And maybe that’s what makes Ellie Brown’s DEAR DIARY, BYE such a fascinating show. The play, directed by Seth Reichgott, presents her 1984 diary. Brown wasn’t so different from any other ten year old – she liked boys, she got sick of her parents, she was teased, and she liked more boys. There’s a pleasure in this kind of uncensored presentation, a la Nature Theater of Oklahoma.
View More DEAR DIARY, BYE (Ellie Brown): Schoolyard scraps and crushes galore
The much-talked-about BLEED, running this weekend only as the next page in FringeArts’ idiosyncratic year-round programming, opened in New York last year to what seems like universal praise. The dance piece is the culmination of two years of work and three other dance pieces, which O’Connor made, then digested and collapsed into BLEED.
View More BLEED (FringeArts): Tere O’Connor’s dance embraces all
Joan was quizzical, studied ‘Pataphysical science in the home. Late nights all alone with a test tube, Oh, oh, oh, oh. Do you have problems…
View More ‘PATAPHYSICS FESTIVAL: Films, Art, Talks, The Savage God
Article courtesy of Art Attack Philly, in association with Drexel University and the Knight Foundation. See the original article here. In a way, art is always about identity.…
View More ID:3 (HYBRIDGE): The Name of the Beast
“Anything’s possible in a world where media rules all.” In 1981, John W. Hinckley Jr. fired into president Ronald Reagan’s entourage, hitting four men, including…
View More HINCKLEY (New City Stage): Life, Death, Celebrity
If Philadelphia is a tightly wound city wearing a permanent scowl, Sophiatown is tightly wound with a broad smile. Sophiatown was a cultural hub for…
View More THE SUIT (Prince): Balancing cruelty and kindness in pre-apartheid South Africa
On their website, Team Sunshine Performance Corporation calls themselves “an unstoppable force for good.” Among other things, they love play fighting and projects that sound insane. In that vein is their current collaboration with Shakespeare in Clark Park, HENRY IV: YOUR PRINCE AND MINE.
View More Join the Battle: Team Sunshine & Immersive Arts Involvement
Talented and celebrated director Aaron Cromie teams up with the idiosyncratic Idopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium to tackle French impressionist Jean Giraudoux at the Walnut Street Theatre…
View More ONDINE (Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium): At sea with emotional hyperbole
Enter the world of Japanese Japanese theater company Niwa Gekidan Penino: claustrophobic, hallucinatory, voyeuristic, surreal. Niwa is the Japanese word for “garden.” For over a decade…
View More THE ROOM NOBODY KNOWS (FringeArts): Put your secret emotions, dangerous illusions here
The performance spaces which have made Kensington their home (Walking Fish Theatre, Hella Fresh, Mascher Space, and fidgetspace) are remote, both financially and physically, from the city, yet still close enough to converse artistically with downtown venues and even to attract funding.
View More You’re Probably Missing Out: A tour of Kensington’s performance spaces
At People’s Light and Theatre’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s GHOSTS, the program note written by dramaturg Gina Pisasale discusses Ibsen’s life and work. In his theater,…
View More GHOSTS (People’s Light): Just give in to the melodrama
EL AÑO EN QUE NACÍ (THE YEAR I WAS BORN) is the January installment in FringeArts’ year-round programming at their Race Street Pier theater, and…
View More EL AÑO EN QUE NACÍ (FringeArts): Living mosaic
John, a baby boomer, patriarch, and oil exec who has spent his life gaining, has lost quite a lot in a short period of time:…
View More Wilma Theater’s CHEROKEE impresses, in a way
AMERICAN FAIRY TALES is a kids’ show, adapted by co-artistic director Stan Heleva from L. Frank Baum’s short stories with a generous amount of modernization and localization. This is fast and messy theater making, thriving on audience involvement. The story doesn’t matter as much as the laughs, and the more we shouted along, and the more sassy little Benjamin in the front row jeered and challenged the actors, the more engaged they, and we, became.
View More AMERICAN FAIRY TALES (Walking Fish): Riotous fairy tales at Walking Fish
Dylan Thomas’s poem A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES runs the risk of becoming sticky-sweet with nostalgia, and it is director Sebastienne Mundheim’s idiosyncratic vision, and the spot-on…
View More A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES (Lantern): 60-second review
David Patrick Stearns writes yet another petulant review, this time of Pig Iron’s TWELFTH NIGHT. If he whines enough that he isn’t entertained at theater…
View More TWELFTH NIGHT (Pig Iron): Upends Expectations, Rights Shakespeare’s Play
This is in Kensington, on the closing night of Mascher Space Cooperative’s Microfestival of Stubborn Occasions: a set of performances described as “a space where choreography is given permission to exist in the in-betweens.” Two shows are on the docket for tonight, Foster’s #JANEGOODALLDRAMA and Christina Gesualdi’s MY NEBULOUS SOLO.
View More A MICROFESTIVAL OF STUBBORN OCCASIONS (Mascher Space Co-op): The moment doesn’t exist
Adam Vidiksis’s legs are completely still like a concert violinist’s. He barely bends except to lean over the snare as he burrows the tip of a…
View More OPERATIC OR NOT, a review of THINGNY IS BACK, the third night of fidget’s 4th Annual Fall Experimental Music Festival
Six audience members isn’t an empty house; that’s the full load for Nichole Canuso Dance Company’s THE GARDEN. The basement below us is an expansive concrete stretch, a network of small rooms and squared pillars, and we’re sent down into a smallish room scattered with chairs. We’re invited to sit wherever we like.
View More THE GARDEN (Nichole Canuso Dance Company): Offer your hand…
SmokeyScout is named after artistic director Josh McIlvain’s cats: Smokey and Scout. The program of the November NICE AND FRESH thanks them, along with Moving Arts of…
View More NICE AND FRESH November (SmokeyScout): Get punched in the face by art at SmokeyScout Productions’ NICE AND FRESH