FRINGE REVIEW: Untitled Feminist Show

POSTED: Friday, September 21, 2012, 3:45 PM

Filed Under: Arts | Dance | On the Fringe Theater

Every year, there's hundreds and hundreds of performances at the Philly Fringe and Live Arts Festival, and unless it's one of the big shows, it's sometimes hard to tell what you're going to get. Here at Critical Mass we're sending writers to as many shows as we possibly can for 75 pocket-sized reviews over the course of the fest. Check back in with us at On The Fringe every day for real talk on what these things actually are!

SHOW: untitled feminist show

GROUP: Young Jean Lee's Theater Company

GENRE: Theater/dance

ATTENDED: Wed., Sept. 19, 9 p.m.

CLOSES: Fri. Sept. 21

BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: In Young Jean Lee’s latest experiment, six charismatic stars of the downtown theater, dance, cabaret, and burlesque worlds come together to invite the audience on an exhilaratingly irreverent, nearly-wordless celebration of a fluid and limitless sense of identity.

WE THINK: Lee's "utopian feminist experience" is Bang's older, more serious sister, challenging the audience in profound ways (even the title — which isn't a title, yet is — provokes thought), yet born of the same fun spirit as Charlotte Ford's comic treatise on body image, sex and nudity. In untitled, six performers enter naked in a ritual procession, then perform a variety of dance and theater vignettes perceived through our constant awareness of their nudity. How, and why, does nudity affect us so much? From childlike games and a dance pantomiming domestic chores to Amelia Zirin-Brown's mimed offers to audience members of increasingly ridiculous sex acts , we're both confronted by their bare flesh and conditioned to ignore it. When the performers finally appear clothed for their bows, they seem unfamiliar, like they're suddenly in disguise.

—Mark Cofta

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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