All Around the Edge

Friday night’s theme is “Before the Edge”,  with art and performances with sexual themes that are playful and teasing, such as a Atomic Cheesecake Pinup Pageant and performers such as

• Eliza Charming
• ShortStaxx
• Lee Luscious/Lee Harrington
• Coco Mource
• Dix Washington

and other art and performances on the site. The headliner is the famous sex educator, performance artist, and feminist Annie Sprinkle.

Saturday things get a bit darker, with performances featuring more BDSM and kinky themes such as flesh pulls, rope bondage, and poetry.  Some performers like Lee Harrington and Annie Sprinkle will be reprising appearances with a more explicit theme, and they will be joined by fetish performers such as Klawdya Rothschild, Julie Simone, Graydancer, Sacred Mark Sanctuary,  and more.

It all takes place at the Load of Fun gallery, 120 W. North Ave in Baltimore, beginning at 7pm. Admission is $15.

image used permission of Suzannah Gerber

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All About Numbers

As the video on their site will tell you, in the past 9 years Artistic Fraud has called for:

• 81 school desks
•  32 flourescent semaphore flags
• 790 maps
• 36 vibraphone keys
• 2400 square feet of polyester wedding dress lining
• Over 300 performers.

You can see a short film about the relatively small production Fear of Flight on YouTube now, and hear the ensemble as they blend and create their vocal stagescapes (score by Jonathan Monroe). It’s fascinating how the score backs up the dramatic collaboration of the characters on the stage…

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I’d been to Edinburgh with the same company back in 2002, when I had the chance to see a show from a Russian physical theatre company, Derevo. That show was called La Divina Commedia, took place in a circus tent in an industrial part of the city and was at the time – and still to this day – an example of some of the finest, most dreamlike and Boschian performance work I’ve experienced.

 That’s Right: Boschian.

Theatre in the round, four blocks of audience with a tower between each block. A tightrope at least twenty feet up across the stage. A woman, naked from the waist up, immaculately muscled, pale and dusted white wearing faun legs and curling ram horns summoning the three other performers as rabid dog animals only just prevented from attacking the audience. I looked closely at one of those dog-people and for a moment saw nothing at all that was human there.
The show in 2006 was entitled Ketzal and took place at what is well known as one of the most exciting and innovative performance venues at the Fringe, Aurora Nova. This year it’s unfortunately not a part of the festival which even though I’m not going to be able to be there upsets me tremendously. Ketzal, however, was a fitting way for me to end my relationship with the venue.

Again, the imagery is amazingly dreamlike, severely disturbing and unlike anything you’ll have seen on this side of the ocean. They have a complete mastery of environmental design – as soon as you enter the theatre you are, without a doubt, somewhere else. Mark Monahan from telegraph.co.uk reviewed Ketzal in 2006 and said, “Quite simply, Ketzal, the company’s latest show (named after the Naguan for “bird”), is one of the strangest, darkest, most mesmerisingly beautiful things you may ever see.” Frankly, I couldn’t agree with him more. If you EVER get the chance to experience a performance by Derevo, do not pass it up. You can also see their video and still image work at their e-life site.

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Now, I’ll admit that I found this by googling “Mountain Standard Time Arts”, but a causal browse on
their website revels a lot beneath the generic title. The first festival was in 1971 in Calgary, AB Canada. Since then, the festival has specialized in combining traditional art forms like film and dance with more modern ones like video and multimedia, as well as covering everything else under the “performance art”
umbrella. I know that this will be of particular interest to my friend Gray, who has a lot of experience with combining video with dance to create new and interesting performance pieces.

They don’t have the current program for this year’s festival up yet, but going to the Program navigation
link on their website does bring up links to past artists that give a sample of what the festival has to
offer. The artists range from Camille Turner, who uses her performance as beauty queen Miss Canadiana as a way of mirroring the society around her; to the Nihilist Spasm Band, who specialize in creating their own unique sounds using a variety of low and high tech instruments and items not normally related to music; to Mono Logical, a monologist who incorporates video and audio clips into his monologues about urban space and global economics (among other things.) And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

If you’re interested in how performance arts are performed in different parts of the world, you could certainly do worse than checking out this site.

The Mountain Standard Time Performance Art Festival is being held October 3rd-17th, 2008 in Calgary, AB
(Alberta) Canada. http://www.mstfestival.org/index.html

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Her son, Paul Sills, died of pneumonia today at age 80, having continued his mother’s work and shaped theatre as we know it today.

Paul Sills, the “Orson Welles of Improv”

Maybe you’ve heard of some of the places Paul Sills’ influence was felt. Second City? The Kids in the Hall? OK, how about Saturday Night Live? 30 Rock? Broadway’s Ragtime? Or how about one of his students, a fellow by the name of David Mamet who achieved a thing or two on Broadway and in Hollywood? Maybe you’ve been to a Comedy Sportz workshop or performance in your town?

Really, looking at the list of people and places influenced by and trained through Sills’ techniques is like looking at the entire shape of our cultural milieu. And yet, hardly anyone has heard of him. Jeffrey Sweet, theater historian, says “Paul was never given his due. Nobody did more for the American theater.”

So, in the interest of giving him his due…

Paul Sills & Story Theatre

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“Embrace what frightens you. Get some new experiences.”
– Adam Carolla, Dancing with the Stars

Over the weekend I’ve been in Fort Lauderdale as part of a performing arts  seminar. Part of it was myself and others doing some Japanese-based performance art, something like a cross between butoh and kabuki and a post-modern aesthetic. There were other groups there, but if can say so, ours was the most planned of the events.

