Arts-Entertainment
Livingston Fringe Fest (LFF) returns the first week of September with theatre productions of every genre. LFF has its roots in the Edinburgh Fringe Fest, the largest performing arts festival in the world. It features thousands of shows across hundreds of venues spanning comedy, theatre, circus, dance, and music.
Co-founded in 2025 by Tessa Welsch and Kate Britton, Livingston Fringe Festival is a popular theatre festival featuring mostly new works showcasing Montana artists and performers. This year’s festival includes sixteen productions and events at nine locations. It exhibits local talent, as well as giving venues and audiences a meaningful opportunity to participate in the arts.
Tickets are already going fast and many of the venues are small, don’t wait to purchase yours. Priced at $15 a show with options for All Access passes for $75. More information, visit livingstonfringefestival.com
TMI x Fringe
September 2nd at Empire Theatre
Local Story Wrangler Bex Frucht's spicy & silly storytelling show is back to kickoff Livingston Fringe Fest 2026! Enjoy a fun & freaky evening ON THE FRINGE at Empire Twin Theatre with raw & randy true-life tales from your friends and neighbors featuring “too much information” ... so expect the illicit & eXXXplicit along with humanity & hilarity because OVERSHARING IS CARING! This show is rated R for ROWDY, so please leave the kiddos at home. Featuring local storytellers: John Henry Haseltine, Max Johansen, Katie Mangett, Tessa Welsch. Accompanied by Chace McNinch plus Kyle Sorenson.
TICKETS at https://www.livingstonmovies.com/
THREE SHORT PLAYS
September 3rd & 5th at 6 pm at Wheatgrass Books
Until We Forget
What does it really mean to move on? Lucas has spent his life guiding lost spirits toward the afterlife. With endless optimism, a backpack, and a school schedule he refuses to fall behind on, he's sure he's seen every kind of ghost—until he meets Cassidy. Unlike anyone Lucas has helped before, Cassidy is perfectly content spending eternity surrounded by books and has no intention of letting a stranger decide who she is. As an unlikely friendship begins to challenge what they believe, they discover that moving on isn't always as simple as letting go. Written and Directed by Cora Roseberry, featuring Emmett Shannon-Lier.
Third Culture
1996. A 15-year-old Australian moves to small-town Texas and quickly discovers that everyone loves an Australian... as long as they keep acting like one. A fast-paced comedy about fitting in, making things up, and eventually forgetting which stories were ever true. Written by John Roseberry, directed by Cady Epperson. Featuring Christian Garcia, Fiona Shinn, Annika Coleman, Daisy Duncan, and Quenby Iandiorio.
Beards From Beyond
INANUTSHELL:ALIENSFROMDOOMEDPLANET(IMPENDINGIMPLOSION)-SCIENTIFIC/ENGI NEER-INGADVANCEMENTS-DISCOVERYOFSUITABLEPLANETWITHBIGCAVEAT-PLANS&SU BSEQUENTRELOCATIONVIASPACETRAVEL:WARPSWORMHOLES-TENUOUSSYMBIOTICREL ATIONSHIPUNDERGUISEOFCASUALFACIALHAIRGROWTHUNTIL. Written and performed by Jeff Medley
The Realistic Joneses
September 3rd at 8 pm & 13th at 6 pm at The Blue Door Gallery
Bob and Jennifer Jones live next door to Pony and John Jones. They share a fence, a last name, and perhaps more than they’d like. Neighbors talk. People laugh. Time passes. With two actors portraying all four Joneses, this adaptation of Will Eno's The Realistic Joneses gently blurs the boundaries between couples, inviting us to recognize the shared language, longing, and humor that connect us. Featuring Kyrie Dawson and Luke MacKay, directed by Jaelyn Silvey.
Smoke Thief & Road Stories
September 4th & 6th at 6 pm
Elk River Books Road Stories
Road Stories: A Vagabondaoist Exploration of Newton’s Three Laws of Motion (as purveyed by Cap’n Ahab Odysseus of the Hi-Line) blends monologue, short plays and spoken word poetry to search for the perhaps mythological ur-traveler, Miscellaneous Jones. It includes Inertia, or “Thump, Thump,” Acceleration, or “A Good Sturdy Coat” and Action/Reaction, or “I Have a Knife.” These scenes are interspersed with Beaudin’s road poems excerpted from his book Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals. Featuring Marc Beaudin, Tom Baskett, Christian Garcia, and Sherry Pikul. Written and Directed by Marc Beaudin.\
Smoke Thief
Smoke Thief is a magpie inside a clown. Mimic, thief, collector. Born of and trapped in the fantasy. Smoke Thief wants to steal your cigarettes and show you the smokeless fire. A one person show exploring god, delusion, clowning, and begging for mercy.
Written and performed by Tyler Potter.
