Fest Bets (A-H)

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Published: Aug 27, 2008

Gerald van Wilgen

Kensington's Walking Fish Theatre, best-known for its burlesque shows and classes on subjects ranging from yoga to playwriting, is hosting a full day (one Earth rotation, that is) of standup comedy. Providing the funny will be Philadelphia standup talents such as Chip Chantry and Doogie Horner and ... you. Patrons can come and go — and take part in open-mic segments — as they please for the price of one ticket, but one lucky guest who manages to stay the entire 24 hours will be rewarded with a pass good for every Walking Fish show for the next year.

Sept. 1, 12:01 a.m.-mid., $5, Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Ave.

4x4

Blake Shockley

First it was Anonymous Theatre (where actors perform together in a play after only rehearsing individually with the director) — now that same local theater community is presenting cramped theater. PDC is actually calling this latest project 4x4, and it consists of four new short plays written by four different playwrights all performed in 4-by-4-foot spaces. Too easy? Well, none of those spaces are on a traditional stage — everything takes place in stairwells and corners of the theater. Not innovative enough? OK: All four performances will be going on at the same time, so audience members will have to rotate around Plays & Players to see them all. That's more like it.

Sept. 7, 3 and 7 p.m.; Sept. 8, 8 p.m.; Sept. 11-13, 9 p.m.; $15, Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey Place.

Michelle DeBlasi

Judging from the closets of many women (and their metrosexual counterparts), it doesn't seem all that far-fetched to wonder: Can you change your identity by changing your shoes? That's the premise of Malleable Dance Theater's 7 Veils, a satirical work where, when a woman puts on different shoes and/or reads different classified ads, she transforms into a variety of personas. A study in personal reinvention, it's partially based on real-life situations — the classifieds here are drawn from actual ones posted on Craigslist and in The Village Voice.

Sept. 2-4, 9 p.m., $15, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St.

Herb Newsome

Based on actual witness testimony, as well as imagined life circumstances, this show reflects on that fateful day when foreign terrorists hit a number of targets in America. Stories about the date are related through 12 characters representing a diversity of ordinary people whose lives later intertwine. Director Charles Dumas says the piece (which has been performed on the anniversary of the attack every year since 2002) started out as a community ritual, created to "restore something that was ripped from our souls by the attack — hope and faith in our American dreams." He has since added a second act that seeks to "examine where we as a people have come since 9/11."

Aug. 29, 6 p.m.; Aug. 30, 2 p.m.; Sept. 11, 9 p.m.; $15, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St.

Bill Brock

If you missed this summer's off-Broadway revival of Chris Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo, the heartbroken, furious, hilarious look at the alcohol- and tragedy-plagued disaster that was his parents' marriage, you can still catch A Streetcar Named Durang: Two Burlesques and a Nightmare at the Fringe. As before, The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium will occupy L'Etage Cabaret with three Durang one-acts. This time it's A Stye of the Eye, which takes on Sam Shepard's oeuvre with lamb's blood, symbolic blindness, symbolic cymbals and a coyote howling out in the prairie; Desire, Desire, Desire, a send-up of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, in which Blanche tries to remain a lady as Stan brandishes an enormous ... toothbrush; and The Actor's Nightmare, involving a hapless accountant who wanders onto a stage and is forced to replace the lead actor ... but in what play?

Sept. 2-4, 7 and 9-10, 7:30 p.m., $15, L'Etage Cabaret, 624 S. Sixth St.

Rodrigo Garcia

If you are like me and believe that ambulatory shellfish are just bugs who live in the ocean and that bugs are gross and not food, you are probably partly repulsed and partly excited by Argentinian Rodrigo García's controversial ACCIDENS (matar para comer). Repulsed because, yes, the show is a "duet" between García and a live lobster. Excited because audiences are apparently very freaked out by the show and you're hoping that live lobster gets what's coming to him. García's oeuvre is deconstructing consumer culture, and audiences are promised they'll "hear, see, smell and almost taste" his message, so draw your own conclusions and maybe bring a bib and butter. You never know.

