This weekend brings fresh productions including 'Soul Pop: Summer of Soul' and Breakthrough Theatre's Original Play Festival

With no end in sight to Central Florida's wet hot white boy summer, there's no better place to escape Orlando's humidity than inside an air-conditioned theater. If you're sick of reheated artistic leftovers, there are some refreshingly original productions premiering this weekend that should help you dry off and chill out.

Soul Pop: Summer of Soul

Fringe ArtSpace's season started off on a soggy note, with HVAC-induced flooding that shut down the Church Street venue for several weeks. Defying my expectations, they were able to repair the damage in time to reopen for July's sold-out screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, featuring the Rich Weirdoes shadowcast. Now ArtSpace lets the sun shine in with their first full post-flood production, Sonflower Joy Music's Soul Pop: Summer of Soul (running Friday, Aug. 9, through Aug. 25).

Meka King, the founder and CEO of Sonflower Joy, is one of the area's most sought-after singers, starring in musicals like Little Shop of Horrors and The Color Purple and originating iconic roles at Universal's Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Disney's Galactic Starcruiser. Now, King and her talented co-stars AC Jenkins, Saige Love, Matt Pablo, Nick Melvin and Shanden Vance are taking audiences on a different kind of cosmic journey, into a galaxy they've billed as "filled with pop, love and a whole lot of soul."

Soul Pop: Summer of Soul is described as an interactive concert experience, whose setlist features an eclectic selection of pop and soul songs — ranging from Whitney Houston, Bruno Mars and Earth Wind & Fire to Justin Timberlake and Taylor Swift — along with original music performed by a rotating roster of guest stars that includes Charlyce Simmons, Raven Iman and Trumaine Lamar. But even before the concert starts, guests can soak in the summertime vibes inside ArtSpace's lobby, which will host vendor tables and a gallery show celebrating Black joy through art. "I am excited for SJM's group Soul Pop to have its very first concert residency," says King in an emailed statement. "Ten performances at Orlando Fringe ArtSpace is a great way to introduce the community to this amazing group of performers and their art, as well as demonstrate our company's mission in action. Our goal is to uplift the art and voices of Black creatives and creatives of color, and, ultimately, to display that artistry to diverse audiences. Everyone is welcome, and it will be out of this world!"

Sonflower Joy's show is a product of the Collective, Orlando Fringe's incubator that was announced last year [full disclosure: The Collective is overseen by my spouse]. The "deep dive" artistic development program offered the inaugural cohort mentorships, educational opportunities and in-kind services sponsored by the Downtown Development Board, in order to create original productions.

"We're doing familiar music our own way. We really are friends and family who love performing together," says King. "We also love giving back. The core of our mission is to create opportunities and raise up other artists. This is an opportunity for us through the Collective, and it's important to us to be a blessing in return."

Breakthrough Theatre's second annual Original Play Festival

If you enjoy the thrill of taking a chance on a never-before-seen playscript, be prepared to camp out at Breakthrough Theatre this week, because they are hosting their second annual Original Play Festival from Wednesday, Aug. 7, through Sunday, Aug. 11. Described as "a place for theater lovers to find new voices, but with a smaller, more local flair" than the Fringe Festival, the event also celebrates the company's 16th year, as well as the first anniversary of Breakthrough's new Winter Park home at 6900 Aloma Ave.

Entries in this year's festival include an adaptation of the Roman tragedy Phaedra, featuring Cherran Dea and Sarah Lockard; How I Learned (Not) To Drive, an original solo show created and performed by Jesse Bradley-Amore; Escape, writer/director Jordan Barnett's psychological thriller set in an escape room; and Solomon Jordan's metaphysical mystery Revolution, Celestially Speaking. Two of this year's scripts come from writer/choreographer (and occasional Orlando Weekly contributor) Jodi Renee Thomas: Still Bitchin': This Bitch Will Never Stop, a sequel to her autobiographical spoken-word solo show A Bitch Like Me; and BWA: Broads With Attitude, an all-female ensemble dramedy starring Suzi Aten, Kat Johnson, Emma Bramer, Grace Wieckowski and Amy Jean Barnickel.

Perhaps the festival's most intriguing original offering is Florida School Board Meeting (2:45 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 10, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 11), which schoolteachers Jill Craddock and Jennifer Bennett devised based on actual transcripts. After being riveted by a local school board meeting on YouTube, the pair interviewed school board members from across the state and watched hundreds of hours of public meetings, compiling a cornucopia of crazy-but-true comments triggered by hot-button topics. "It felt like drama, and it was hard to believe it was real," says Craddock. "Our hope is that the audience will be entertained and moved to get involved in local government. We can't let the extremists take over." (Editor's note: See page 11 for some unplanned synchronicity.)