This is a Piano & Sister Act
September 4th & 6th at 8 pm The Empire Theatre
This is a Piano
Since teaching herself how to play the piano at the age of three, Chace McNinch has spent countless hours of her life learning the ins and outs of music. What about it makes us tick? Why is learning how to play an instrument easy for some yet an impossible task for others? Why do we all pretend to enjoy crappy songs like Sweet Caroline? In the end, Chace isn’t sure either. But she’s going to attempt to help us all find the answers once-and-for-all and teach us just how this music thing works in the comedic, chaotic performance of her show “This is a Piano”. Written by and featuring Chace McNinch.
Sister Act
This is an improvised convent comedy with big musical numbers and even bigger personalities. When a mysterious fugitive crashes into a convent, a gaggle of nuns must hide them, help them,
and somehow turn their struggling convent into something heavenly. The story, the characters, and the chaos are all created on the spot using your suggestions, with a few show-stopping songs anchoring the night. Featuring Chelsea Hogan, Johnathan Baker, Addy Erickson, Emmy Harvey, Kyle Sorenson, and Natalee Wheeler. Directed by Chelsea Hogan Musical Direction by Chace McNinch.
Polly and Dolly Vinyl’s Theremin Show
September 5th & 11th at 8 pm at The Blue Slipper
Polly and Dolly Vinyl’s Theremin Show combines storytelling and art projections with live Theremin music performed by Bozeman artist Marla Goodman. Her 1-hour show features wildly eclectic visual and melodic selections threaded on the narrative of a now defunct “Fraternal Twin Thereminist” act. Quirky, homemade and darkly comic, the Vinyl’s show includes musical styles ranging from Sci-Fi, Experimental, Jazz, and Classical to Country Western, all played on the theremin! Invented c. 1919, the theremin was one of the first electronic instruments and is played by making hand gestures in the air. Ask after the show to try your hand! Written and performed by Marla Goodman.
Butcher Holler Here We Come
September 5th at 10 pm, 6th at 4 pm, 10th, & 11th at 6pm at The Shane Lalani Center for the Arts
1973, West Virginia. Following a cave collapse, 5 coal miners struggle to survive the dwindling supply of oxygen, the lack of food and water, the unravelling sense of passing time, and, even more threatening, their own competing natures. Butcher Holler Here We Come is a descent into the male psyche-in-crisis where secret desires, carnal urges, and hidden memories come boiling to the surface in a primitive territory of Earth that mirrors the subliminal mind. Written by Casey Wimpee, Directed by Lee Bonvissuto, featuring Issac Byrne, Cole Wimpee, Adam Laten Willson, Colt Wayne Keeney, and Michael Mason.
Swing
September 6th at 2 pm at Wheatgrass Books (FREE)
Bobby Zeller has only ever known baseball. Baseball is what has defined his existence across the small Montana town he grew up in, and the one he currently exists in as he struggles at the lowest level of the professional game. However, his grip on the bat, and himself, begins to loosen as the secrets about himself that he's tucked away his whole life are becoming impossible to hold inside. Bobby finds himself exploring the world of drag, leading a double life as he navigates baseball, love, and the past he's desperately trying to leave behind. Swing is being presented at the Livingston Fringe Fest as a staged reading of the screenplay. Join us as a talented cast and crew take you on a journey through the story.
Written by Gus Yeager. Talkback afterwards led by Yetta Stein.
The Art of Adaptations
September 8th at 6 pm Wheatgrass Books (FREE)
A panel discussion about how we adapt stories fornew mediums, audiences, and
Beyond. In partnership with Opera Montana and Elk River Arts & Lectures, this conversation will explore questions including: Why do we adapt works? What does a good adaptation do? Featuring Kelley Rourke and Isabel Shaida.
White Recycling
September 10th at 8 pm and 13th at 6 pm at The Owl
From the Florida swamps to the Montana mountains, Danae Bray has spent a lifetime trying to sort herself into the right pile: poor or successful, faithful or skeptical, good enough or not. In White Recycling, she turns those attempts into an hour of earnest, whimsical stand-up and storytelling about trying to become the right person, letting go, and discovering that life can't be sorted into neat little bins after all. Absurd, heartfelt, and unexpectedly freeing, it's a comedy for anyone who's ever tried just a little too hard to get it right. Written and performed by Danae Bray.
Your Mother Called
September 12th at 8 pm & 13th at 2 pm at The Blue Slipper
Your Mother Called is a dance‑theatre-media fever dream contemplating our sense of meaning, nostalgia and facing the inevitable— a millennial’s coming-of-age told 20 years late, with choreography. Created and Performed by Kelly Bouma. Media and Direction by Mike Steinberg
Closing Party with The Sleepless Elite
September 13th 8 pm at The Attic
For one night only, THE SLEEPLESS ELITE unveils their unreleased EP live — with exclusive behind-the-scenes commentary on how it all came to life. Featuring Carolina Kehoe, Bay Carter, Drew Carter, Mary Makris, and Stephanie Burda.
Stick around after the show for Livingston Fringe Festival's CLOSING PARTY! Drink, dance and celebrate all night long