About | Omaha Fringe Fest

Our Mission:

The Omaha Fringe strives to bring the different members of the Omaha theatre community together for one open access and inclusive festival where theatre artists can experiment with new works and audiences can experience new theatrical movements.

Meet The Team

Tamar Neumann
Executive Director

Tamar Neumann is a writer, dramaturg, educator, and theatre critic. She is passionate about creating and sharing good theatre in her community. In addition to running the Omaha Fringe, she worked as a dramaturg for UNO’s production of The Wolves and Blood at the Root. In Minneapolis, MN she served on the Board of Directors for Chameleon Theatre Circle in spent multiple years helping to judge and run their New Play Festival. She wrote for AisleSay Twin Cities as a theatre critic and currently writes as a theatre critic for The Reader. She received her BA in English literature from Western Washington University, and her MA in English Literature from Weber State University. Her thesis focused on Irish theatre and its representations of Irish culture and history. She is currently finishing her MA in Theatre at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and she teaches writing at Metropolitan Community College.

Lara Marsh
Artistic Director

Lara is a very active Omaha/Metro area director and theatre practitioner with her master of arts in Theatre Direction from UNO. She has directed for multiple theatres in the Omaha/Metro area. Favorite credits include The Clearing, Brilliant Traces, Operation Crucible, Mary Stuart, and Lost Boy Found at Whole Foods. In her continued education, she fulfilled a graduate assistantship in stage management. Lara has stage-managed plays, musicals, festivals, and events. Some of her favorite stage management credits include: Richard III, Othello, Mister Roberts, and The Sound of Music. Over the years, Lara coordinated the national tours of A Christmas Carol for the Nebraska Theatre Caravan, while also coordinating the apprenticeship program for the Playhouse. Currently, she is a free-lance theatre practitioner. Her work includes dramaturgical work, dialects, intimacy directing and continuous exploration of her favorite classics including Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, and Tennessee Williams. Lara’s hobbies include traveling, obsessing over the Tudors, loving all animals, and rooting for the Green Bay Packers. Lara is thrilled to be a part of the Omaha Fringe. Bringing new theatre to life and ensuring new voices, new stories are heard are what make the world go round. We must never forget the very essence of theatrical movement in all its forms – humanity and storytelling.

Board of Directors

Nicholas Jansen (President; Marketing & Social Media)
Naomi Bates (Vice-President; Marketing & Social Media)
Katie Cameron (Secretary)
Dwayne Brown (Treasurer)
Grace Luis (Volunteer Coordinator)
Della Gushen (Active Member)
Cindy Phaneuf (Active Member)

THE FRINGE

Theatre fringe festivals have a long tradition, starting in 1947 in Edinburgh when eight artists, not invited to perform at an arts festival showed up anyway and performed on the fringes. From that beginning artists all over the world have gravitated towards festivals that celebrate the arts in a similar way. A Fringe festival derives its name from those performers who began on the fringes of a recognized festival and is simply a place where artists of all types can come together and perform or show their art. The works are generally performance based, self produced and self funded. The roots of Fringe are located in open access festivals, where all performers are given an opportunity free of adjudication. The heart of Fringe Festivals is performance and sharing new works of art in the community. They are often unique experiences where the variety and organic nature of the festival creates an atmosphere of discovery and adventure. For audiences it allows them to experience a wide variety of shows; for artists it gives them a low stakes platform to try new things.

After Edinburgh, Fringe festivals began to show up all over there world. Currently, the World Fringe website states there are over 250 Fringe festivals in countries from Europe to Africa to Asia to America. They estimate that, “19 million people see approximately 170 thousand performers in 60,000 free and ticketed events. Over 8 million Fringe tickets are sold in over 6 thousand venues across the globe.” That’s a lot of brand new theatre being created and performed for audiences to enjoy.

The Omaha Fringe was created based on this long tradition of Fringe festivals. We felt that that there was a need in Omaha for this type of festival. In the true spirit of Fringe festivals, our festival allows anyone to apply and our applicants are chosen by lottery, so everyone has an equal shot at getting a performance slot. Our first year festival produced ten different performances in two different spaces at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. We had over seven hundred audience members from all around the Omaha community come and celebrate the different productions our artists created. Since then we have continued to grow and are so excited for the future of Omaha Fringe!