The New York International Fringe Festival 2016

The 20th edition of this enormous annual downtown festival includes work by nearly 200 frantically rotating companies in 16 venues, mostly in the East Village and on the Lower East Side. The wildly eclectic lineup includes musicals, dance pieces, classical revivals and plays inspired by the lives of Richard Pryor, Pete Seeger, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Stokely Carmichael and Muammar Qaddafi's cook.