Sept. 6-7, 7 p.m., $25, ICE BOX Projects Space, 1400 N. American St.

Boy meets girl. Boy has piano. Girl has a coloratura soprano vocal range. And there's a story about a piano, which happens to be jealous, that runs between the two humans. If this were written by Tom Waits, the piano would be drunk and doing stupid things to the star-crossed love duo. But it's the show's pianist/composer, Philip Seward, doing his Gershwin-esque best to present a cosmopolitan love affair (with Patrice Boyd as the romantic lead and singer) that brings elements of Woody Allen's Manhattan and Nora Ephron's When Harry Met Sally to the table.

Aug. 31, 3 and 7 p.m.; Sept. 1, 3 p.m.; Sept. 5, 9 p.m.; Sept. 6, 3 p.m.; $20, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St.

Jean-Pierre Stoop

Belgian artist extraordinaire Jan Fabre travels and works under the name Troubleyn. So it's probably no big surprise that his Live Arts offering is designed to disturb. Already performed at festivals in Italy, France and Croatia, Delta Day explores themes of love, suicide and the erotic body (just your usual Fringe combo).

Fabre was inspired by Bobbie Gentry's country music classic "Ode to Billie Joe" — the song about the boy who kills himself by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge in Mississippi. Since the song's 1967 release, it's been anyone's guess as to why he did it. The European take on this question focuses on the solo performance of Croatian dancer-performer Ivana Jozic.

Fabre's been upsetting — and delighting — audiences for a long time. He's taken the money people paid to see him and burned it onstage, making drawings in the ashes. He once covered a building with sketches done in ballpoint pen. In other words, come prepared to see real experimental theater. Don't be surprised if the performance contains nudity ... or if it doesn't.

Sept. 10-13, 8 p.m., $25, Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St.

"Who's brain fucked? We're brain fucked!" So says Zombies Ain't Shit Theatre, a company of St. Joseph's University students venturing into the Fringe for the first time. (Can you really swear so much at a Catholic college?) Be ready for "a mix of high-energy sketch-like comedy mixed with absurdist horror," says member Gregory Day about Brain Fucked, playing at Manayunk's newly renovated Dawson Street Pub. "It's an intimate yet frightening look at the horrors of attention- and focus-enhancing drugs, like Adderall or Ritalin, and how they are changing our country one brain at a time." Yeah, that's fucked, so don't think too hard. "Come in, sit at the bar, have a good beer, and get absolutely disgusted as we devour everyone's brains!"

Sept. 6-7 and 12-13, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m., $5, Dawson Street Pub, 100 Dawson St.

Scott McPheeters

Plenty of people are talking about the industrialization of food, but Scott McPheeters has finally made the discussion more interesting than a bag of Doritos. His new dancer-theater piece, Chick, begins with a buttermilk biscuit snack. We're listening. Then Sara Nye — the one-woman show's star — gives birth to a piece of fried chicken. Fair enough. Nye's character, who is actually part chicken herself, wavers between wanting to eat her baby and wanting to be her beautiful, crispy little baby. Completely unaware of her natural beauty, she begins to tan herself to resemble its grotesque skin and looks to her perch as a potential rotisserie. Ultimately, she becomes what McPheeters describes as a "Rachael Ray sort of character," which, on its own, is enough to make us drop the Snickers. Yum-o.

Sept. 7-8, 6:30 and 9:30 p.m., $5, 123 Cuthbert St.

Matt Clowney

In the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus travels to the underworld in desperate longing after the death of his wife, Eurydice. In Karen Getz's Disco Descending, several of the same characters from her 2006 hit Suburban Love Songs find themselves 10 years older and searching for similar answers to questions about love and death in what Getz describes as a comic actor's ballet, starring Philly all-stars Mary Carpenter, Jennifer Childs, Dawn Falato, Mario Fraboni, Dave Jadico, Pete Pryor and Fred Siegel.

