Audiences love being outside of theaters," says Nick Stuccio aboard a trolley on a sticky August afternoon. Stuccio, co-founder and director of Live Arts and Fringe, spends the non-festival part of his year not only scouting for innovative new artists, but spaces for their work. All year long, Stuccio and company keep their eyes and ears open for chatter about undiscovered basements and neglected rooftops, vacant lots and abandoned factories. It's like they're real estate barons in the name of art. Today, Stuccio is leading a trolley tour to show off 2005's alternative venues.

Finding great spaces is becoming increasingly challenging, with the burgeoning redevelopment of areas like Northern Liberties and Fishtown. The warehouses and factories are giving way to restaurants and condos. Stuccio's always cataloguing conversations with people and making mental notes when they drop the names of spaces that may become available. When someone mentions she has a building in Frankford, for example, Stuccio's ears perk up.

Also, the programmers are always looking to reach out to new neighborhoods to expand the festivals' reach into different communities, says Stuccio, "while still maintaining a nice hub of works in Old City," the Fringe's original stomping grounds.

This year's lineup reflects a year well spent. Some shows have site-appropriate venues, like Plays & Players' turn-of-the-century structure for Miro Dance Theatre's Gustav Mahler-themed Hurdy Gurdy, or the fountain at Love Park for choreographer Monica Bill Barnes' Fountain Tour. Then there are venues that are just plain cool — places you usually go for things other than theater and dance performances, but why not? Sulimay's Diner, Pierre's Costumes, Palumbo Field, bars, bookstores, jiu jitsu centers.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Two shows have put down stakes in the National Building at Second and Race streets, a former restaurant supply house long close to the organizers' hearts, over the years serving as box office, hub or performance venue. This year, it's once again the box office, as well as the venue for two particularly animated groups: Pig Iron and Reactionaries/Bald Mermaids. It's also the public's last chance to see the National Building in its current state. Soon the space will be converted into lofts and townhouses.

Festival regular Mark Lord is using what since 1998 has been called Smoke, a particularly dusky, dim basement find in the shadows of the Ben Franklin Bridge, to mount his Zone, an homage to Apollinaire and Beckett.

Leah Stein is staging her Buddhism-inspired dance piece Bardo in a weedy lot at Broad and Spruce streets. The spot's got history, too: It's been a church, a speakeasy and was the original home of Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

Some neighborhoods, though, were uncharted territory for the festivals.

West Philly, meet Live Arts/Fringe.

Just because these festivals made the trek west doesn't mean arts-minded endeavors are new to the area beyond the South Street Bridge. Scribe Video Project, the Philadelphia Folklife Center, Spiral Q Puppet Theatre, Community Education Center and the University Arts League, to name a few, have established roots on the other side of the Schuylkill. And a few years ago, Slought Foundation, known for its experimental visual art and jazz shows, moved into the building that houses the University of Pennsylvania's newspaper offices. It made sense for the city's biggest arts festival to make its way west.

Back in March, festival folks met with Penn folks — the university controls much real estate there — and a marriage in the arts was made.

"We're incredibly privileged to be the stewards of these architectural gems," says Andrew Zitcer, cultural asset manager for the University of Pennsylvania. These gems wind up being exactly what the festivals look for. "We try to get venues people haven't been in in a while," says Stuccio. "Dust 'em off, clean 'em out and restore them, return them to the public."

One venue being resuscitated is the sanctuary space at the Rotunda at 40th and Walnut streets, a 1909 structure once home to the First Church of Christ Scientists. Since 1999, the Rotunda's main space has been used for concerts and other cultural events, but its chapel-like area, complete with pipe organ, choir loft and iron chandeliers, hasn't been open to the public in more than 10 years. British choreographer Siobhan Davies will transform the sanctuary, an architectural wonder with a regal, yet crumbling dome and gorgeous light, into an aviary of sorts with her multimedia dance piece, Bird Song. Several Fringe events also make the Rotunda their home this year.

St. Andrew's Chapel, an imposing Gothic structure on Spruce Street near 42nd Street, has become, in festival parlance, "The Cathedral," playing host to Planetary Enzyme Blues, New Paradise Laboratories' latest show, fittingly related to the activist scene in West Philadelphia. The disused chapel (see this week's cover), originally part of the Divinity School of Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, has been dormant for two decades, but NPL audiences will discover its holy treasures, from its high-backed pews to its light-drenched windows.

While for some venues these performances mark a rebirth, for others, like the National, it's last call.

Brian Sanders brings his quirky, daring vision to the old Cinemagic movie theater at 39th and Walnut streets, staging his campy suburban spoof Patio Plastico, a reprise from the 1999 Fringe in which a family romps around a stage full of hammocks and pogo sticks and water slides in an attempt to escape their synthetic lives. Within a year or so, the entire block — a mini-strip mall where Cinemagic stands along with The Last Word Bookshop and other stores — will be redeveloped into a mixed-use complex with student housing and retail spaces.

For now, though, besides Sanders' project, Cinemagic is also the University City hub for Live Arts and Fringe, where in the lobby by the old theater's ticket booth, festivalgoers can take a load off, have a snack, browse fliers, order tickets online at several computer terminals, and get updates from a festival liaison.

The biggest, most open venue of all, the streets of the city, also promises to be a playground for the weird and wonderful. Festival program director Deborah Block has planned Stage Free, a moniker that encompasses what lots of people believe is the best part of the whole two weeks: the stuff that just happens while you're walking your dog or going to get the paper. This year around Old City, look for unexpected patches of grass from artist Vida; Punch and Judy going at it outside Café Ole, courtesy of actor Aaron Cromie; and something about corsage boxes and mounds of sound equipment hooked up by Rick Henderson's Mouth of Flowers and City of Horns. Anyone who remembers 1998's hilarious Parking — a series of staged arguments over parking spots that came off all too real to unsuspecting passersby — knows that sometimes the best performances are the ones you're not looking for.