Again I apologize for no photos--they really would help. You wouldn't be forced to depend on my inadequate descriptions, delivered insultingly in bulletpoints, as if this were a memo for upper management.
So with that, away we go!
"What The Storm Brought Home" by Jere Pfister
- A one-woman play.
- She tells us about her mother and three aunts from New Orleans.
- After Katrina, she had to rescue one of the aunts, Billie, from a shelter in Baton Rouge.
- Billie is starting to go senile.
- Billie talks to the narrator's dead mother about sexual abuse she suffered from her step-father.
- The narrator realizes that her aunts, who seemed so puritanical and who took obsessive interest in her sex life, were protecting her.
- They never left her alone with her grandfather.
- But they could never say why until they were old and seriously infirm.
- This was one of the "Hmmm, yes..." pieces. It was good but not "fringe."
- A farce like "Spelling Bee Sluts" from the second weekend.
- A father takes his three daughters out to one of those hunting ranches where they keep animals penned for hunters to shoot.
- One daughter is a goth, one daughter is a curvy blonde airhead, and one daughter is a mannish lesbian.
- The animals are mostly dancers, so whenever the ranch manager sets one free, we see some animalish dancing.
- Which is abruptly truncated by the shooting of the four hunters.
- There is also music and singing.
- The music was played on a keyboard set-up and was amplified. It tended to drown out the unamplified singing.
- While I watched this, I kept wondering, what is the point? In short, "Meh."
- These two are the founders of FrenetiCore and the Frenetic Theater
- This film is basically a film of three women dancing in an industrial landscape, while a man does karate movies.
- This seems like something in the air--combining modern dance with other activities that involve the moving body.
- So combine modern dance with kung fu, or with circus clowning.
- It was an interesting piece of work.
- Tasteful, not very "fringey" except for the unusual combination of dance and martial arts.
- This was the first piece that seemed really fringey.
- Davidson is a dancer who presented a kind of high-camp U.S.O. show.
- He was dressed in drag as a spike-haired Statue of Liberty.
- His dress left his upper chest bare, so we could see his pierced nipples.
- His clunky high-heel boots made dancing a little challenging.
- The "chorus line" girls were dressed in frilly hot-pants and red-white-and-blue tops.
- Davidson spoke to the audience and encouraged audience participation.
- One of the dances was to a medley of the armed service theme songs.
- Then he changed into a costume that would allow a little more dance-like movement.
- He danced to "Don't Laugh at Me."
- This is that super corny song that begs people not to laugh at other people because they are different.
- The sentiment is unarguable, but the song is cringe-inducing.
- In his dance of the song, he kept falling down and popping back up.
- It was hard to tell whether he wanted us to experience the music ironically (about the only way I can experience it) or not!
- Davidson was funny, an amazing showman, outrageous, and a hell of a dancer.
- A conversation between three members of the Weather Underground on the day they accidentally blow themselves up.
- Alice, the female member, is unconvinced about the bombing that is planned.
- The two other guys use wacky, fractured logic to try to convince her.
- The conversation deliberately reflects Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the Doormouse.
- It's a clever conceit, and it sort of works.
- But it kind of goes on too long.
- This is a performance that includes "dance" broadly defined, singing, and extreme physicality.
- It's the second Frenetic Fringe Festival that deliberately recalls Butoh.
- Hubscher is on stage in a Butoh-like loin cloth.
- But more important, he performs under an extreme physical constraint, one he can barely manage.
- This gives his performance unbelievable tension.
- He lifts a wide wooden beam onto his shoulders.
- It must be 30 feet wide, 4" x 4".
- He staggers under the weight.
- It is slightly unbalanced, and when he looks like he is about to fall, he asks for help centering it.
- He speaks into a microphone.
- You can hear him panting.
- He tells us that it is a beam from the floor of his house, which has been torn down.
- He is muscular--he definitely has a dancer's body.
- But he is staggering under the weight.
- You can see his muscles straining, and the mike picks up his panting.
- He then sings a torch song to a recorded accompaniment.
- He finishes while we in the audience were grimacing, awaiting his fall.
- Surely he is meaning to recall Jesus Christ bearing the cross through the streets to Calvary.
- His assistants lift the beam off his shoulders.
- He breathes hard, and slowly puts on his pants, shirt, and shoes.
- Then he sings (rants, chants, raps) another song--an angry one about being a Texan.
- It's for George Bush.
- Another legitimately "fringe" performance.
- Pirtle is kind of a local performance art legend.
- He has stuff up right now at CAMH, if you want to see his tamer side.
- For this performance, he explains that he heard somewhere that you can get drunk faster if you squirt booze up your ass.
- Uh oh...
- He has a squeeze bottle, lube, and a bottle of wine.
- And "stunt pants" as he calls them.
- And thank god for that--he doesn't actually have to take the pants off.
- Still, we watch the entire awkward process.
- He succeeds in getting a small quantity of wine up there (or so it seems--no way to know for sure, really).
- He gives himself the classic pre-breathalizer sobriety test. He is still sober.
- But he assures us it might take a few minutes before he is "rip-snorting."
- His is the only performance that required no talent.
- Yet he was funny and obviously knew how to keep an audience's attention.
- Pirtle is a showman, that's for sure.