"Suburban Love Songs was about this group of middle-aged people in 1968," says Getz, who wrote, choreographed and performs in Disco Descending. "I started thinking how cool it would be moving these people ahead to 1978." The suburban fortysomethings are busy mourning the loss of their friend in an era characterized by inflation, a gas crisis, a new wave of feminism and, of course, disco. One couple is getting divorced. Another character is discovering his sexuality. "This piece is much less about the era," says Getz. "It's much more about love," set to a soundtrack of songs from the era.

Getz wants her characters to be relatable, warts and all. "Sometimes our bodies are more truthful than our mouths," she says, even if most of these actors don't have any formal dance training. "It makes us realize more about ourselves," says Getz, who remembers well the backlash against disco, politics and inflation, something that may sound awfully familiar today.

Aug. 28-30 and Sept. 3-6, 7 p.m.; Aug. 31 and Sept. 7, 3 p.m.; $25 ($40 opening night), Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St.

Colleen Joy

David Smith eats fire, lies on a bed of nails, walks on broken glass. These talents are near and dear to his heart, but they are also decidedly not everyday. "Many people in their minds ask, 'Why?' That's the elephant in the room and a lot of performers never address it," says Smith. The "Why?" question is pertinent to Smith, who is proud to say he's never had to use his college degree. It's the other degree that matters to him: "I studied at the Sideshows by the Seashore at Coney Island. When I left they made me a little diploma that said, 'David Smith is certified carny trash.' I think of it as my master's."

Aug. 30, 7:30 and 9 p.m.; Sept. 6 and 13, 9 p.m.; $10, Greene Street Studios, 6122 Greene St.

The exclamation points say it all: The Don and Julie Show!!! promises to be better, or at least funnier, than its standing as "Philadelphia's fifth-best variety show." Talk show pastiche might seem stale — what with Saturday Night Live's flagrant flogging of the format, and the earnest hilarity of local NBC's excruciating 10! show — but from Don Montrey (comic mastermind of Die Actor Die, ComedySportz improviser, co-writer of 1812's excellent This Is the Week That Is parodies) and Juliette Pryor (a brilliant comic actress sidelined lately by motherhood), along with pianist Alex Bechtel, expect smart, sharp humor and outrageous "celebrity guests" from the theater community.

Sept. 11-13, 8 p.m., $10, Khyber, 56 S. Second St.

Alex Escalante

Should I buy some peaches today? In his dance ensemble piece, Brooklyn-based choreographer Miguel Gutierrez uses questions banal as well as huge to begin daring, exuberant dances. Gutierrez and his seven-person troupe, The Powerful People, dressed in jeans and sneakers, stand still, then leap recklessly, then address themselves and the audience. A day's worth of musings — peaches, war, the creative process, peaches — are voiced in fragments and then danced in a maelstrom of energy.

Aug. 29-31, 10 p.m., $25, Mandell Theater, Drexel University, 3300 Chestnut St.

Gabriel Bienczycki

The Poles are back! A hit at 2007 Fringe, Dada Von Bzdülöw Theatre from far-off Legnica, Poland, returns to mystify and amuse us. Famous in Europe for intellectually stimulating fare, this year they're bringing Factor T, based on the writings of Polish intellectual Stefan Themerson. This gentleman posited a theory that mankind's tragedy (Factor T) lies in its drive to satisfy certain urges while being repulsed by the acts necessary to achieve these (ever has it been). One of Philly's best dancers, Bethany Formica, performs with the troupe.

Sept. 5-6, 8 p.m.; Sept. 7, 7 p.m.; $25, Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American St.

