The new Fringe Curated Series introduces established theater companies like Happenstance Theater and its show Barococo to the annual Fringe Festival (Photo courtesy of Capital Fringe)

Julianne Brienza, CEO and co-founder of Capital Fringe, has been using words like “jazzed” and “great” to describe this year’s Capital Fringe Festival. It’s a little out of character, she admits.

“You don’t really know me, but I don’t usually talk this way,” Brienza says. “It’s honestly awesome.”

A year ago Brienza had plenty of reasons for trepidation about the 2018 festival of weird, scrappy theater, which opens on July 7 and continues through July 29.

Fringe needed to begin phase two of construction on its relatively new theater spaces in Trinidad, meaning that just two years after the festival moved to Northeast D.C., it would need to find new venues for dozens of performances. Fringe was still far from its overall $9 million donation goal, $3.5 million of which would go toward making that long-planned renovation happen. To add superstitious insult to injury, 2018 marks the festival’s 13th year.

To Brienza’s surprise, finding a new home for the festival proved easier than expected. In April 2017, she started casually discussing possibilities with administrators at Arena Stage as well as Steve Moore, executive director of the Southwest Business Improvement District and a founding member of Fringe’s board of directors. She was quickly convinced that Southwest would work for Fringe, and within five months had secured theater space at Arena Stage, three nearby local churches, and Blind Whino, too. SWBID is also a sponsor of the festival.

“We love Fringe. It is authentic, fun, challenging,” Moore says. “It seems to us so much more interesting than just producing ‘movie night.’”

The neighborhood’s intimate venues lend themselves to the spirited conversations that inevitably follow most Fringe performances, Moore adds.

Relocating temporarily to Southwest gives the festival an opportunity to find a new audience, and to freshen the experience for longtime fans. The moving process began in earnest two months ago, and kicked into high gear after the last public performance at the Logan Fringe Arts Space on Florida Ave. NE on June 23.

Some aspects of the transition that seemed disappointing at first turned out to be blessings in disguise. Unlike at the Logan Fringe Arts Space, Fringe itself won’t be running a bar. Instead, Brienza formed a partnership with the Hyatt hotel, which will pay for a portion of rooms for visiting performers, and offer its rooftop to Fringegoers as the festival’s official bar.

“We’re just going to take the place over, and I can’t wait,” Brienza says.

Market SW, an open lot with an outdoor stage across from the Waterfront Metro, will serve as the festival’s “main gathering space,” with frequent live performances from a wide range of immigrant musicians, all booked by Fringe’s Jim Thomson, also known as the original drummer for the metal band Gwar.

As the festival has matured more than a decade in, Brienza has started thinking about ways to expand its influence and engage more directly with the performance communities it serves. In addition to the slew of small, independently-produced pieces, two new programs, both part of the new Fringe Curated Series, populate this year’s festival schedule.

“Fringe Presents” showcases experimental plays from established theater companies that have a track record in the region. This year’s recipients are New Paradise Laboratories from Philadelphia, which will play with the time-space continuum and drop several thousand ping pong balls from the ceiling (really) in O Monsters; and Rockville’s Happenstance Theater, which presented at the very first Fringe festival back in 2006, and this year will present Barococo, which explores the philosophical musings of six Enlightenment-era clowns.

For the first time, Fringe has also commissioned new work for the festival. Last fall, Brienza sent out a call for adaptations of non-Western classical texts. Twenty applications came in, and three were selected: America’s Wives, adapted from a Yoruba folktale, The City Of…, inspired by a Jorge Luis Borges short story, and Andromeda Breaks, a gothic horror take on the Greek Andromeda myth.

Meanwhile, plans for phase two of the Fringe home base in Trinidad are moving forward. The organization has raised more than $8 million toward its $9 million goal since conceiving its 2015 move to Northeast. Features of the new space, set to open next year, include a 200-seat soundproof auditorium, a scene shop and set building space, an art gallery, an indoor bar with a commercial-grade kitchen, and an outdoor kitchen.

But for now, Southwest is the place to be for the unmistakable thrill of seeing new talent blossom and veterans thrive on the Fringe stage. A new Circulator bus route will make transit to Southwest venues easily, and Brienza points out that the Fringe venues have never been closer together.

Attendees will see banners and wayfinding signs guiding them from one venue to another—outdoor features that even the Fringe headquarters in Northeast doesn’t even have yet.

“I think people are going to feel like the festival fits there,” Brienza says.

Here’s everything else you need to know for this year’s festival.

Cost: Individual show tickets are $17; you can also purchase discount passes for 4, 6, 10, 20, and 50 shows. Everything can be done online, or you can head to box offices at Market SW and each of this year’s Fringe venues (box offices at venues open an hour before curtain time).

Fringe button: In addition to a ticket, theatergoers need to show a button to attend every performance. The one-time purchase is $5 before July 6, after which it goes up to $7.

Seating: It’s all first-come, first-served. Latecomers are only admitted at the discretion of the house manager (in our experience, they are often not admitted at all, so be advised to show up on time).

Getting there: In addition to the Metro, several bus lines, and the new Circulator route, the neighborhood has a free shuttle. The SW Neighborhood Shuttle stops at the L’Enfant Metro, National Mall, L’Enfant Plaza, and The Wharf.

Happy hour: On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, join Fringe staff from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. at CityBar to geek out on the festival. Happy hour prices are available to anyone with a 2018 Fringe button.

Crowd alert: Take note that the neighborhood is also playing host to the MLB all-star game and a series of related events from July 13-17, as well as the opening game at Audi Field on July 14.