Despite its name, the Maui Fringe Theater Festival doesn’t have to go too far to find talent. Many of the contributing playwrights are experienced writers from the entertainment or media industry who have retired or vacation on Maui.

But the event, which opens Thursday at Iao Theatre in Wai­luku with a gala and continues through the weekend with a half-dozen plays, lets their creative juices flow freely and without constraint, said Michael Pulliam, festival organizer.

"Every writer/performer has this sort of dream of ‘I wish I could just do it my way,’ so it gives them the opportunity to put on this bare-bones production of the show that might otherwise cost them thousands of dollars," he said. "For one weekend, you don’t have to hear the word ‘no.’"

The playwrights and performers pay a few hundred dollars to stage the show and receive half of the gate. Usually everybody breaks even, Pulliam said.

This year’s festival features an unusual confluence of coincidence in the production of "John Brown’s Body," a one-man show about the abolitionist whose attempt to start a slave rebellion ratcheted up tensions on the issue of slavery leading up to secession and the Civil War. Penned by retired television writer Will Hausman, the play stars Paul Janes-Brown, a well-known figure in Maui’s performing arts community who is a descendant of Brown.

"The theater sent out an email to two actors … who they felt could possibly do the show," said Janes-Brown, who had a long career in the arts industry on the mainland before moving to Maui in the 1990s. "I wrote back and said, ‘Yes, I’m really interested in looking at the script, and by the way, John Brown is my ancestor.’"

Janes-Brown’s lineage traces back not only to the radical abolitionist, but to passengers on the Mayflower and Revolutionary War soldiers. He grew up well versed in the lore of his family but found that Hausman’s well-researched work brought out aspects of John Brown that were unknown even to him.

"He went out into the wilderness and founded a town," Janes-Brown said, speaking of his ancestor. "He built a school, he founded a church, he was the first postmaster of that area, appointed to the position by John Quincy Adams. He also surveyed roads and also established a lending library in his town."

The play discusses how the Browns were "fighters on behalf of freedom ever since they landed on the Mayflower on Plymouth Rock," he said. "He really believed that God chose him to destroy the institution of slavery, to emancipate all of God’s ebony children and lead them to the promised land. That’s what he believed in his heart of hearts."

Having the opportunity to perform this play goes beyond kismet, he said, adding that an Oahu theater has already expressed interest in staging the play.

"There are no coincidences," he said. "I have no idea where this is going to lead, I have no idea what’s going to happen with this, but when I got the play, I said, ‘I have to do this.’ And it’s a 45-page monologue, and I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of frickin’ words."

Another Fringe Festival offering, "Celestial Mechanics," by Matthew Gurewitsch, details the interaction between two tourists and a homeless person who performs as a living statue.

Gurewitsch, who lives on Maui and writes about cultural affairs for The New York Times, based the play on a similar experience he had in Spain, where he encountered a man from Eastern Europe who appeared to be from Central Africa.

"We could hardly talk because he had no Spanish, he had no English, so it was a very fragmentary conversation, but it made me think about what it must be like to live as a very displaced person and a very hidden person, wearing a costume all the time," he said.

Gurewitsch set the play during a transit of Venus, a rare celestial event in which the planet’s orbit takes it between Earth and the sun. Gurewitsch remembers the 2004 transit — the first in modern times — "and the way it hit me is the way it hits this living statue.

"On the other hand, the two other people in this play, they say things that I’ve said in my life. So little bits of me are in all the different characters, but none of them is me. Each of them is also drawn from people I’ve encountered in the real world."

Gurewitsch said the Maui festival is giving him the chance to do something he always wanted to do.

"Coming to Maui, one of the things I wanted to do was start doing things that were not predicated on other people’s creative work," he said.

Also on the playbill is "They Call Me Q!" — a one-woman show about Indian-American actress Qurrat Ann Kadwani, who was born in India but grew up in the South Bronx and went on to star in several TV daytime dramas.

"She decided to do this one-woman show about her life, where at night she had to be this nice, conservative Indian girl but by day she was more like J.Lo. … She’s performed it at the New York Fringe and the Chicago Fringe, and it’s won several awards."

Grouped with some of the longer plays will be shorter performance acts, including poetry by 2011 Fringe Award winner Sharyn Stone, the Adaptations Dance Theater and stand-up comedian Chino LaForge. Admission to each show is $10.

"There’s basically a show every hour on the hour from Friday night till Sunday night," Pulliam said.