 | | Master of puppets: Sebastienne Mundheim’s new work is ethereal and heavy. |
A-List
Sea of Birds, Wandering Alice,
Wawapalooza and Sweet By-and-by.
»Rare Bird
Sea of Birds Through Sept. 9. Various dates and showtimes. ICE Box Projects Space, 1400 N. American
St. $25. 215.413.1318. www.livearts-fringe.org
Ivars the Butterfly Catcher, Gregor the Tormented Meadow Dweller and several other
eerily created puppets move in shadows and dimmed lights, while Philly’s Sebastienne
Mundheim speaks in her somber voice about war and departure and an American child’s
active imagination. Mundheim describes her work as, “Fragile paper sculpture animated by
dancers, a lyrical voice, a sonic landscape, live musicians, light and shadow play.”
It’s Pan’s Labyrinth on steroids and in person. Her sculptures move
with an eerie starkness, as performers shift through their routines weaving in layer
after layer into the pieces, while Mundheim and her five performers explore “how we
inherit the stories of our parents.” It’s also one of the few pieces, according to
Mundheim, that successfully merges dance, puppetry and storytelling. If you’re looking
for a Fringe event that will enchant and challenge your eyes and ears with dizzying
layers and performance styles, this is the one for you. (St. John
Barned-Smith)
»looking Glass
Wandering Alice Through Sept. 13. Various dates and showtimes. $25. Christ Church Neighborhood House,
20 N. American St. 215.413.1318. www.livearts-fringe.org
Has it ever stuck you as absurd that an audience experiences dance immobile and nailed
to a seat? Philadelphia’s Nichole Canuso Dance Co. melts the wall between punter and
hoofer with its work-in-progress Wandering Alice—inspired both by Lewis
Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Haruki Murakami’s
surrealist novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (which, like Alice,
discovers the demented lurking just behind the mundane). Creator and choreographer
Nichole Canuso plays Alice and leads an 11-strong cast through an entirely original
production. The audience members, meanwhile, are liberated from their sheeplike
subservience and roam the dreamscaped Christian Neighbourhood House, discovering the
production or (much more exciting) having the production find them. It’s high art on
drugs, basically—a wonderful concept and one that’d make a fantastic
Avengers episode (leading British scientists suffer increasingly
surreal and grotesque deaths at the hands of the Red Queen, the Walrus and the Rabbit).
It all sounds exactly like the sort of mentalist event the Philadelphia Live Arts
Festival and Philly Fringe was designed to foist upon us. (Steven
Wells)
»comic Belief
Wawapalooza 2: Get Shorti Through Sept. 4. Various dates and showtimes. $10. Second Stage at the Adrienne, 2030
Sansom St. 215.563.4330. www.livearts-fringe.org
You may have Google-read that the last issue of Adbusters dug the
hipster up and sucked the marrow from his groovy bones. They say the only people who
really hate hipsters are hipsters. But you know who really, really hate hipsters? The
poor bastards at Wawa. Can you imagine the horror of working in an average-to-shit
convenience store endlessly patronized by a procession of smug oafs who think there’s
some kind of ironic kudos to be gained by the pretense that mediocrity is thrillingly
authentic (see the ironic smugster demonstrations that accompany attempts to shut one of
these ho-hum shitholes down)? The creators of Wawapalooza get it. That’s why their show
was one of the runaway artistic successes of last year’s Fringe. This year’s update
features demented attack-sketches savaging Guitar Hero, sweatpants,
online dating, the Jersey shore and of course Wawa—the store where coffee goes to die.
There, I said it. (S.W.)
»THE HILLS
Sweet By-and-By
Through Sept. 13. Various dates and show times. $25. Arts Bank at the University of
the Arts, 601 S. Broad St. 215.413.1318. www.livearts-fringe.org
Forget about DiMaggio. It’s Joe Hill we need most in these dark days of war and the
radical right. Hill is the legendary labor activist, rabble-rouser and artist who fought
the good fight early last century. As Phil Ochs sang of Hill, “It’s the life of a rebel
that he chose to live/ It’s the death of a rebel that he died.” It’s fitting that one of
Philly’s most rebellious artistic groups should take on Hill’s life for this year’s Live
Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. Dubbed “one of the few groups successfully taking
theater in a new direction” by The New York Times, Pig Iron Theatre Co.
collaborates with Daniel Rudholm of Sweden’s Teater Slava for this one-man multimedia
show. Rudholm plays Hill’s hilarious and inspiring songs on banjo and concertina, taking
us on a journey from his native Sweden all the way to his eventual execution in Utah on
trumped-up charges. It’s an amazing work that will have you wondering where our Joe Hill
is. (Jack Schonewolf)
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