Buffalo Infringement Festival Buffalo Infringement Festival|
For immediate release. BUFFALO'S "INFRINGEMENT FESTIVAL" CELEBRATES ART UNDER THE RADAR, JULY 27-AUGUST 6, 2006More than 110 projects. Over 20 venues. Plays, concerts, exhibitions, and much more, from the early afternoon until the wee hours of the night. From Thursday, July 27-Sunday, August 6, 2006, the second annual "Buffalo Infringement Festival" will introduce Western New York audiences to a jaw-dropping assortment of work by performers, musicians, and artists of many other kinds from throughout the region and far beyond. The inaugural festival in the summer of 2005 was a word-of-mouth sensation, generating excitement on the streets of Allentown and celebrating the abundance of independent theater and performance in the area. By comparison, says coordinator Kurt Schneiderman, "This year's festival will feature a lot more of everything than last year-especially more musical acts, more out-of-town artists, and more venues." Indeed, 2006 brings participants from Toronto, Montreal, New Brunswick, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Orlando, and even Taipei, Taiwan, among other places-although the majority of the work is still being generated right here in WNY. Traveling from one venue to another, audiences will encounter all sorts of activities, including (but hardly limited to) experimental and conventional theater, bands of every stripe, political performance art, hip-hop poetry, new versions of literary classics, gender-bending cabaret, puppetry, live radio broadcasts, pyrotechnics, virtual reality, visual art exhibitions, and a late-night "self-serve" Shakespeare reading. No less than ten separate music showcases will take place, mixing hometown favorites with intriguing visitors. No single style or aesthetic predominates throughout the festival; some events are intended for mature audiences, while most are suitable for viewers of all ages. All of this will take place in such spaces as Rust Belt Books, Nietzsche's, Gallery 164,Squeaky Wheel, the New Phoenix Theatre,the Albright-Knox, Merlin's, the Crane Library, Hallwalls, and Soundlab, among others; at times, Allen Street itself will serve as a stage. (See complete list of venues, attached.) Each event has a separate admission fee of ten dollars or less, with several productions being presented either free of charge or on a pay-what-you-can basis. All income from each project will go directly to the artists involved. The Buffalo festival is the result of many months of planning by an ad hoc collection of more than a dozen volunteers from the local theater and arts community and is part of an international circuit of summertime "infringement" festivals. (For more information on events in other cities, see www.infringementfestival.com.) The attached schedules list confirmed events as of July 5 by venue and by date. Given the nature of the festival, all events are subject to change; the latest updates will always be available on the festival website (www.infringebuffalo.org). In keeping with the grassroots, do-it-yourself nature of Infringement, audience members are invited to post reviews of events they have seen on the festival's blog, www.infringebuffalo.blogspot.com, while the back patio of the restaurant La Tee Da (206 Allen St.) will serve as a nightly gathering place for artists and spectators alike to touch base and compare notes. "It all goes to show that the possibilities for 'Under-the-Radar Art' are endless," Schneiderman says. "There's a lot more to art than just what you have to pay a lot of money to go see, and all of us involved with the festival are thrilled to be carving out a space for it here in Buffalo." -end- ATTACHMENTS (all available on the website as well) :
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