by Lorie Lewis Ham

The wonderful arts festival known as the Rogue Festival, which takes place in the Tower District of Fresno, is nearly upon us again! This year it will be running from March 1-9. While the general idea of the Festival remains the same each year, there are always subtle differences, so we took a moment to chat with the always witty Jaguar Bennett to find out what this year’s Rogue has in store for us! Hopefully, we will get him to tell us about his show this year as well!

KRL: Your position with this year’s Rogue?

Jaguar: I am the undisputed king of the Rogue Festival. I am president of the board and the lead producer. I have unparalleled opportunities for graft and corruption that are restrained only by my iron sense of duty and stern and puritanical ethical convictions. No mere mortal should be trusted with this much power; fortunately, I am far more than human. The Rogue Festival is indeed fortunate that I am the most ethical human being who has ever lived.

KRL: How many years have you been involved with Rogue?

Jaguar: I have been involved with the Rogue since its start in 2002, although I took a 7-year break from 2007 to 2014, when I was pursuing other interests that involved excessive amounts of alcohol.

KRL: Is there anything different this year?

Jaguar: The big difference is that we will finally have a useful website! The all-new Rogue Festival website is now at a new URL, fresnoroguefestival.org, and it’s far easier to search for the show you want to see by show title, artist, venue and showtime.

Other than that, this is the year that we are declaring the Rogue fully recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. We had to go all virtual in 2021, and in 2022, and 2023 we had smaller festivals than our historic norm. This year, we are up to our full capacity of three Mainstage venues, two Cafe venues, two off-Rogue venues, and two Artists Underground venues.

KRL: How many performers will there be?

Jaguar: This year we have 45 separate performing groups.

KRL: Any familiar names?

Jaguar: Some returning Rogue performers include Mike Alexander, Christopher Bange, Jaguar Bennett, Martin Dockery, The Fools Collaborative, The Fresno State Creative Writing Program, Tony Imperatrice, The Magic of Eric, Kate McKnight and Sarah McKnight, Minion Productions, The Murray Girls, Janice Noga, Noam Osband, Heather Parish, Joey Rinaldi, UR Here Theater and Donna Kay Yarborough.

KRL: What are this year’s venues?

Jaguar: We have five Rogue-managed venues — these are venues that we staff with our own volunteers and run the tech and the box office:

Dianna’s Studio of Dance, 826 N. Fulton St.

The Lotus Room (formerly the back room of Revue, now a location of Tower Yoga, and still behind what is now Component Coffee), 626 E. Olive Ave.

Spectrum Art Gallery, 608 E. Olive Ave.

Veni Vidi Vici, 1116 N. Fulton St.

VISTA Theater, 1296 N. Wishon Ave.

KRL: What are the off-Rogue venues?

Jaguar: We have two off-Rogues and two Artists Undergrounds. Off-Rogues are venues managed by their owners who take it upon themselves to book performers and run their own tech and box office. Our off-Rogue venues for 2024 are:

Hart’s Haven, 950 N. Van Ness Ave.

LAByrinth Art Collective, 1470 N. Van Ness Ave.

Artists Underground venues are single-performer venues operated by individual performing companies who take it upon themselves to secure a venue and handle their own tech and box office. Our Artists Underground venues for 2024 are:

The 2nd Space Theatre, 928 E. Olive Ave. (UR Here Theatre is doing a storytelling show here.)

Stargazer Cottage, 1292 N. Ferger Ave. (This is a private home.)

KRL: How do people get tickets?

Jaguar: You can buy tickets from the Rogue website at fresnoroguefestival.org, from our ticketing website at roguefestival.ticketleap.com, and at Rogue venues 30 minutes before a show starts. Patrons should be aware that to get into any Rogue show they must have a Rogue wristband, a one-time purchase that is your ticket to the Rogue Festival. Keep your beautiful and stylish Rogue wristband on your wrist at all times — you’ll need it to get into every Rogue show, plus certain Tower District bars and restaurants may offer you a special deal when you show your Rogue wristband. Rogue wristbands cost only $6, and you can buy them on our ticketing site, at any Rogue-managed or off-Rogue venue (but not Artist Underground venues), and at the Rogue Store, which will be located in the Lotus Room/Component Coffee parking lot.

KRL: Can you tell us a little about this year’s Teaser show?

Jaguar: This year we’re taking the Teaser Show to a whole new venue — the Teaser Show will be at The Howlin Wolf, 920 E. Olive, on Thursday, February 29 at 7 p.m. What’s more, this year the Teaser Show is FREE! The Teaser Show presents quick two-minute teases of the shows at this year’s Rogue to help you discover new and exciting shows, while enjoying the Howlin Wolf’s fantastic craft cocktails.

KRL: Can you tell us about this year’s muse?

Jaguar: This year’s Muse is “Autumn” by Fresno artist Elizabeth Castro. It’s a haunting self-portrait inspired by German Expressionism and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” It’s a moody, eerie, otherworldly piece that conveys the Rogue’s strange and unsettling nature.

KRL: Where all can people find the Rogue Festival online?

