Remember 1997?

Clinton began his second term as President.

Britain gave up control of Hong Kong.

Scientists cloned Dolly the sheep.

But most important:  Lunatic Fringe started to make people laugh!!!

In 1997 Deb Maclean, Jerry Lazar and Paul Murphy were invited to do some improv at Luna Stage. We made each other laugh so much that we decided to form a group and make other people laugh.  So we started a group and named it  Lunatic Fringe. 

The first few shows had no piano player, so we played the kazoo and harmonica between scenes.  And we had no one to run lights, so cast members ran back and forth up and down a ladder to the lighting board. Then came Jan, the laughing lighting guy, and we were always lit and always had at least one laugh.  A woman named Allison Field wrote an opening number, we found a keyboard player, and began to do regular shows. One night the keyboard player didn’t show up, so Deb went into the audience and asked if there was a pianist who could play and go get a keyboard. And Eric Heilner played piano with us for 15 years.

For a while a clown was involved. A professional clown. Al Calienes. You can Google him. And for a while a surgeon.

Years passed, we kept doing shows and people kept laughing. Some cast members came and went and some others came and stayed, like the ingenious Harvey Chipkin, who joined in 2000; the stellar Dave Groveman, who arrived in 2010; and the brilliant Gay van Lieu, who first performed with Lunatic Fringe from 1999 to 2001 and then returned to the group in 2017.

After five years at Luna Stage in Montclair, NJ, Lunatic Fringe moved to 12 Miles West Theater, also in Montclair. Then both theaters left town and the group moved to Pianos in Bloomfield, where we made people laugh for five years. Eight years ago Lunatic Fringe found a new home at the Glen Ridge Train Station Performance Space and this year we are also appearing at 23 Skiddoo Café in Bloomfield, NJ.

 So come and laugh. Just laugh.  

It's not deep. 

It's rarely thought-provoking.

 It's just funny!