It's been a frosty few years since touring artists Katie Hartman and Nick Ryan — better known to Orlando Fringe patrons as The Coldharts — last fired up local audiences with their provocative play Eddie Poe at January 2020's Winter Mini-Fest. One life-changing pandemic later, the pair have finally returned with Edgar Perry — the third and final panel of their "Poe Triptych" that began with the award-winning Edgar Allen — which is running in repertory with its companions at Fringe ArtSpace now through Nov. 19. Ahead of opening night, Hartman and Ryan caught me up on how COVID changed their lives and the important role Orlando Fringe has played in their creative career.
Although The Coldharts had been Brooklyn-based since their inception in 2012, the pandemic prompted them to move out of New York City and up to the Hudson River Valley, which Hartman says "has been a beneficial change for us, in that we realized that living in the city and maintaining lives as independent artists that tour a lot, that we were running on the road and then when we came back we had to keep on running; and that was unsustainable."
The pair turned their inability to tour into a positive opportunity to establish better work/life balance and diversify their interests, with Hartman producing the Cincinnati Fringe Festival and Ryan working as a chef at a theater residency in the Catskills. Now that The Coldharts have returned to the road, Ryan says they "have definitely come back a bit slower and more strategic," in order to make more room for their offstage lives. But they've made room in their reduced schedule to let Orlando fans be the first ever to experience their entire "three-hour adaptation of a 14-page short story" (as Ryan jokingly puts it) by the ur-Goth poet Edgar Allan Poe.
Since each installment of the Poe Triptych was created to stand alone, you don't have to have seen the earlier entries — or indeed know anything about Poe — to attend Edgar Perry, which focuses on the author's time as an engineering student at West Point. However, those who view the full cycle may appreciate that after centering on Hartman in the first piece and Ryan in the second, for the finale, Ryan says, they "wanted [in] this one the driving force to be both our voices." And although Poe could be dismissed as a dour antique, Hartman says the shows are still "fun [and] mischievous," observing, "We're 200 years removed from the times in which Poe lived and there's a lot that's the same."
"We're in a period of time where the theater is in crisis, and it is dwindling," says Ryan, "and part of the responsibility of a theater artist in these times is to just keep the fire lit."
Both he and Hartman give Orlando Fringe credit for being one of the important organizations that is tending those flames in the face of Floridian politics, especially for queer and counterculture artists. Hartman says, "Orlando Fringe is known for the high quality of talent and production value, most notably among local artists. As an out-of-town artist, you know you have to bring your best, and the Orlando Fringe audience is an incredibly generous and supportive community that appreciates risk-taking."
"We've felt very supported by Orlando even before we came here," adds Ryan, crediting Fringe's former artistic director Michael Marinaccio for originally recruiting them from the Canadian circuit. "Immediately we felt very, very embraced, [and] the fact that Orlando is leading the charge in the U.S. Fringe circuit to start making year-round programming, getting this circuit humming all year round, that's the direction we want the Fringe movement to go in."
"We can't have classic work unless we have new work, and the fact that Orlando is creating a space for that, to develop new work and to keep emerging and mid-level artists like ourselves being produced, is really big," says Hartman. "I see [Fringe] as a neo-vaudeville; we need a mid-level circuit for independent theater artists in North America."
In addition to hosting acclaimed out-of-town artists like The Coldharts, the nearly year-old ArtSpace is also making room for homegrown talent. Last month, the Orlando Artist Guild got to present a fully staged, full-length version of The Spider Queen, playwright Bryan Jager's hysterically insightful autopsy of the disastrous Spider-Man musical. It's been a delight watching this show evolve from a fascinating but overstuffed script in 2020 to a trimmed-down hit at the 2022 Fringe, and now get enough breathing room to dig into the dysfunctional relationship between auteur Julie Taymor and author Glen Berger at the story's emotional core. (Look for the Guild's unauthorized Muppet Christmas Carol tribute at ArtSpace on Dec. 22.)
Fringe could continue to be a launching pad for groups like The Coldharts and Orlando Artist Guild, but the organization is currently at a crossroads, with the announced departure of executive director Alauna Friskics in January 2024. Nobody in charge has asked my opinion — and, full disclosure, my wife works for the organization.
But I only hope Friskics' successor has roots in Orlando Fringe's culture and community (instead of a "nationwide search" recruit who flees Florida after 18 months), and that they hit the ground running with a clearly articulated vision of Fringe's future, before this precious flame flickers out.