Festus was just 4 months old when his leg became trapped in a crevice. It had to be amputated to free him. Two years ago, Domenick Scudera, chair of the theater and dance department at Ursinus College, adopted him from an animal shelter. Ever since, walking down the street hasn't been the same. Scudera, who is also a local theater director, will be performing the one-man, family-friendly mix of puppetry and autobiographical narrative that describes how the canine went from a stray to a spokesdog for perseverance. Scudera has performed rough drafts of the show earlier this year, but the Fringe performance, he says, will be the completed version illustrating that man's best friend can sometimes be a source of unbridled inspiration.

"The lesson ... is that nothing can hold you back," Scudera says. "Festus was running around the day after having a leg amputated. A dog does what he has to do, but we get caught up in so many important things and often hold ourselves back. Dogs don't do that."

Sept. 4, 8 p.m.; Sept. 6, 1 p.m.; Sept. 9 and 11, 7 and 8:15 p.m.; $5, Projects Gallery, 629 N. Second St.

Pedro M. Silva

Anyone who saw Brain Sanders' hilarious takeoff on the famous scene in the movie Flashdance where a water bucket douses Jennifer Beals at the end of her routine — performed for a Fringe Festival cabaret many years ago — likely recollects it to this day. Fondly remembered as "the toilet dance," it was way over-the-top. Now, Sanders is expanding on that piece with Flushdance, a more full-bodied reference to Flashdance, although he says it's "more an homage to the soundtrack rather than the movie itself ... and the DJ will be playing other hits from the '80s. It's kind of a nostalgia trip." Whatever, you know it'll be quite the sensation. Such is par for the course with Sanders' Fringe shows. (Remember those topless girls swinging on scaffolding who stopped traffic on Second Street in Old City?)

Presented at Drake Theater, where Sanders has rebuilt the stage and tricked out the space to look like the Mawby's bar in the movie, the set includes strobe lights and poles for, well, pole dancing. Yes, there's a toilet to reprise that cabaret bit. Drinks and noshes will be served; there're "plenty of tasteless jokes," Sanders says; and one scene features waltzing penises. But he wants you to know, "I'm definitely trying to keep it aesthetic. I'm exploring that line between bawdy and artistic. It's high/low art."

Aug. 29-31, Sept. 3-7 and 10-13, 9 p.m., $20, "Mawby's" (Drake Theater), 360 S. Hicks St.

Thomas Choinacki

Without sounding too (ahem) dramatic, it was something like fate when Thomas Choinacky stumbled across a used copy of Georg Kaiser's Gas at a local bookstore. "I read it and was blown away," he says of the German expressionistic play, which imagines a dystopic future ruled by corrupt gas companies. Although Gas is nearly a century old, its contemporary relevance made it an apt première for the Anthology Project, a budding theater group that spotlights current social issues. With its staggering 30 characters (played by six actors) and heady, abstract feel, Gas is an ambitious choice for the novice collective, although Choinacky emphasizes that their production will stay relatively close to the original. Expect some stark moral dueling, lots of industrial revolution-era dinginess and a dash of humor — all framed by spooky modern resonances.

Sept. 4-6 and 11-13, 8 p.m.; Sept. 5 and 12, 11 p.m.; $10, Mew Gallery, 906 Christian St.

"Crypto-zoology-horror-comedy" is how Justin Jain, co-creator of The Giant Squid, explains his show. What the hell does that mean? Part of a trilogy (including last year's Jersey Devil and an as-yet-unwritten third part), The Giant Squid looks to frighten this year's Fringe attendees with the tale of the title animal (crypto-zoology is the study of mythical beasts, BTW). "We haven't seen scary theater that goes beyond turning off the lights and going 'Boo!' at the audience," says Jain. "We wanted to build a story in the audience's mind so when they finally see the monster, it's terrifying."

Aug. 29-30, Sept. 5-6 and 10-13, 10 p.m., $10, Disque Hall, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut St.

John Myers

Focus on someone else's drama for once and go see Have a Nice Life, which follows seven people with seven sets of wacky-but-undeniably-familiar neuroses sitting down for a 90-minute group therapy session. Originally presented at Mum Puppettheatre in March, this Nice People Theatre-produced musical caught enough buzz that it's being reprised for Fringe. Expect meltdowns, breakthroughs, hilarity, sincerity and enough musical numbers to keep you entertained for an hour and a half. The cash bar can't hurt, either.