It  was an interesting experience, because my friends and I came to this conference from several different states, and spent a few hours in a hotel room Thursday night planning out cues, music, transitions, and the acts. We actually only got one rehearsal, moments before the house opened, and it didn’t matter. We blew the audience away – it was a small seminar, about 350 people, and they didn’t expect theatre. They expected a minor demonstration of, say, Kabuki costume technique, or perhaps butoh suspension performance.

They got an MC. They got comedy. They got a story arc. They got drama. They got costume changes, careful attention to music, and for the next two days people talked about it. I daresay they’ll continue to talk about it after they leave to go back to their homes.

On the one hand, part of it  is due to the professionalism of the performers, in particular the Director, Lee Harrington. But honestly, we were all professionals, and what really made the difference was the seriousness with which we took the small performance. It didn’t matter that the audience was small; it didn’t matter that the admission was only $5. We took the time and the care to do the show the right way, and I think that it was done as much for each other and ourselves as anyone else. Afterwards, as we all went out for ice cream, there was a measure of camaraderie that is rare in any setting, but which normally takes weeks and months of rehearsal to instill in a cast.

Somehow we managed to get it in just a couple of hours of planning, rehearsal and performance.  Taking that time made all the difference between just another conference demonstration and what was undeniably a work of art.

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Last night’s presentation on Great Performances was as good as promised. Anyone who has ever liked Seinfeld or Sex and the City will appreciate it – in fact, you might think the play was a rip-off of those ouvres until you realized that Sondheim wrote it in the 70’s. The music is also melodic enough that I was able to appreciate it more than the wandering tunes of Sweeney Todd, and included one of my favorites: “Not Getting Married“, a hilarious patter song sung by a nervous bride on her wedding day.

Raul Azara had an understated elegance to being the lead, content to be the lens through which the ensemble could explore their talents of acting, singing, and playing instruments (there’s something quite hilarious about a wide-eyed flight attendant with perfectly-coiffed blonde hair puffing away on a baritone in the middle of a large number). He really let his talent shine in the final number, though, “Being Alive“, and “Marry Me…a Little“.

One of the more difficult challenges in any production like this is the translation of the play from the intimacy of a theatre – an immersive experience – to a tiny screen in a living room. The directors met this challenge beautifully – the lighting, focusing our attention, giving dimly- seen presence to the ensemble at times, as well as the choreography of the camera served to augment the script and acting rather than simply documenting it.  And you were able to see Stephen Sondheim interviewed at the end and it really brought home the ground-breaking nature of this musical.

So I’m relieved to see the DVD is available through PBS.ORG, and I plan on purchasing it soon. It’s something I can see coming back to and enjoying again and again.

Blue Man Group: How To Be A Megastar LIVE! 

Not much to say about this, except that the bridge between the fine arts and the young new kid on the block, Performance Art, is Blue Man Group. Not just the music, but the entire commitment of their performances to this identity of alien-yet-familiar forms. So the idea of a DVD-CD-Book set coming out on March 25th, 2008 is pretty damn cool. The fact that this avant-garde group was performing in Dallas, TX, in front of over 40,000 Blue Man fans is even more astonishing – a great example of how cutting-edge art can support himself.

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It’s beautiful.

http://view.break.com/445525 – Watch more free videos

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I’ll be stage managing the show portion of this festival in the beautiful Memorial Union Theatre in Madison, WI. But the entire weekend is going to be loads of fun:

 he Madfest Juggling Festival is approaching!! The 47th Annual Madfest will take place on January 17,18, 19, and 20. There will of course be a Juggling Extravaganza stage show, on Saturday the 19th of January, at 7:00 PM in the Wisconsin Union Theater, featuring special guests The Passing Zone and Sean Blue.

Join us a day early for our usual Thursday night practice from 6 P.M. to Midnight in the On Wisconsin room, right next door to the Memorial Union.

Open juggling will be held in the On Wisconsin Room Friday night, and at the University of Wisconsin Field House, on Saturday and Sunday.

Times, which are subject to change, are as follows (please see our website for cutting-edge up-to-the-minute details):
6:00 PM – midnight, Thusday, Red Gym, On Wisconsin Room (716 Langdon St.)
7:00 PM – midnight, Friday, Red Gym, On Wisconsin room (716 Langdon St.)
9:30 AM – 5:30 PM, Saturday, UW Field House (1440 Monroe St.)
7:00 PM, Saturday, Public Show. Memorial Union Theatre (800 Langdon St.)
9:30 AM – 5:30 PM, Sunday, UW Field House(1440 Monroe St.)

For more information about accomadations, crash space, and parking, as well as the most up to date information about the festival, please visit: http://www.madjugglers.com/madfest/.
Hope to see you there!

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I have to indulge in the completely worthless and futile speculation of the Chicken or the Egg, or, to put another way, the true roots of the Influences of Change in Art, Music, and Literature.

It involves discussion like this:

“This seeming dichotomy is explained by the stages of development the two art forms had reached. To visual artists moving beyond formal representation, music provided a guide because they considered it already to be in a state of pure abstraction.”

See? It just rolls off the eyes, into the cerebrum, and lolls about there with a happy plop sound. Does it really serve a purpose? Does it really further the human aesthetic and drive the machinery that powers the food of the soul?

No.

It justifies more liberal arts majors, and gives people with philosophy degrees something to do. It gives bloggers like me something to feel superior about, since we write about what is raw and real without the need for anything as silly as credentials.

But…if you want to indulge with me, the very-well-written article is here.

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