Horror is coming to Hollywood Fringe with 15 different theatrical shows and stage plays

In 2010, Hollywood Fringe was born and has raised over $5.7 million for the artists’ community since then.

Today, they are showcasing a record-breaking 480+ shows and over 2,150 performances, celebrating LA’s performing arts.

“The Hollywood Fringe Festival is an annual, open-access, community-derived event celebrating freedom of expression and collaboration in the performing arts community. During each festival, the arts infiltrate the Hollywood neighborhood: Fully equipped theaters, parks, clubs, churches, restaurants, and other unexpected places host hundreds of productions by local, national, and international arts companies and independent performers.”

For horror, there are 15 shows you can watch throughout Hollywood Fringe’s run from June 11th-28th, and we are going to highlight a few that piqued our interest!

2026 Salem Witch Trial

What happens when a tarot-reading lesbian finds herself exiled by Christian neighbors who might just be in a cult? In “2026 Salem Witch Trial,” Telly Award winning writer-performer Gretchen Wylder tells a raw, hilarious, and haunting true story. This solo show with video elements fuses personal memoir, dark comedy, and radical reclamation of spirituality.

Set against the backdrop of Salem’s mysticism and a disturbingly devout cottage town just north of Salem proper, “2026 Salem Witch Trial” is the evolution of “2025 Salem Witch Trial,” based on Wylder’s real-life descent into a modern-day witch hunt. Navigating a double life—reading tarot by day, surviving zealotry by night—Wylder unpacks her personal horror alongside the religious violence still faced by women, queer people, and spiritual nonconformists alike. But in 2026, things get litigious and even more culty. The story is based on her current lived experience.

Morpho Dance Fitness

True to the tenets of Fringe Fest, Morpho Dance Fitness is a high energy, pop-fueled dance workout class that mutates into absurdist comedy and bodily nightmare. The audience is welcomed into a dance class environment led by Farrah (Daugherty), a magnetic instructor obsessed with control, vigor, and physical perfection, alongside her sycophantic assistant Francis (Brooks). What begins as an upbeat, tightly structured fitness class slowly devolves as Farrah’s body undergoes an unsettling, Kafkaesque transformation.

“I am thrilled to be bringing Morpho Dance Fitness to this year’s Hollywood Fringe Fest along with my collaborators Matt Brooks and Mike Swift. Our piece combines movement, comedy, and body horror to answer the question of what happens when our identity is defined by and reliant on impermanent structures?”

A Haunting Revue II

Birds of a Feather asks the question, “What if E.T. and Elliot were combined into one humanoid alien who then had 20 years of sibling rivalry with Michael and Gertie?” Also the question, “How would it have affected Randall’s relationship with Kevin and Kate if he were an extraterrestrial instead of an African-American?”

These three characters – brother Hunter, alien Zanzie, and sister Daisy – find their dysfunction has its roots less in their having different home planets than in their having the same parents.

The Lateness of the Hours features a middle-aged man named Bart who has seemingly done nothing right with his life except mentoring a little boy named Pete to whom he, as a teenager, became a “Big Brother”. Pete has gone on to a fabulous life while Bart constantly struggles, even having a falling out with his “Little Brother”.

Bart cryptically asks Pete to meet him, for the first time in five years, at a diner on Christmas Eve. Why?

The Fight or Flight Response focuses on a mentally challenged man named Grant who works at the aerospace company his father founded yet gets bullied constantly by the current owner Terrence.

A new coworker named Anna with a heart of gold wants to help Grant assert himself, but it turns into a literal matter of life or death…spanning both physical and spiritual realms.

NILBOG! the Troll 2 musical

Soon it will be time for some things to happen……..AGAIN!

Once upon a time long forgotten… in the ancient year of 2016… the twisted humans of 2Cents Theatre turned the beloved Best Worst Movie TROLL 2 into a Musical. Now, 10 loooong years later, the sexy magic rock of Stonehenge has awakened, and now ONLY YOU must face the Goblins, devour the green frosted foods, and drink all the Nilbog Nog your disgusting meat eating vessels can handle!

If you have no idea what any of this means… GOOD.

If you think Troll 2 has anything to do with any other film about Trolls… EVEN BETTER.

And if you ARE a Troll 2 fan already… THIS SHOW IS GOING TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

TOTAL HORROR SHOW

Beware the moonlight overhead!

No one is to be trusted and nothing is quite what it seems once you hop the party bus (the only vehicle large enough to fit everyone on such little notice!) and join Wesley, Ben, and Nash, as they go searching for their missing college “friend” in rural northern California. Secrets and festering old wounds quickly catch up with everyone and what is there to do but sing and dance about it?

Maybe you’ll smuggle elephant tranquilizers across the state! Maybe you’ll dig a grave! You’ll almost certainly see the GAYEST werewolf transformation in the history of lycanthropy!

Based on the MIDNIGHT MUSICALS podcast musical of the same name, TOTAL HORROR SHOW is an immersive camptastic musical creepfest, wickedly comedic and absolutely QUEER! Don’t forget to pack your wolf repellent or you might not make it through the night.

Hollywood Fringe Festival runs from June 11th-28th in Los Angeles, California. Each show might be at a different theater or venue so please check each showing accordingly. For full details check out https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/