Dale Heinen and her BorderLight Theatre Festival (BLTF) creative team take great pride in delighting audiences with shows they’re unlikely to see in Cleveland and performances they will likely never forget.
“It’s a truism, but there’s literally something for everyone because there’s work that suits all ages, all interests and all pocketbooks, including a lot of free work,” said Heinen, co-founder and executive and artistic director of BLTF. “Our whole ethos is ‘pick something new and give it a shot,’ because our audiences know they may be surprised by a performance they find absolutely magical.”
This year’s festival, the seventh, runs from Wednesday, July 8 through Saturday, July 11. The closely curated programming of 40+ shows will range from theatrical performances by fringe artists from Cleveland, and throughout the U.S., blended with dance, music, comedy and international shows. Performances will be held at 15 indoor and outdoor venues throughout Playhouse Square, including The Hermit Club, and surprise street shows.
The highly subsidized ticket prices range from $11.50 for children ages 6 to 14, up to $38 full price for an international show.
“I love the feeling that I have to choose between so many awesome shows that are happening simultaneously,” said Dan Moulthrop, CEO, The City Club of Cleveland and founding board member of BLTF. “I love knowing that no matter what I choose, I’m going to be engaged and delighted because the team has done such an excellent job of curating the festival.”
Located on Euclid Avenue near East 13th Street in Playhouse Square, the City Club serves as the central box office for BLTF. Attendees can also purchase tickets online.
Additionally, BLTF’s website includes event search filters that help buyers choose by day, genre, interest area or by free or ticketed events to facilitate their ticket purchases.
Moulthrop cites another timely benefit for festival attendees: “We’re in a moment characterized by a lot of fear of difference, and BorderLight helps us bridge divides. It helps us understand people we don’t know, and there’s nothing like theater to inspire empathy and to help us better understand the human experience.”
Rachel Costanzo, another original BLTF board member, who already has her tickets for 14 shows, appreciates the opportunity to spend several days tickling her theatrical fancy.
“Some shows may not resonate with me, but others will challenge me or inspire me or make me laugh,” said the director and senior consultant for The Acuity Group in Cleveland. “I am still thinking about performances that I have seen in past years, so I know something in my mix of 14 this year will do the same, which is fascinating and exciting.”
The seasoned festivalgoer who has seen as many as 19 performances in one BLTF also knows to wear tennis shoes so that she can comfortably hustle between Playhouse Square locations to catch all of her shows. She advises newcomers to bring an open mind, an experimental attitude and a desire for fun.
A strong local flavor
Although BorderLight festivals always feature a diverse national and international mix of artists, keeping artists from Cleveland and Northeast Ohio involved has never been an issue, according to Heinen.
“We’ve been annual since 2023, and the number of applications has been consistently between 75 and 100, and our goal is to consistently program half local, half nonlocal,” she said. “We make it appealing to emerging artists as a boot camp for learning arts administration, marketing and self-producing, and maybe even figuring out which role makes them happiest.”
Heinen adds that BLTF also appeals to artists at different points in their careers to provide opportunities for them to produce new work or a new form or practice or a new partnership they want to test out.
“We want the festival to appeal to artists at both ends of the scale and anywhere in between,” she said. “That’s part of how we keep participation robust and bring new people in.”
For Cleveland actor and playwright Amy Schwabauer, BLTF has been a rewarding opportunity to test a range of new work.
“As a DIY artist, it’s nice to have a venue that can produce new work because that’s what I’m always creating,” she said. “I can adventure and do different things, and I feel like BorderLight is a great place to put up those works.”
Schwabauer has participated in six festivals. In 2025, she won The Char and Chuck Fowler Audience Choice Award for her solo performance play “I Wear My Dead Sister’s Clothes,” and in 2022, she and actor/playwright Jill Levin won The CAN Journal Artistic Theatre Award for Levin’s toy theater play “Coco and Gigi.”
“BorderLight is a place where I feel comfortable taking risks and feeling like the quality is still great because they are super professional and supportive,” Schwabauer added. “I also love the artists who come in from out-of-town and going to see their different shows. Last year, I spent three days at the festival to see as much as I could.”
This year, you can catch Schwabauer and another notable Cleveland theater artist, Carrie Williams, reprising the characters they created as two of the three witches from “Macbeth.” Now, they’re in a comedic piece “Bell, Book, and Discount Cocktails” in the Hermit Club Grille. A couple festivals ago they created the zany characters for “Bell, Book and Late Night Drive-Through.”
What to look for this year
Among the numerous performance art surprises BLTF has in store for attendees this year, Heinen discussed several that stand out for her.
For the international programs, several artists are flying in from Lima, Peru, to perform “Los Regalos” (The Gifts) in the Westfield Studio Theatre in the Idea Center.
“It’s an example of how BorderLight can bring lesser-known types of theater to light and share them with more people,” Heinen said. “This company from Peru has toured the world for a long time at a high level, but this is their first American set of performances, Chicago and here, because we partnered with the Physical Festival in Chicago to bring them here.”
