WTF with Darren Lee Cole of SoHo Playhouse + 2026 Best of Fringe Awards

exactly i love when i meet someone and i tell them i do theater and their eyes light up and they say i was in a play in high school I was at a play in eighth grade, and then they want to tell you the story of the play that they were in.

And you can hear this, like, longing of wanting to still be a part of that.

Yes, there's an ennui to missing it.

By the way, you know how you can tell when another theater professional is involved when you say that? Like, oh, my God, you're in theater? My first reaction is, are you okay? Yeah.

That's so great.

That's so great.

Oh, man.

See, this is why I love you, Daringly Cold.

You're just losing this generosity and community spirit, which I think is the

spirit of Fringe.

I was so blown away when I joined the Fringe community a couple years ago of how welcoming it is and supportive, which you don't always find in other areas of American theater.

I will leave it at that.

There's a competitiveness that has infiltrated a lot of what you're talking about, where that competitiveness, I mean, there's some, but that doesn't seem to exist in the fringe world.

The fringe world is much more, we're all going to help each other.

We're all sort of in this big boat of fringe together.

And everybody wants everybody else's show to succeed in a very, I think, organic and genuine way, not in a like, oh, yeah, rah, rah, because people are sacrificing the same things at the same time.

I was going to say, what do you think that it is that drives that? And I think that sacrifice is a huge part of it.

Yeah.

One of the shows we have coming in to our fall season, Elf Lions Show.

Elf's wonderful, by the way.

And in fact, won the List Magazine Spirit of the Fringe Award this year, which is nobody deserves it more than Elf.

But she was doing a daily.

Everybody started following her because she just had this great personality.

message of hope and sincerity every morning about doing Fridge because we forget the grind it is and the physical and mental toll it takes on you.

Like her positive messages about, hey, you know, we're all in this together.