The Hollywood Fringe Festival Has Announced the Recipients of Their 2020 Scholarship Program

The Hollywood Fringe is congratulating the thirteen members of the 2020 Fringe Scholarship Program. This year, the Scholarship Program received over 160 applications, and after numerous conversations and intense deliberation by our selection committee, the Festival is proud to announce the 2020 Fringe Scholarship winners.

Created in 2016, the Fringe Scholarships Program seeks to expand and diversify the pool of artists producing work at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Since its inception, the program has expanded from five to thirteen scholarships that receive free registration, a $550 stipend towards production costs, an experienced Fringe mentor and marketing as an award winner in the Fringe community.

Fringe Scholarships are available to first-time Hollywood Fringe producers who contribute to the ethnic, cultural, racial, mentally or physically disabled, or LGBTQ+ diversity of the Fringe community.

Winners of the 2020 Fringe Scholarships:

Alters in the 5th District

Alters in the 5th District is an interdisciplinary ritual unearthing trauma inherited, experienced, and passed on while reflecting on the possibility and cost of healing. Atravesando el universo que siempre ha conocido tu nombre...

Caminos: A Mother's Journey

Caminos: A Mother's Journey is an original one-act play written and performed by members of Teatro Liberado, an up and coming Latinx theatre ensemble based in Pomona, CA. The script is derived from a series of interviews which ensemble members conducted with their own mothers and mother figures in November, 2018. Then, they translated those interviews from Spanish to English and interweaved them into a script.

From A to Za'atar

Laila Abdo is your Lebanese guide on this culinary journey with real food! The daughter of immigrants, Laila celebrates being Arab and American, but what happens when she faces the ultimate question of her quarter-life crisis: how does location affect identity? Step into her kitchen to find out.

Japanese Love Story - SHIZUKA -e??a??a??

Japanese Love Story introduces a famous historical Japanese tale. In 12th century, Shizuka, the popular Dancer of reputed beauty, and Yoshitsune, genius warrior, the younger brother of supreme leader of Samurai fall in love. The play is full of aesthetic charm of Japanese classical theater.

Literary Creatures

LONG LIVE THE MULTIRADICALS! For the uninitiated, A. Ti Nyalien is a Literary Creature: an ethereal being from the deep center of the goddess we call Earth. Her mission? To encourage spontaneous bursts of sound, poetry, & movement in the audience, & explore playfulness as vulnerability. Come dance!

Mermaid

An American bridesmaid clashes with her Nigerian relatives at a family wedding. Her life, however, changes forever when she traces her troubled past to an ancient, African mermaid curse.

Palmares

Based on historical events, Palmares recounts the epic power struggle between King Ganga Zumba and his legendary General Zumbi within colonial Brazil's mightiest fugitive slave colony-Palmares. A struggle to survive. A struggle to be free.

Pedro the Puppeteer

With mounting pressure from his parents, Pedro wrestles with giving up puppetry. Suddenly, puppets that he has never seen begin to appear before his eyes. Evilito puppet, an amalgamation of Kermit, Chucky, and Mexican symbolism, seems to guide Pedro, but is Evilito only guiding Pedro to his doom?

Rotten Apple

The true story of a rebellious Caribbean 14 year-old girl who is sexually assaulted only to be locked up by her church. As an artist, she creates an alternative world on her four walls, a painted portal, which alters her reality and liberates herself and her mother, breaking generations of oppression.

SHADE: A Colorful Musical Comedy

A black woman and a white woman switch places because they think the other one has it better. But is the grass actually greener...?

Ten and a Half

The friendship between two Asian-American women starts to unravel after a fateful meeting with a handsome stranger. Through a series of uncomfortable events, Bea slowly taps into her own voice and discovers liberation in conflict, and Valerie faces the truth of her demons.

The Book That Won't Close- Confessions of a Love Addict

A deaf woman locks herself in her apartment and agrees to do a self imposed rehab from bad relationships. She hires a non-binary transgender coach to help her heal her love addiction and integrate the parts of her that are both deaf and hearing.

What's Been Eating Me

What's Been Eating Me is a true life dramedy of what happens when a not-so "Strong Black Woman" takes an emotional colonic, purges her feelings and feeds her spirit.

Three applicants that also struck the heart of the scholarship committee have received honorable mentions:

12 Tasks of Denton and Gonzalez

Family in a Box

This Was Never Supposed To Be A One Woman Show

As an open-access festival, The Hollywood Fringe Festival seeks to foster a ground-breaking community of artists and make performances more accessible, both to the artists who produce them and for those who otherwise cannot afford to see theatre.

Previous scholarship winners have gone on to win awards including Best Solo Performance 2019: Mr. Yunioshi, Short & Sweet Award 2017: Chatter, O-Face Award for org*smic Achievement (Most org*smic Performance): Yozmit Walker - Do You: Migration of the Monarchs). They have also performed beyond the festival including extended runs at various Fringe venues, a run Off-Broadway at the SOHO Playhouse, Second City, and even on the steps of the California State Capitol Building.

The Fringe Scholarship Committee firmly believes that these new winning productions will enrich audience experience and the quality of the Hollywood Fringe Festival's artistic offerings through the presentation of unique and underrepresented themes. The Festival has plans for the scholarship total to continue to grow each year with the support of grants and the generous contributions of its donors.

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