SPORTS! to Bring Teams LAVA and OBSIDIAN to Philadelphia Fringe Festival

This September, Obvious Agency will take the field with SPORTS!, a one-time-only, professionally performed, athletically amateur, everything-on-the-line sports extravaganza presented as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

At The Lawn at uCity Square, two teams, LAVA and OBSIDIAN, will battle for ultimate sports glory in an outdoor theatrical competition exploring our complicated relationships with competition, athleticism, and belonging.

Are their knees past their prime? YES. Are they good at sports? YES… and no… and also kind of?

Now adults, the artists behind SPORTS! are returning to the field with questions left unanswered from middle school gym class. Where is the line between healthy and unhealthy competition? What versions of ourselves emerge in the pursuit of victory? And who gets to feel like they belong in sports in the first place?

Audiences won't simply watch from the sidelines. They'll root for a team and help guide LAVA or OBSIDIAN to glory in a live competition where the outcome is not predetermined.

The artists bring their own complicated histories with sports to the field. Some pursued athletics at elite levels before competition took the joy out of playing. One went to college to play volleyball, tore an Achilles, and found theater. Others avoided sports altogether, alienated by expectations around masculinity, athleticism, and belonging. Through humor, physicality, and a genuine battle for victory, SPORTS! reclaims competition on their own terms.

“I have been fascinated for as long as I've been directing about the connection between theatre and sports,” said Director and Lead Artist Cat Ramirez. “In fact, I wouldn't have become a theatre maker had it not been for a career ending Achilles tear my senior year of high school that led me to taking my first theater class in college.”

“For me, sports have always been a huge place of contradiction in my life - a space where I can be as loud as I want on the court, but also where I grew up feeling like I never belonged,” Ramirez continued. “In researching for the piece, I discovered pretty quickly that everyone has a story around sports that they want to tell and I'm eager to create a space where everyone - nerds, queerdos, emo kids, etc. - feels like they can engage in the heart pounding adrenaline of competition on their own terms.”

Ramirez spent months in partnership with OutLoud Sports Philly interviewing athletes and former athletes before bringing together a team of performers to lean into their collective sports fantasies and traumas and compete as hard as they can.

“The right to move our bodies and sing as loud as we want and hug people when we're sweaty and stand in front of a crowd wearing a dope outfit and scream and be as big as can is for everyone,” said Ramirez. “I don't know who's going to win and am excited for y'all to be on this ride with us.”

For Artist/Athlete/Performer/Creator Joseph Ahmed, SPORTS! is a chance to revisit an arena where he once felt he didn't belong.

“In middle school gym class I was an uncoordinated nerd with asthma. Sports represented everything I didn't fit into - athleticism, coolness, masculinity, toughness,” said Ahmed. “Because I sucked at ball sports I thought that I just wasn't a very physical person. Over two decades later I know this is a lie, having found a thriving relationship with my body as a dancer, juggler, acrobat, and actor. What is there for me in sports that I can find now in the fullness of myself that I couldn't find then? I'm so hype to find out.”

SPORTS! also plays with the surprisingly thin line between theater and athletics: both are high-stakes, unpredictable performances shaped by the energy and engagement of an audience. The show asks what happens when stories of queerness, transness, disability, mental health, and aging are given the epic framing of professional sports.

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