Inside Tucson Business
ARTS & CULTURE
Fringe Theater Festival offers up five cutting-edge plays
Friday, February 17, 2012
By Herb Stratford
A showcase of cutting-edge, experimental and uncensored theater and performance art, the second annual Tucson Fringe Theater Festival takes place next weekend at two venues: Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. Sixth Ave., and Solar Culture, 31 E. Toole Ave.
Five pieces will be performed three times each during the Feb. 23-26 span of the festival.
• "The Barely Free Baja Spectacular!" spontaneously created by a performance company named One Gentle Mule, the show's manifesto is "We shall secrete a concentrated but vast parody spectacle of New Old-Timey music, Fresh Bold-Slimy humor, miracles, vagabonds, politicians, maniacs, psychos, and freakishly good musicians! There will be no blood! Everything will be up for sale, and nothing shall be sold! We shall insist upon a Free Baja in the way only those from Baja may possibly understand! Fun will be had, and mayhem, and music! There will be no available exclamation points when we are through! And anyone from north of Sierra Vista shall be positively enriched by the unacceptability of the continued Maricopa Sheriff-ness of Massachusetts Joe! Do you dare not participate?"
• "Lethal Fairy Tales" is a song cycle about the plight of those unfortunates who are encumbered by unwonted intelligence and thus feel alone and alienated in modern society. By explicitly following the instructions contained in these songs, however, these afflicted souls can finally throw off the shackles of reason and analysis and thus transform themselves into true Americans.
• "Numb" is a tribute to the adult children recovery movement and shamanic self-knowledge. It's about a needy bride who after much rejection finds her peace in feeling her feelings.
• "The Starter House," a story of a young man who stumbles into an office without any recollection as to how he got there (it was the hallway) or why he's there (because that's where the hallway lead). He attempts to unravel the riddle of where he is and what he's doing there with questions such as: What is the mysterious salesman's commission rate and can it be avoided?
• "Unreality Shows: Three Short Plays" are "Happens All The Time" about a newcomer who joins a terminal cancer support group and begins asking tough questions, "Kids!" about two moms and their precocious kids who are joined by a handsome stranger and his child while spending a day at the beach, and "Is A Pig's Ass Pork?" is a play set in a dystopian matriarchal society decades into the future.
Tickets for each of the plays are $10 each or $7 for students and seniors. See the schedule and buy tickets online at www.tucsonfringe.org or Antingone Books, 411 N. Fourth Ave.
Contact Herb Stratford at herb@ArtsandCultureGuy.com. Stratford teaches Arts Management at the University of Arizona. He appears weekly in Inside Tucson Business.
------------------------------------------------------------
TucsonStage.com - home of Chuck Graham's "Let the Show Begin"
Visit the website for TTA Listserv subscription information
No comments:
Post a Comment