These physical theater experts tell the story of a father and his two sons without any dialogue but with acrobatic movement, clowning and masks.
“The ability to tell a story with just your body is an art form not fully appreciated in Cleveland, so I’m excited to share this moving performance,” Heinen said. “It was a fun opportunity to discover the Peruvian community in Cleveland and connect with residents who might be interested in this kind of work from other Spanish-speaking countries.”
Heinen is also excited about singer/songwriter Estzer Balint, a Hungarian native whose family moved to New York in the 1970s. Balint, whose family befriended filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, appeared in his film set in Cleveland, “Strangers in Paradise.” She will perform a piece she’s created called “I Hate Memory” in Cleveland State University’s Black Box Theatre.
There will be two workshops at this year’s festival. Cleveland’s Dancing Wheels company’s free session will provide participants the opportunity to use a specially-adapted wheelchair to learn how the company’s choreographic process works.
From Tel Aviv, Israel, artist Amir Yatziv will perform “Peter is Back,” a live show featuring an AI avatar inspired by a Franz Kafka story. Also located in CSU’s Black BBox space, this innovative piece marks the American premiere of Yatziv’s show, and includes a workshop detailing his process of how he uses AI as a tool.
“This should be interesting to people who want to learn what the possibilities of AI are for the creative arts,” Heinen said. “They’re obviously huge, and I don’t think there’s any question about Amir’s ownership of his creation.”
How BorderLight came to light
After graduating from Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Film and Performance Studies, Heinen, a Cleveland native, ran the Footsteps Theatre Company in Chicago for ten years. The company produced all-female Shakespeare plays and original scripts with a focus on strong female characters.
Heinen then relocated to Dublin, Ireland, before attending Middlesex University in London, where she earned her M.F.A. in International Theatre Directing in 2003. She then worked in new play development for Soho Theatre in the West End of London and took freelance jobs in Europe as a dramaturg and director.
“For Soho I was reading hundreds of new plays and working with playwrights and running an international playwriting competition called the Verity Bargate Award,” Heinen said. “I kept directing as much as I could, and I would come back to the states and direct in Chicago and out west. I did some work internationally and a little bit in London.”
While living in Europe for 15 years, however, Heinen took advantage of opportunities to attend several historic theater festivals, including those in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Avignon, France, that left a lasting impression.
In 2013, she returned to Cleveland to be closer to her family.
“I thought, well, what do I do with my eclectic resume?” Heinen said with a laugh.
Fortunately, she connected with a new friend, Jeffrey Pence, associate professor of English and cinema and media at Oberlin College. The two started seeing plays together.
“We generated this idea of what if there was an international theater festival in Cleveland because we have all of this infrastructure at Playhouse Square, which is unusually large for a city of Cleveland’s size, and at that time at least, largely dark in the summer,” Heinen said.
Her mother, Lee Heinen, suggested that they connect with Joy Roller, then president of Global Cleveland.
“Joy embraced the idea and started making introductions to people like Dan Moulthrop and Char Fowler, who were our founding board members and are still with us today three terms later,” Heinen said. “Then we built our advisory council of local leaders in the arts, commerce and philanthropy, and we developed the organization and started a 501(c)(3), and it’s now seven festivals later.”
Festival history
After three years of fundraising and developing relationships with foundations and donors, BLTF enjoyed a successful debut in 2019.
“We very ambitiously [and] rolled it out as a big festival from Playhouse Square to Public Square, with about 40 shows including international work, and we even brought in giant puppets from South Africa, and did a parade down Superior Avenue in conjunction with Cleveland Public Library’s 150th anniversary,” Heinen said of the first festival that brought in 10,000 people.
Heinen and her team decided to make the festival biennial so they could address the fundraising and logistical challenges of obtaining the correct visas for international artists.
Then they had to cancel the festival in 2020 because of the global pandemic. In 2021, the festival was entirely virtual.
In 2022, they revived the large-scale, square to square festival. They considered it a success, but attendance wasn’t as large, as people still tried to figure out the new world of post-pandemic public experiences. Next, they chose to make Playhouse Square the sole location.
“We decided we should do the festival every year because we don’t want people to forget about us in the off year, and we don’t want to lose our great staff, who had gone through this crucible of a learning process,” Heinen recalled.
To keep things interesting and fresh, Heinen said, after each festival her team evaluates and reconsiders every component.
This May, Heinen, Yasmin Maldonado, director of operations and communications, and Kadijah Wingo, producer, attended the World Fringe Congress in San Diego to dive into the fun and “incredibly immersive” learning and networking opportunity with attendees from theater festivals worldwide.
They also tapped into the Midwest Trifecta Lottery for the first time to learn about and recruit acts for BLTF.
Today, Heinen thoroughly enjoys seeing her “wish fulfilled” every year as the BorderLight Theatre Festival energizes the Playhouse Square neighborhood with packed streets and a vibrant, joyous vibe for four days. She also treasures the team of staff and volunteers that she works with year-round and at the festival.
“I just love these people, and I have a good experience working with them,” she concluded.
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