Jaguar: Rogue website: fresnoroguefestival.org
Rogue ticket sales website: roguefestival.ticketleap.com
Rogue social media:
Facebook: facebook.com/rogue.fresno
Twitter: twitter.com/RogueFestival
Instagram: instagram.com/roguefestival

KRL: Do you have a show this year? Can you tell us a little about it?

Jaguar: I’m reviving a stand-up comedy show I originally performed for the 2015 Rogue (which should be long enough to introduce the show to a whole new audience), How to Be Wicked: The EZ Course for Beginners. The premise of this show is simple: Morality is a lie. Doing good is for suckers. I teach a special executive seminar that will teach you how to transcend human morality and find success through evil. It’s like studying Nietzsche, but in EZ comedy form! When this show premiered in 2015, Kings River Life’s Terence McArthur said, “[Jaguar] lays this out in a logical, reasonable manner, insidiously worming past personal standards and concepts of fairness. It’s like a shark explaining the food chain before he eats you. Machiavelli was naïve, Hitler lacked ambition, and terrorists are short on style compared to Jaguar. He comes across as a genial sociopath, an agent provocateur for The Dark Side. He is crude, vile, foul, vulgar, and strangely persuasive.”

I know that Terence is a kind, honorable, devout church-going man, and I briefly tempted him to pure evil, which I regard as a major accomplishment.

Die-hard Jaguar fans should note that this year I am performing not at my usual venue of Veni Vidi Vici, but at Dianna’s Studio of Dance, where I can charge more money. My stand-up comedy will now face the ultimate test — am I funny to people who aren’t drunk?

KRL: LOL. Anything else you would like to add?

Jaguar: I must thank our talented and incredibly hard-working Rogue staff and volunteers who devote their time, effort, heart, soul and love to produce the Rogue every year, as well as our wonderfully generous community sponsors who provide much of our funding.

On a personal note, I’d like to say that what makes the Rogue so special is that it is the most unfettered and uncontrolled arts event in the entire San Joaquin Valley. One of the behind-the-scenes things about the Rogue that not many people know is that no human being ever selects what shows go into the Rogue Festival. Rogue performers are selected from our pool of applicants by a random lottery. I haven’t seen any of these shows yet either — every year the Rogue staff is completely surprised by what performers do on stage. We don’t curate, we don’t vet, we don’t select, we don’t edit, and we don’t censor.

This means there is no guarantee that any particular Rogue show will be appropriate, tasteful, present decent values, or even be any good. (My shows, in particular, are vulgar, obscene, and shouldn’t be seen by any self-respecting person.) (Although we do have performers rate the content of their shows on a movie-like scale from G-rated to Adults Only, and this year there are several lovely shows appropriate for all ages.)

This sometimes freaks out first-time Rogue audiences. You never know what you’re going to get at a Rogue show. It can be brilliant or meh. You could be inspired or disgusted. You can see something breathtakingly beautiful or nauseatingly crass, sometimes in the same performance. And occasionally, there are Rogue shows that just don’t work. The Rogue is a direct, unmediated conduit between the performer and the audience.

Every so often, someone asks why we don’t curate Rogue shows. Maybe if we were a little bit more selective, we could make sure that all our shows are high quality and deliver a positive message on socially conscious themes? Maybe we could promote the right kind of artist, rather than anybody who wins a lottery?

The core belief behind the Rogue Festival is that arts administrators are not the proper judges of which artists should be allowed to perform or which messages audiences should hear. It is not our job to say who is allowed to speak, what they can say, what messages and values are correct, who must be listened to, what to hear or what to think. Our mission is to empower artists and give them opportunities to perform their art and let audiences make up their own minds about whether the art is good or worthy.

At a time when politicians think it’s their job to supervise American society and values … when mobs try to ban books … when the Fresno County Board of Supervisors wants to take control of the Fresno County Public Library away from professional librarians and give book-banning power to a hand-picked, unelected shadow council … when politicians think they should have the power to dictate what religion you should believe, what ideas you are allowed to know, and what medical procedures you are allowed to choose for your own body — it is incredibly important that there are institutions that stand up for free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

The Rogue Festival is the only arts institution in the San Joaquin Valley where I can guarantee you that no one will ever dare ask an artist, “Are you sure you want to be so controversial?” That is something to celebrate, and that’s why I put so much of my time and energy into working on the Rogue Festival.

Thanks to Jaguar for chatting with us and we hope to see you all out at Rogue this year! Watch for more performer preview articles between now and then, and our reviews once Rogue starts!

You will be able to see ALL of our Rogue Festival coverage in our special Rogue category and you can find more Rogue Festival information on our Rogue event page over on KRL News! There you will find press releases and extra info! You can also go to the Rogue Festival website for more info and to purchase tickets.

If you love theatre, be sure to check out Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast, which features mysteries read by local actors. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, and also on podbean.

Check out more theatre reviews & other local entertainment articles in our Arts & Entertainment section. You can also find more theatre coming up on KRL’s Local Theatre event page.

Lorie Lewis Ham is our Editor-in-Chief and a contributor to various sections, coupling her journalism experience with her connection to the literary and entertainment worlds. Explore Lorie’s mystery writing at Mysteryrat’s Closet. Lorie’s latest mystery novel, One of Us, is set in the Tower District of Fresno and the world of community theatre!<