Life on the Fringe: John Clancy keeps New York festival on the cutting edge

By Joseph Hurley

John Clancy sat at a corner table at the Lotus Club on Stanton Street on a recent afternoon, over a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee, giving off a very light aura of sawdust, machine oil and sweat, talking about the hectic activities he knew were awaiting him in the coming days and weeks.

As the artistic director of the 4th New York International Fringe Festival, which runs through the 27th of the month, as well as his own space, the Present Company Theatorium, Clancy really has his hands full.

The Fringe movement started 50 years ago in Edinburgh, Scotland, and among the major Fringe locations throughout the world, including Dublin, New York is the only city in which there’s no drama festival going on when the ancillary events are taking place. It is the only major fringe without a festival.

Clancy, a 36-year-old actor, writer and producer from St. Louis, has a definite vision of what he wants the Fringe to be, and what he thinks it already is.

“I like to think that for these two weeks, this whole area, the East Village and the Lower East Side, becomes a cultural zone, and as you are going to the theaters, you can see performances on the street, and you may pass galleries with special fringe shows, all that sort of thing,” he said. “Because of the sheer magnitude of the festival, with 180 indoor shows, and another 15 or 20 outdoor shows, it becomes what I might describe as a non-stop cultural marathon. As soon as you come down here, you’ve entered into that festival zone.”

The Fringe, in other words, is virtually taking over an area bordered by the Bowery on the west, Grand Street to the south, and East 9th Street to the north.

Clancy estimates that, taking everything into account, the Fringe this year will offer about 2,000 hours of performance and participation, including several offerings with a distinctly Irish flavor.

As artistic director of the event, Clancy is understandably proud of the fact that the 4th Fringe has attracted shows from 15 countries beyond the borders of the United States.

“We accepted 35 international applicants,” he said, “and I think 28 have ended up coming. A few of them have had to back out because of things like their inability to raise the air fare, or they were offered gigs in places that were closer to their home base.”

Inevitably, the Fringe loses a few locations every year. The House of Candles, a popular venue in early festivals, has become what Clancy calls “a very expensive restaurant.” and The Piano Store, once a choice spot, is gone. New York real estate being what it is, other choice spots have fallen under the wrecker’s ball.

“Rents are rising in the area and it’s hard to keep theaters alive,” Clancy said. Still, he prefers to look on the positive side. “There’s a kind of confederacy down here of the theaters we’ve managed to keep, a little cluster of spaces that have banded together,” he said.

After attending Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Clancy and his wife, the actress Nancy Walsh came to New York and, in 1992, founded their theater, the Present Company. Clancy had done a successful show at Aaron Beall’s NaDa Theater on Ludlow Street, and, as a result, when the idea of doing a New York Fringe took form, the Lower East Side seemed the right place for it.

In the spring of 1995, Clancy called a meeting of downtown artists and producers to see how much interest a potential Fringe might generate.

“Three hundred and fifty people showed up,” he said. “It was 18 months before the first Fringe, and, obviously, it was a potent idea.”

In Clancy’s view, the Fringe exists “to bring in the fresh. We serve art fresh daily. It’s not the same old stuff sitting on the shelf. This is the new stuff. This is the stuff that’s going to come in and open up your eyes, and make you think, make you question, make you laugh.” By his calculations, 20 to 30 of each festival’s shows go on to some sort of further life elsewhere.

As has been the case in the past, this year’s Fringe Festival will include items of interest to Irish audiences. Among them are “The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett as Found in an Envelope (Partially Burned) in a Dustbin in Paris,” an offering of Chicago’s Neo-futurists & Theater Oobleck. And then there’s “Pictures of Oscar,” in which London’s Skullduggery Theater uses portions of Oscar Wilde’s work to illuminate events in his life.

Rounding out the Irish contributions, there’s a production called, with utmost simplicity, “Two Plays and a Poem by W.B. Yeats,” and a one-woman endeavor called “Waiting For Mr. Yeats,” subtitled “Maud Gonne in Exile,” starring Helen E. Calthorpe in what appears to be a revised version of her show “The Painted Boat,” which played briefly uptown last March.

“And,” said John Clancy, “there’s more, too.” At the Fringe, there’s always more, usually right around the next corner.