Usually we sit around the art meeting talking about upcoming issues and trying to come up with a couple of striking images that might work on our cover. This time we had a million of 'em. That's Fringe for you.

"The audience is sitting on the same earth where people and their stories lie buried beneath. Obviously, we don't need props — we have everything there for us already. ... It adds a reality to the stories that you couldn't find elsewhere."

So, even though its artists wander, Pig Iron never dies, says Rothenberg. "I was talking to Julia Stratton, a local sculptor and my landlord for the past seven years, about all the projects in the festival that James, Manu, Geoff, Suli and Dito are doing, and she said, 'You did it. You really did it. You told me you were trying to change the face of theater in Philadelphia, and now it's happened.'

Matsune says for the "Eraser Head" piece, for example, a customer pays $3.90 to stand on a pedestal and have Subal draw a portrait of him or her. Matsune then rubs out portions of the portrait with an eraser and the crumbs from the subtraction are then handed to the customer in an envelope. The manipulated portrait remains on exhibition.

With a chat about those stereotypes as its basis, Stuccio and Stromgren hashed out The European Lesson over dinner of reindeer and whale at the latter's Oslo apartment. Next thing you know, Stromgren's choreographing Philadelphia actors and toying with notions of international, national and personal identity.

"Make yourself a mask of someone you don't know here, and wear it as you introduce yourself to them as them, like, 'Hi, I'm you.'"

This time around, Verdensteatret's own ambassador is a 10-foot-tall spider born of the junkyard heap, and their picture of the world appears drawn from a palette of ambient noise, floating silhouettes, the unnerving and the unexplained.

While you'll be able to spot him with his head buried deeply under the black focusing cloth of a photographer, his charges — that means you — can become everything from a lion-girl to a hermaphrodite to a snake and beyond.

24-Hour Comedy Marathon | 7 Veils | 9/11: A Day in the Life of a People | A Streetcar Named Durang | ACCIDENS (matar para comer) | ... And Piano Make Three | Another Sleepy Dusty Delta Day | Brain Fucked | Chick | Disco Descending | The Disillusionist | The Don and Julie Show!!! | Everyone | Factor T | Festus the 3-Legged Wonder Dog | Flushdance | Gas | The Giant Squid | Have a Nice Life | From Head to Toe | Head Shots | HerStory | The Hoppers Hit the Road

In Flux | Janet 2.0 | LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! Hoity Meets the 'Hood | Lost Animation of the 20th Century | The Maguffin | Manic Swell | THE MeLTING BRiDgE | SÃ-WU: Safe Again with You | Sea of Birds | S.H.A.V.E.D. | Straight Up Vampire | Stuporwoman | Thee Spectacular Waterboarding Adventure | Through Their Eyes | Waiting for the Ship from Delos | Wawapalooza 2: Get Shorti