Dancers are taking over the fountain at Love Park. Actors are gliding down water slides into inflatable pools on stage. Audience members are taking risks in choose-your-own-adventure plays.
This is not a circus. This is the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe.
Mixing a little bit of drama with a lot of humor and the spirit of experimentation, the program has brought cutting-edge performances to the area for nine years. As the festival continues its current run of performances, arts enthusiasts have the chance to attend over 100 performances before Sept. 17.
Fourteen shows have already sold out only midway through the festival lineup. This includes the opening-night performances of three major shows held in Penn-owned venues: New Paradise Laboratories' Planetary Enzyme Blues in St. Andrew's Chapel at 4201 Spruce St., Brian Sanders' Patio Plastico at the former Cinemagic site and Siobhan Davies Dance Company's Bird Song in the Rotunda.
Although the exact attendance and ticket sales have not yet been calculated, festival spokeswoman Sarah Anton said, "Things are going well. We're excited, and things are kind of revving up, which we are always happy to see."
Staff members are conducting surveys of audience members and keeping track of sales, but because all festival transactions are done on paper, Anton does not expect to have precise figures until mid-October.
Last year, she said, certain shows sold out before the festival even got started.
"Brian Sanders has always been one of our most popular artists," Anton said. "We always sell out of his shows and have lines of angry people and all of those things."
So this year, festival organizers doubled the show's audience capacity by housing it in the old Cinemagic building. By leaving the original theater's seats and erecting a stage where the screen used to be, Fringe organizers created for Patio Plastico a spacious and fitting venue.
"One of the things that was so exciting was that the venues that the University of Pennsylvania allowed us to use were perfect for the shows," said Deborah Block, the festival program director.
The Live Arts Festival has been known to creatively integrate venues with artistic performances. Patio Plastico and the other West Philadelphia shows have proven to be no exception.
For a show featuring an Astroturf stage, dancers clad in neon bathing suits and a cameo by robed aliens, the kitschy Cinematic location provides an appropriate backdrop.
"I think Patio Plastico really realized itself in the old movie theater, thematically and artistically," Block said.
The theater has a high capacity so that people wanting to see the performance will not be shut out of sold-out shows this time.
"There are still tickets available for all the shows in University City, including Patio Plastico," Anton said.
As the Fringe approaches its 10th anniversary, Block said that the festival's future would be determined by the arts.
"One of the things that we're known for is placing things outside their traditional venue and redefining such a relationship," she said. "I think [the future will be] a continuation of that and a deeper exploration of that."
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