Sept. 4-5, 7 p.m.; Sept. 6, 7 and 10 p.m.; Sept. 7, 3 p.m.; $15, Prince Music Theater, Independence Black Box, 1412 Chestnut St.

Rachel Shoham presents her collection of fairy tale-inspired glass slippers, created by fusing glass to create the colorful — but unwearable — shoes (sorry, well-heeled ladies). She melts different pieces of glass together at high temperatures and then shapes them to create the pieces. "I let the glass tell me what it wants," she said. This is Shoham's first Fringe Festival, and she has her work cut out for her: Many slippers are still in the making. Let's hope they're ready before the clock strikes midnight.

Aug. 31-Sept. 1, Sept. 5, Sept. 7 and Sept. 10, 3 p.m., free, Old Jewish Art Center, 119 N. Third St.

Ellen Abraham

Ellen Abraham can't recall a time when she wasn't drawing people. She'd go to coffee shops, bars, restaurants, park benches, cafes and the gym to find subjects for her portraits, which have a clear basis in reality but are done with a contorted, skewed and colorful satirical twist. "People who do satirical art aren't always taken seriously. I take being silly very seriously," she said.

Her 48-by-48-inch paintings have an expressionistic cartoon-y feel and are influenced by her love of comic books, Mad magazine, politics and history. The collection is one of three in a series called "From Head to Toe."

Sept. 5, 5 p.m., free, Old Jewish Art Center, 119 N. Third St.

Tammy Jean McMullin

Women are constantly pitted against each other — remember Teams Aniston and Jolie? Despite the occasional stiletto in the back, there is a powerful bond that women share. Emerging choreographer Tammy Jean McMullin celebrates female confidence and beauty in this empowering modern dance performance. The character-driven numbers touch on topics such as the relationship between sisters, domestic abuse and the search for a soul mate. While Tammy is a Fringe veteran, this new group formed this year and is composed of eight female and one male dancers. They move to the tunes of Jewel, David Gray and other contemporary artists. The choreography demonstrates that insecure women cannot search externally for happiness — they can only look within themselves.

Sept. 7, 6:30, 8:30 p.m., $15, Koresh Dance Co., 2020 Chestnut St.

BJ Ellis/Lindsay Crawford

Brothers Benny and Martin Hopper are songwriters. Their credo, "Family-friendly fun with your family and friends," poses one problem: "They're almost too dumb to realize that they're not family friendly at all," says Michael Connor, director and star (he plays Martin) in The Hoppers Hit the Road. The Hoppers reside in Glenside, but after their granny kicks the bucket, they decide to head out on the road to the big city — Philadelphia. The show features 17 songs, written by Connor and co-director Brandon Libby (who pulls double duty as Benny), interspersed throughout the Hoppers' journey. Borne from singing Christmas carols together at a show for Philly improv group the N Crowd, Connor and Libby handpicked the cream of the city's improv crop to play the Hoppers' acquaintances, like Nathan Edmonson, the leader of a hippie band the brothers meet at the corner of Catharine and Passyunk. "Every single person in this cast has really impressed us before and that's why we asked them to do it," says Connor. "We had these characters — the Jersey douchebag, the schoolmarm — they were stock, flat characters. These actors were able to really flesh them out."

Aug. 28, 8:30 p.m.; Aug. 30, 3 and 7 p.m.; Sept. 4, 8:30 p.m.; Sept. 6, 3 and 7 p.m.; Sept 7, 7 p.m.; $15, Adrienne Mainstage, 2030 Sansom St.

Crowded House
All The World's a Stage
Six Degrees of Pig Iron
Pop Shop
Have It Norway
What's My Line?
Along Came a Giant Spider
Of a Certain Age
Fest Bets (I-Z)