COVER STORY .

Green Up Your Act

Fringe vet Thaddeus Phillips goes Off the Grid.


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Published: Sep 1, 2009

Making do with less is a long-standing Fringe tradition. Arising from DIY ingenuity and starving-artist economics, the Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe have always welcomed artistic frugality, from unlikely venues to shape-shifting, space-efficient sets. Taking the self-propelled ethos a few steps further — and quite literally — Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental's new Fest-within-the-Fest OFF THE GRID makes that connection explicit: Billed as "the first eco/green/new energy theater festival," its performances will run entirely on renewable and self-generated power sources.

"We should figure out a way to highlight how there's nothing plugged into these wall sockets," jokes Lucidity main-man Thaddeus Phillips as he surveys the space — part of the Painted Bride's New Studios — which will become the lobby of a makeshift venue offering a diverse slate of performances. Thanks to rooftop solar panels, the space is almost entirely independent of the Bride's power grid. "Except for fans," Phillips admits. "We don't like being hot." At least they've gotten PECO to donate wind-energy credits to offset the fan usage. "Maybe we can get somebody to donate some beer, too," muses Phillips.

Inspired by the venue-rotation system of the Edinburgh Fringe, OFF THE GRID features four very different shows and functions like a microcosm of the larger festival. Phillips' Microworld(s) Part #1 — the mini-festival's centerpiece and certainly its flashiest offering — is a solo show that, he says, "works on several metaphorical levels." Performed inside a gleaming white phone booth-size box lit by energy-efficient LEDs that run off a Weza generator (a foot-pumpable human-powered device typically found in fishing boats, RVs and sub-Saharan villages), the play's format looks toward a greener theater future even as its content acknowledges some apparent dead ends of sustainable thinking from years past. It takes place in Tokyo's Nakagin Tower, a modular building from 1972 whose capsulelike apartments were designed to be replaceable — but were never replaced — on the day before the building's scheduled demolition.

Following Live Arts' Flamingo/Winnebago (2007) and The Melting Bridge (2008), which combined technological gimmickry and a high-energy pop performance style with ruminations on environmental issues (peak oil, climate change), Phillips says he wanted to explore solutions to those problems. The second installment of this two-part work (at the Bride in February) "will probably be a lot of cardboard boxes and newspaper," Phillips laughs, but for this piece he and his collaborators wanted to create something green "but still high-tech and slick."

That said, one of the festival's goals is to communicate that "green theater" doesn't have to be or mean anything in particular. Alongside Microworld(s)' snazzy technical intricacy and the conceptual directness of Miro Dance Theater's Generate. Degenerate. (performed by one dancer and two bicyclists pedal-powering the lights), OFF THE GRID will also include music from The Mural and the Mint and a performance of card tricks by New York magician Steve Cuiffo (whose energy requirements are limited to the solar-powered lights). As Phillips points out: "I could go outside and do a show by myself right now, and it would be green." Maybe it is easy, after all.

(r_hoffman@citypaper.net)

OFF THE GRID, Sept. 4-19, $15, Painted Bride New Studios, 230 Vine St., offthegridfest.org.