By Ande Jacobson

The San Francisco Fringe Festival 2025 is sponsored by the EXIT Theatre and runs at the Taylor Street Theatre on weekends from Friday, 8 August – Sunday, 24 August 2025 offering performances that break new ground across multiple disciplines. Some are fairly standard theatrical faire, while others are more performance art stretching the imagination and perception. One latter-type offering mixes the fiber arts with movement and other theatrical devices to reach audiences on an emotional and sensory level challenging basic assumptions about fiction/non-fiction, narrative/non-narrative, sense/non-sense, and even basic meaning as we understand it. Speak English, conceived and presented by Vanessa Kamp, encourages audiences to come to their own conclusions through a solo performance highlighting nuance, color, pageantry, sound, and emotion with very little verbal exposition. In fact, less than five minutes out of the 60 minute performance are spoken at all, yet the characters Kamp brings to life speak volumes through other means. As such, the title comes from a place of awareness attempting to break barriers and preconceived notions, in this case stemming from one of the characters and scenes in the performance. Continue reading →