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Capital Fringe returns next week—and judging by Friday’s preview night, the arts festival will be as eclectic as ever.

Now in its eleventh year, the annual festival showcases independently produced performance pieces in music, theater, and dance. As of last year, the festival’s home base is the Logan Fringe Arts Space in Trinidad, a former auto body shop outfitted with three black box theaters, gallery space, and an open-air bar. A $5 Fringe button is required for access to any of the festival’s events, and admission for each performance costs a flat fee of $17.

The delirious preview event in Trinidad cycled through four-minute snippets from nearly 20 of the annual festival’s 114 offerings, which will premiere at 11 D.C. venues throughout July. As emcee and Capital Fringe founder Julianne Brienza promised at the start, the performances proceeded in no particular order, oscillating wildly from a surreal vision of a silly nightmare to a somber meditation on the struggles of a nurse in wartime.

The common threads were spontaneity and surprise. Whether breaking mid-performance to laugh joyfully at the sound of an audience member’s errant iPhone GPS, miming actions with props when there weren’t any onstage, or even forgetting the occasional line, the performers soldiered on, eager to share their vision with a receptive crowd. Their enthusiasm bodes well for an energetic festival.

Here at DCist, we’ll do our best to give you an overview of what’s worth seeing, as well as reviews and inside looks at as many individual performances as we can. We won’t get to everything — but neither will you.

Here’s what we caught at Friday’s preview.

Rhythm and Melody

The preview opened with an homage to The B-52’s, complete with a revealing lacy outfit, a soulful strut, and a full-throated embrace of gender fluidity. A Romp Around Uranus with Special Agent Galactica promises vibrant costumes, powerful vocals and a healthy sense of anarchy.

Tia Nina in Juiced. Photo: Courtesy of Capital Fringe.

And speaking of anarchy, nothing could prepare Friday’s audience for the final performance of the night, an exuberant rock-and-roll dance routine from the rollicking trio Tia Nina, stars of Juiced. The audience hooted and hollered when one cast member formed a pyramid atop the other two, but everyone erupted when the ladies shot off fully loaded water guns.

On a quieter note, the stars of folk opera Rain Follows the Plow delivered the plaintive title song in subtle, somber fashion. The performance suggests fewer fireworks than either of the previous two. Instead, a reflection on the environment awaits.

Bluegrass cropped up several times Friday night, as in the “badass bluegrass benediction” Over Her Dead Body. I can’t take credit for that alliterative turn of phrase — it’s the show’s subtitle. Pinky Swear Productions has long been a staple of Fringe, but this year marks the group’s first departure from the “Triple X” characters they’ve showcased in each of their previous Fringe productions.

The brief preview clip alluded to the complexities of Romanov, an electro-pop musical set during the fall of Russia’s most powerful dynasty. It’s safe to say that electro-pop music was…not a thing at that time. Hence, an intriguing juxtaposition.

Intrigue and Bafflement

The cast of Prison Break, Incorporated. Photo: Courtesy of Capital Fringe.

The general conceit of Prison Break, Incorporated is about what you’d expect from the title. But from the snippet I saw, the specifics are far more elusive. A disaffected triangle of prisoners danced onstage without much enthusiasm, followed by the spirited entrance of the warden and his partner. The playwright Derek Hills’ website describes the show as “Frontline meets Survivor meets Orange is the New Black.” At the very least, that’s a combination worth investigating.

The “trapped in an elevator” premise is tried-and-true for psychological investigation and suspenseful thrills. Too Close appears to be going for the former far more than the latter, with a monologue about the insignificance of humanity introducing the show to the preview audience.

It Will All Make Sense in the Morning, the title promises. It didn’t make much sense at night, but I’m willing to be convinced. The show is set in a dream world where conversations flow in illogical rhythms and people eating raw eggs whole is a normal sight. If Inception had a baby and fed it a hallucinogen, the result might look like this. That’s a compliment, I promise.

Several disparate elements — plaid shirts, a bouncy dance beat, jangling banjos — unite in Wash Over You, which appears inspired by bluegrass among many other origins.

A dance performance is inherently difficult to distill into a four-minute bite. Fractals, a dance production named for the repeating patterns found throughout the natural world, would likely benefit from a full viewing experience.

Tears of Laughter

The cast of One Mutual Happiness. Photo: Courtesy of Capital Fringe.

A middle-aged man extols the virtues of wedding logistics in the manic monologue preview for One Mutual Happiness, which offered some tantalizing teases. Why does this man care so much about nuptials? Who is he talking to? What happened at his own wedding, which he mentions in an ominous aside? I now pronounce thee: a hoot.

The humor in The House of Yes, centered on a sibling rivalry, appears laced with melancholy. But there’s wry pleasure in watching sister Jacquy, just emerged from a mental hospital, berate her brother and his fiance for their simpleton ways. Fun fact: the original version of this play was adapted into a 1997 film from the director of Mean Girls.

Erik Mueller embodies a bashful computer scientist reflecting on his awkward past in The Computer That Loved. In the section we saw at the preview, Mueller delivers a dazzling rundown of the first several dozen digits of pi.

The closing line of the preview for Death Not Be Loud is a Gone with the Wind reference to die for. The rest of the scene was no slouch either, as the play’s author Susan Jackson shared her tale of sardonic woe at the hands of her miserable ex-husband Franklin.

Creative Sadness

American nurses had a strong influence in France during World War I, as described in Ready to Serve. Photo: Courtesy of Capital Fringe.

“How many of you have ever gone to war?” asks Ellouise Schoettler, star and auteur of the one-woman show Ready to Serve. Whether your answer is yes or no, Schoettler’s reminder of the forgotten nurses who were critical to operations during World War I will strike a poignant chord.

Shakespeare favorite Romeo Montague is back with a vengeance in One Man Romeo, reflecting on the experiences that led to his (spoiler from four centuries ago) untimely death.

The Bard also inspired Macbeth in the Basement, which rendered the preview audience stunned and eventually silent as the cast delivered a ferocious “All hail!” chant dressed in Army getups. The show tells the classic Renaissance tragedy through the eyes of an overly committed group of teenagers.

General Stonewall Jackson and War Secretary Judah P. Benjamin return to life in Confederates, set on local turf in a time of massive upheaval: the dawn of the American Civil War. The period garb and military strategy recalls the 1860s to a tee.

The Capital Fringe Festival runs from July 7-31 at the Logan Fringe Arts Space (1358 Florida Avenue NE) and various other locations. A button, which is required for all performances, is $5 and general admission tickets are $17.