Rave Theater Festival

Into the vacuum left by the departure of the New York International Fringe Festival steps this ambitious new venture from producer Ken Davenport: a platform for emerging artists that includes 20 productions, each performed five times. Among the offerings are Michael Bontatibus's immersive mystery, Noirtown; Harold Hodge Jr.s post-slavery drama, Fancy Maids; the Australian all-female tap-dance show Girls on Tap; Michael Wills's Tempest-tossed gay comedy, Stormy Weather; the musicals Big Shot (by Ireland's Lauryn Gaffney), Waiting for Johnny Depp (by Janet Cole Valdez and Deedee O'Malley) and The Perfect Fit (by 12-year-old Joshua Turpin); and Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj and Adam Mace's Sweet Lorraine, which imagines a deathbed conversation between Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin.