Rogue Festival returns for 20th year. Take a look back at Fresno’s performing arts party

Over the past 20 years, the Rogue Performance Festival has become a ubiquitous part of Fresno’s artistic landscape, offering performers and their audiences a venue for uncensored expression with the kind of DIY aesthetic for which the city’s Tower District has become known.

This year, the festival’s two-weekend run is March 4-6 and 10-12 and features more than 100 theater, music, dance, comedy, spoken word and magic performances — at six different venues.

Before that, organizers are throwing a community block party 7-9 p.m. Thursday in the parking lot of the old Chicken Pie Shop on Olive Avenue. The free event will have food trucks, coffee and desserts, local artisan vendors and a DJ, plus teaser performances from some Rogue artists.

It’s also a chance for audiences to get Rogue programs, entrance wristbands and other swag.

“After two years when we’ve been forced to avoid human contact, live performance is more important than ever,” Rogue Festival board of directors president Jaguar Bennett said in a statement.

“The essence of live performance is to be in a room with another human being and watch their movements and hear their words as they are performed. Performance is raw, real, intimate, messy, moving, hilarious, and disturbing — which is exactly how we want you to experience the Rogue Festival.”

In honor of the festival’s 20 years, The Bee reached out to organizers to compile a list of Rogue Festival milestones, as chosen by a “few Rogue old-timers.”

A ‘smorgasbord’ of theater

It’s hard to imagine the Rogue not being in the Tower, but the festival actually started downtown at the Sanctuary Stage Theater on Calaveras Street. While it was always called the Rogue Performance Festival, it was originally sponsored by Marcel Nunis’ Theatre J’Nerique and ran a full week.

Some 1,352 people attended.

It was in year two that the festival moved to the Tower District. The first official venues were The Starline and Veni Vidi Vici. Ashtree Studios was the first “Bring Your Own Venue” experiment.

While many venues have come and gone, Veni Vidi Vici has remained and is hosting performers again this year. The other 2022 venues include Dianna’s Studio of Dance, Goldstein’s Mortuary & Delicatessen, Spectrum Art Gallery, Vista Theater and Hart’s Haven.

The Rogue Festival was envisioned as a “smorgasbord” of theater, designed to give audiences something not available at 2nd Space Theatre or Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater and a place for performers, especially local performers, to try out and create new material.

At least one, musician Blake Jones, has performed in each of the past 19 seasons and has a show in this year’s festival, as well. He performs “What Piece Did You Lose?” March 4, 6, 11 and 12 at Veni Vidi Vici.

On the fringe festival circuit

While the festival originally serviced local performers, it has since been picked up as part of the fringe festival circuit and seen an influx of out-of-town performers. The first out-of-towner was Jay Martin of San Francisco in 2005.

In 2007, the festival had its first international performer, Kien Lim from London.

Founder Marcel Nunis remained an integral part of the festival, handling the festival’s production duties until 2008. Since then, the Rogue has been run by a revolving cast of volunteer producers.

In fact, the festival wouldn’t run without a whole hosts of volunteers — more than 120 signed up to help in 2016. That year, the festival sold some 9,000 tickets and saw more than 3,000 attendees over the two-weekend run.

In 2018, the Rogue changed the way it selected performers from a first-come, first-serve application process to a lottery system, which is the standard practice for most well-attended fringe festivals. It also established its Artist Underground program, which allowed performers to run their own shows.

That year saw a record number of venues, with a dozen.

A pandemic response

The Rogue Festival was the only fringe festival in North America to complete its in-person run in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic shut down large events and gatherings.

The festival’s last day was March 14. On March 19, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stay-at-home order that closed all non-essential businesses. It was also the only year organizers have had to eject a performer for disorderly behavior.

Last year, the festival went virtual, with performances streamed on Zoom.

Festival organizers provided ticketing support and the virtual venue (Zoom hosting and virtual crewmember support), plus marketing outreach to our audiences. Some shows were performed live, while others were recorded, edited and streamed from Rogue’s Zoom account.

Information and tickets to individual shows for the 2022 festival are available online at fresnoroguefestival.com

This story was originally published March 3, 2022 at 5:00 AM.