My mother tells a story about a time when I was young—3-years-old or 4—and I was trying desperately to get the swing I was seated on moving. My little legs kicked and kicked but I stayed motionless. After a minute or two, an adult came over and gave me a push and that’s all it took. I caught the momentum and I was swinging! As she tells it, I turned to the little boy on the swing next to mine and exclaimed in a giddy, high-pitched voice “I was getting so frustrated! Were you getting frustrated, too, Brooksie? I was getting so frustrated!”
View More NOTES from the INCUBATOR (Simpatico): Entry Two: Getting So Frustrated
Have you heard the one about the anorexic dancer who fell off a balcony and landed 14 stories below onto a squooshy flat of doughnuts loaded on top of a car? The fat, cream, sugar and flour she never ate saved her life. What was killing her on the inside was what saved her from the outside. I loved the irony Kathryn Craft set-up in her debut novel, The Art of Falling, by this improbable circumstance.
View More Merilyn Jackson’s Book Review of The Art of Falling
Got a bad case of the Mondays? CardioCreativity dance classes can help beat your work or school day blues. Created by Gabrielle Revlock and Nicole Bindler as a segment of their larger Dance Apocalypse project, these classes transcend the average dance or fitness regiment by allowing participants to unleash their creativity in a performance-based setting while burning calories. The class occurs every Monday through April 7th and appeals to everyone, of all ages, sizes and socioeconomic classes. Even if you’ve never danced in your life, you can still join in and have a good idea of what’s going on during the class.
View More CardioCreativity (Dance Apocalypse): A Not-So-Blue Monday
The Philadelphia Artists’ Collective concludes its 2013-14 season with Friedrich Schiller’s MARY STUART, directed by PAC co-founding artistic director Dan Hodge (whose previous credits include the company’s potent inaugural production of THE DUCHESS OF MALFI in 2010).
View More The Women of The PAC’s MARY STUART
We have lots of events coming up this week! We’re hoping the impending snowstorm avoids Philadelphia, because we don’t want to miss any of them. This week, you’ll notice a little calendar button next to our events. Click that button to add the event to your GCal!
View More This Week in Clips • March 24 through 30
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
Shut Up & Dance 2014 benefit for MANNA proved one for the books. Every year the performance is typically wonderful for a number of reasons, primary among them its great sense of Philly community spirit in support of MANNA and not the least of which is the esprit of the participating dancers. Some years are standouts artistically and this was just one of those years.
View More A benefit night to remember – Shut Up & Dance 2014
From the moment you arrive, Iron Age Theatre’s production of Sam Shepard’s BURIED CHILD, directed and designed by John Doyle and Randall Wise, thrusts you into a deeply disturbing world of grime, decay, and depression. Mounds of barren dirt, wood chips, and dried-out stalks surround and invade a tumbledown farmhouse with a rusted old mailbox that hasn’t seen a delivery in years. Inside, a filthy stained sofa with torn-up upholstery and torn-out stuffing is held together by black duct tape, as huge gaps between the rough-hewn wall slats let in the pouring rain and dreary darkness of a relentless storm.
View More BURIED CHILD (Iron Age): Decay and Dysfunction in America’s Heartland
Neil Simon’s autobiographical comedy, LAUGHTER ON THE 23rd FLOOR, offers an intimate, insightful, and uproarious glimpse into his experiences as a junior writer for Your Show of Show—the influential TV program that ran on NBC from 1950-54, and was the first to incorporate sitcom sketches into the traditional variety-show format.
View More LAUGHTER ON THE 23rd FLOOR (Bristol Riverside Theater): The Humor and Hysteria of 1953
The historic Walnut Street Theatre celebrates two milestones with its mainstage presentation of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, written by New York playwright Joseph Kesselring in 1939: the play’s 75th anniversary and its own 205th landmark season. Directed by Charles Abbott, the Walnut Street’s crackerjack production (in association with Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, PA) whips up the perfect concoction of murder, mayhem, and misplaced “mercy,” topped with a large dollop of macabre madness, in this delectable recipe for hilarity.
View More ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (Walnut Street Theatre): Macabre Madcap Comedy Classic
Upon entry into the theater space, I was directed to a setup off to the side with slips of paper and pens. Little placards told us to write a NOTE TO SELF and drop it in the metal can, examples offered including “get donuts for the office.” I had received the inside scoop from one of the other theatergoers that they’ll be used as a formative part of the show. As NOTE TO SELF is improv comedy, I didn’t want mine to be too mundane to work with so I chose a simple, sadly relevant, yet ripe for humor note: stop eating in bed. The conversation and jokes with strangers, all ruminating on what their contribution would be, set a fun, friendly and upbeat tone for the performance.
View More NOTE TO SELF (Figment Theater): Improv at Its Finest, with a Twist.
THE WEST is ensemble-devised musical theater, described as “an absurdist western music hall drama about the gun that killed Billy The Kid, the gun that didn’t, and truth and fiction in history, human relationships, and our day-to-day lives.”
View More THE WEST Comes to Town: Interview with Creator Alex Bechtel
Writing this play has been hard. It feels like squinting into the distance at an object that I think I should be identifiable but is just too blurry. Luckily, I have a cohort on this trek. If you met Lena (Barnard) and I, it would feel a lot like an episode of Gilmore Girls or the West Wing. We talk over each other and make obscure references and laugh at inside jokes that no one else gets. Being around Lena makes me feel entirely secure. I can be myself with her. I like to think the feeling is mutual. Who else will get all her Julie Andrews references?
View More NOTES from the INCUBATOR (SIMPATICO): Entry One: The Collective Spirit
This Week In Clips is a weekly clip regarding the best upcoming arts events. If you have an event that should be on this list, let PaperClips215 know.
Lots of events coming up, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. Okay, so most of them aren’t Irish themed, but they ARE a great reason to get out this week, and do something other than drink green beer.
View More This Week in Clips • March 17 through March 23
What better way to welcome the coming spring than with flamenco? Flamenco, which means “flame-colored,” is a genre of Spanish folk dance and music traditionally characterized by sensual choreography and bold, complex guitar rhythms. In Philadelphia, dance company Pasión y Arte is bringing the spirit of modern flamenco to the Philadelphia Flamenco Festival, which runs from March 1st through March 16th.
View More Passion and Art in the Philadelphia Flamenco Festival
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
The summer of 1998, I permanently moved out of my mother’s house. (My mother moved down to Nashville abruptly and without me.) So I traveled…
View More DANCING AT LUGHNASA (Curio): Casting Disaster
The National Asian American Theater Festival and Conference is coming to Philadelphia this October, and Philadelphia’s Asian Arts Initiative and InterAct Theatre laying the groundwork with a reading series of new plays this Spring. Directed by visiting artist Rick Shiomi, founder of Minneapolis-based Mu Performing Arts, “The Way Home” features contemporary works exploring what “home” means to Asian Americans.
View More Asian Arts Initiative’s THE WAY HOME continues with You for Me for You
On March 1, White Pines Productions, which had been without a headquarters since its displacement from historic Elstowe Manor in 2013 (read about the displacement…
View More Update on White Pines: A New Home and a Full Slate