Look Forward to Lunar Retreat: An Accessible Fringe Festival Performance!
Release Date: 08/24/2026
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info_outlineEvery September, Philadelphia hosts more than 1,000 performances as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, presented by FringeArts. In its 30th year, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival “is a city-wide celebration of innovation and creativity in contemporary performance.”
On this episode, we spotlight a multi-sensory experience called Lunar Retreat, which will be performed as part of this year’s Fringe Festival!
Presented by Nichole Canuso | Branching Paths and FringeArts, Lunar Retreat features audio description, interactive activities, and multi-sensory exploration. Join Simon Bonenfant in the virtual studio, as he speaks with Lunar Retreat creator Nichole Canuso, dancer Shannon Brooks, and audio description coach Natanya Sortland.
They discuss the creation and evolution of the piece, preview what to expect, share personal reflections, and engage in an insightful conversation about their philosophies toward life.
Ready to buy your tickets? Read all the details below!
Nichole Canuso | Branching Paths
and FringeArts present
Lunar Retreat
as part of the 30th Annual Fringe Festival
“Lunar Retreat is a multi-sensory performance installation inspired by the gravitational push and pull between the Earth’s oceans and the Moon. Audiences enter the experience in groups of 12 people at a time and are guided through gentle invitations from dancers, pre-recorded prompts on headphones, and a tactile set design.
The slow, rhythmic inevitability of the growing distance between the Earth and Moon, known as the “lunar retreat,” is the poetic motor for this work, which uses the powerful patterns found in nature to invite people into exchanges that juxtapose tender, personal experiences alongside the vastness of global, environmental, and cosmic phenomena. Lunar Retreat creates opportunities for participants to settle their nervous systems and explore meaningful exchanges that touch on loss, grief, healing, and transformation. Lunar Retreat reflects on our deep evolutionary ties to the ocean and the moon, reminding us that we are all interconnected with the natural world.
With Lunar Retreat, we are extending an expansive invitation—inviting all of us, no matter how we identify—to come together and reflect on our relationship to cycles and grief and the natural world. To increase the accessibility of the work, we have built relationships in the Blind and Low Vision communities, through workshops, showings, explorations, and conversations. As a result of the feedback from our workshops, we have built audio description and tactile elements into the design of the show. As part of our set design, we created alternative, tactile props specifically for Blind and Low Vision audiences, to ensure that the sensory world of the piece is fully available to those experiencing it through touch. Audio description, a touch tour, performance docents and a post-show talk-back will be available to Blind/low vision participants at the following performances:”
Saturday, September 12th at 2:00pm
• TICKET LINK for Saturday, September 12 at 2pm
https://fringearts.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/?acode=ac26e22e43357d49f461320273befe68&#/instances/a0FUO00000CAhWD2A1
Sunday, September 13th at 4:45pm
• TICKET LINK for Sunday, September 13 at 4:45pm
https://fringearts.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/?acode=ac26e22e43357d49f461320273befe68&#/instances/a0FUO00000CAhWD2A1
Saturday, September 19th at 6:45pm
• TICKET LINK for Saturday, September 19 at 6:45pm
https://fringearts.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/?acode=ac26e22e43357d49f461320273befe68&#/instances/a0FUO00000CAhT02AL
Location: The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, 3401 Filbert St, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tickets: 12 tickets available at each performance.
$35 per person, discount 20% off with code Lunar20
Groups of 10 25% off, $26 per person, call the box office to purchase.
Access tickets: $2, max 4
Contact: Simon Bonenfant, Accessibility Consultant, sbonenfant2@gmail.com
or Lee Etzold, Accessibility Coordinator, letzold@helloartscollective.com
To purchase tickets via phone, call the FringeArts box office at 215.413.1318.
We hope you have enjoyed this interview. Do you have a comment to share about this episode? Send us an email at whitecanesconnect@gmail.com, or give us a call at 267-338-4495. We would love to hear from you!
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