“Zero Tolerance” is a highly autobiographical piece performed and written by Bárbara Selfridge looking at caregiving, disability and family. Selfridge’s narrative weaves between various points in the past and various characters in her family. She speaks directly to the audience and leaves the house lights up thereby breaking down the fourth wall. There is no escaping what she wants to tell us.
Selfridge wants to tell us that having a family is hard and it sucks and sometimes people don’t or can’t do what they want to or should do. The narrative is well constructed and at times touching...
Comedy, Drama, Monologue, New Work - http://www.barbaraselfridge.com/
“Romance” is a David Mamet play presented by the Queer Arts Society. The play is about justice, world peace, people and everything else. It reminded me of this saying we had when I worked in campus radio “we offend everyone equally.” This work pushed every political button I have and I laughed the whole way through it. At times I reflected about what it meant to laugh at the justice system, drug abuse, racist slurs, misogynist comments, child abuse, homophobia, etc., but I was too busy laughing at the next moment to finish my thought.
Awkward Stages Productions presents a spirited musical set in highschool where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuals are outcasts. The school matchmaker keeps everyone coupled up with his magic wand.
Comedy, Musical Theatre, Satire, All Ages - http://awkwardstageproductions.com/
What a perfect way to begin the festival! I enjoyed Wonderheads’ Grim and Fischer last year, and LOON outshone my expectations as an absolute delight. The Wonderheads have chosen a poetic medium to tell their stories and they really make full use of strong images in their work. Somewhere between puppetry and physical theatre, their stylized approach allows their simple and whimsical stories to come alive.
Comedy, Drama, Physical Theatre, All Ages - http://www.wonderheads.com/
Epic music starts off this epic adventure. I LOVED Peter ‘n Chris Explore Their Bodies. I am a product of my generation; I love self-conscious comedy complete with references to all my favourite movie genres.
Comedy, Physical Theatre, New Work - http://www.peternchris.com/
I looked this play up, because I know Lanford Wilson is famous and successful and I was certain that I was missing a really important piece of contextual information that would make the reason for performing this piece evident and everything would fall into place. From Wikipedia all I got was a lot of “it is implied that…” which, yes, I gathered from watching the play. Other reviews were less than helpful. I just feel like this story lacks context. It was one of his earlier plays, perhaps this is why it felt so... something. Emo? It felt like a...
As a comment on the vacuous nature of the rock and roll lifestyle in the 60s and 70s and how dumb people look when they’ve done too many drugs, this show does a great job. Unfortunately that concept was eloquently communicated in the preshow slideshow. The content of the live performance consisted of about three jokes (usually involving lots and lots of sex and lots of lots of drugs) repeated over and over and over again for the next hour. The music was pretty good. The content was two-dimensional. I like my satire with a bit more wit.
Bad Day to be a Juggler will not teach you to juggle – but it will shed a light on why someone would want to become a juggler even though as he says “when you Google juggler – it autocorrects to unemployed”.
Comedy, Cabaret, Stand-Up, Improv, All Ages http://www.theajishow.com/badday/
There is a wall separating our heroine from the rest of the world, an invisible wall that she comes up against with a loud bang if ever she tries to connect with others. She is different. “The loner, the lone wolf, The Oddity.” At the start of Tiffany Anderson’s original play Oddity, we are introduced to a girl of five with lots of energy and a wonderful imagination. She talks to herself. She talks to us. She talks to Aliens. She’s got a camera in her head and she’s gonna show the aliens what the world looks like.
