Capital Fringe Festival create something very similar last summer. The Capital Fringe Festival is a month long performing arts festival that features new work from hundreds of primarily local artists at ten venues in downtown Washington, DC. Prior to the festival, the majority of these venues were abandoned for decades--home to only rats and pigeons. That meant that in around a month we transformed these spaces from gutted, smelly, and hot buildings into theaters. We installed stages, walls for dressing rooms, lighting, seating, air conditioning... It meant long hours, but what we created renewed storefronts, lots of foot traffic, and a healthy dose of theater to a block that few businesses want to invest in for fear that it will soon be demolished to build something new. Below are some pictures of the process.