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By Joshua Tehee
Sifting through the complete list of artists, performers, musicians, actors and magicians at this year's Rogue Performance Festival -- all 26 pages of it -- is a chore.
More than 150 performers will take over 11 venues throughout Fresno for the nine-day event, which runs from March 3 to March 6 and from March 8 to March 12.
But for an eclectic mix of art and performance, Rogue is the ticket, says Lisa Repasky, promotion coordinator for the event, in its fourth year.
"You can go see modern dance," she says. "And you can go see a couple of guys playing folk songs."
There is also theater -- like "Upton Sinclair's Licked" -- dance from Fresno's Ananka Dance Company, and independent film -- the Fresno Metropolitan Museum will show the documentary, "Supersize Me," at Edwards Fresno Stadium in River Park.
Organizers strive "to give audiences a chance to try something new," Repasky says.
Specific events run an hour long -- max -- and admission prices are kept cheap -- from $3 to $6, with proceeds going directly to the performers.
That means actors like Steven Karwoski, a veteran of fringe theater, can afford to travel from San Francisco to perform at the Rogue.
Karwoski, whose one-man show is titled, "Adventures of a Substitute Teacher," has performed at several festivals in the United States and Canada and says they are great formats for artists, an inexpensive way to stage a performance.
Festivals like Rogue come with a built-in space and built-in marketing.
All a performer has to do is show up and do their thing.
"It's very immediate and very assessable," for the audience, he says.
Tickets for events are only available a half hour before show time. And the environment is not scary or overbearing, "so someone who's never been to the theater can try it out," Repasky says.
This writer can be reached at jtehee@fresnobee.com
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