"Where's my ramp?" he shrieked. "My plans show a ramp!"

Rich Thom : Michael T. Regan

"Mr. Thom, it's a work in progress," said choreographer Brian Sanders.

"Well the city doesn't like works in progress," he replied.

Sure, artists need to flex their creative muscle — move set pieces here and rejigger lighting there. They don't call it "fringe" for nothing. But when it comes to transforming abandoned warehouses and crumbling row homes into full-service performing arts venues, the city takes no artistic license.

There are fire code regulations, Americans with Disabilities Act compliance issues, rules governing water and power sources, emergency exits and a multitude of other details to be worked out before the city can issue a temporary certificate of occupancy. For these reasons, finding a venue that might work is sometimes the hardest part.

Over the past 10 years, Fringe festival staff and volunteers have pretty much figured out what the Department of Licenses and Inspections wants to see. (And this year L&I devised a special application process that cuts down on red tape for the shows.)

As the architect-of-record for the festival, Thom stakes his professional reputation on the meticulous set of blueprints his Old City office staff draws up for each nontraditional venue, working out kinks along the way.

He understands the artists must improvise to satisfy safety regulations while maintaining the integrity of their work.

He learned that eight years ago when his services were tapped to configure a parking lot. As audiences moved from car to car, artists would get out and do their thing but, "because it was the Fringe," he says, "they were ad-hocking it. You have to realize it was a little more fringey back then."

For example, producing director Nick Stuccio recalls, in the early years, Northern Liberties developer Bart Blatstein approved the use of a warehouse (now a catering hall) for a performance. The crew plugged into the first power source they found, letting the cables flop like rubber snakes in the path of the would-be audience. "In this case, we were a little sketchy," Stuccio says. An hour and a half before the lights were set to go down, L&I inspectors wandered in and pulled the plug.

A hundred people were turned away that night, but, instead of shutting down the venue permanently, the city crew climbed ladders and helped fix the mess in time for the following evening's performance.

"We probably should have been shut down for that," Stuccio says. "We're learning as we go. Now, whenever we use an old warehouse, we take it very seriously."

Today the platforms from handicapped-accessible ramps built for that show are being re-used for EYE-95 re-tarred at a warehouse behind the Northern Liberties Design Center on Fifth near Poplar Street.

On a recent August morning at NLDC, while a woman teetered on a ladder to install an exit sign, festival co-founder Eric Schoefer was trying to make another entrance less inviting, its garage-style door barely protected the pricey equipment inside the warehouse. So the night before, over beers at Ortliebs, technical gurus Conrad Bender and Perry Fertig grabbed some paper and sketched a security solution they hoped would meet the approval of the show's director, and this issue's cover model, Madi Distefano. (Her show is part of the Live Arts side of the festival, which means Stuccio and company act as curator, handling the show's lighting, staging and marketing; Fringe shows merely sign up for the fest.)

Schoefer, wearing a black T-shirt and cap, used a power drill and a found bit of grate to make their vision happen. "They just worked out the concept," he says. "The piece of paper was long gone by the time I showed up." From finding each space to perfecting the performances to bringing the venues up to code — and figuring out a way for the audience to enter the warehouse that may include a trek down two alleyways — to Schoefer, it's all art. "The whole experience of getting here is part of the performance experience," he says as his lab mix, Cora, sprawls out across a tangle of wires.

Of course, the challenges don't always come in the form of absent sprinklers or narrow doorways.

Schoefer recalls a previous festival when a Polish group was set to perform on the stretch of Independence Mall where the Constitution Center now stands. Because the politically charged show, which he first saw during a rainstorm at Edinburgh's Fringe, used fire, the city shut it down long enough before showtime to lure the actors back for a performance on the waterfront five years later. (Stuccio was once close to getting permission to use the decommissioned battleships at the Navy Yard for another show, but after 9/11 that'll probably never happen.)

More often than not, though, nowadays the city pulls through for Fringe. Last year, the Limelight Project: Fountain Tour wanted to put on a dance piece in the Love Park fountain. There was just one problem. The Fairmount Park Commission enforces a strict "no swimming" policy.

Stuccio made a pitch to the city's commerce department. "This was a free dance piece for the citizens, really fun and silly and celebratory," not a money-making venture, he reasons. Plus, if Philly wants to be a "first-tier art city," it's going to have to be flexible. That — and the city's willingness to encourage an economic engine that made a $3.4 million impact in 2004 — cinched it. Later, according to Stuccio, Mayor Street told him, "I'm glad we made that happen for you."

Finding an Old City box office that isn't stiflingly hot in the waning weeks of summer is especially tricky. This year, staffers were poised to use the space above Lucy's Hat Shop when they realized the air conditioner was busted.

Forty minutes before the festival guide hit the presses, Stuccio roamed around downtown with a cell phone pinned to his ear. After 15 minutes on hold, "This guy got on the line and went, 'The Fringe? I love you guys!'" That instant, Stuccio knew Gie Liem was going to let them use the prime real estate at 233-35 Market St. "That was just dumb luck," he says.

And finding an office space can be easy compared to getting other approvals. For Headlong Dance Theater's piece Cell the audience doesn't know where it's going to end up, so Stuccio had to coax permission from a bunch of top-secret locales. Approval to use the historic surgical amphitheater at Pennsylvania Hospital for Amnesia Curiosa hinged on a vow to not poke fun at the American health care system. In addition to use of the Rotunda and Cinema, UPenn turned over a well-worn row home. "They didn't even ask about content," Stuccio says. "It's a very forward-thinking place."

It has to be if it's going to be part of the festival.

"The idea is increasing that performance and visual art should not take place in specific places for visual or performance work," he says. "Our audiences are down with the fact that that's no longer the case — and the audiences themselves, they're no longer just observers, they're participants."

They may want to be careful about what they wish for. Next year, Stuccio says, Pig Iron wants to perform in a morgue.

(jenna.portnoy@citypaper.net)