|
|
|
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: Animal Animal Mammal Mine
GENRE: Dance/theater
GROUP: Penn Dixie Productions
ATTENDED: Sun., April 14, 8 p.m., Underground Arts
CLOSES: April 20
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: A devised theater piece that grows out of extensive interviews with women who have inherited the technology of the 60s. It weaves these characters together with dance, projections, and the breathtaking hybrid sculptures of Martha Posner.
WE THINK: Writer-director Anisa George concocts a fascinating adventure, based on conversations with women about reproduction that were expansive enough to explore concerns about climate change and the nature of life itself. As with other works of this style (think Pig Iron Theatre Company, New Paradise Laboratories, Applied Mechanics, and anything staged by Mark Lord), we're embraced by a dizzying variety of fascinating images, action, and sounds — most of them showing low-tech innovation, like Martha Posner's wearable sculptures — from an on-stage glacier and menacing animal activists to the giddy thrills of actresses singing while circling the audience on bicycles and discovering their capacity for flight.
Set designer Amy Rubin uses Underground Arts' basement space well, surrounding us and a deep, sea-blue playing area with eerie bare trees. Often funny while also surprisingly moving, Animal Animal Mammal Mine makes the question of bringing children into an ailing world real and personal, and balances that worry and cynicism with a hopeful message about life's resilience.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: An elephant on trial. No, like, literally, in a courtroom.
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: The Trial of Murderous Mary
GENRE: Theater
GROUP: Aaron Cromie & Gwen Rooker
ATTENDED: Fri., April 12, 8 p.m., Kimmel Center
CLOSES: April 20
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: The Sparks Family Circus comes to [a small coal-mining boomtown in the Appalachians], led by Ringmaster Charlie Sparks and featuring his beloved five-ton elephant, Mighty Mary, “the largest living land animal on Earth." ... The sad, bloody fiasco that follows threatens to derail the circus permanently.
WE THINK: Cromie is circus owner and ringmaster Charlie Sparks, while Rooker, Dave Johnson, Sarah Gliko and Erin Carney play multiple roles and instruments in this powerful play with music. They charm us with earnestness as performers in a circus that traveled the country dazzling small-town crowds until their elephant handler retires, replaced by an inexperienced fumbler who causes Mary to panic in a parade.
Whipped into a frenzy by rumors and lies spread by opportunistic journalists, the town wants Mary to pay for killing her incompetent master. The mob's ignorance and ugliness are portrayed using the same well-crafted methods that amused us earlier: clever songs, vivid caricatures, and shadow puppets. One might wish for more about Mary — both her majestic size and her apparently gentle disposition — but her fate requires no embellishment: The raw facts of her trial (yes, they prosecuted an animal in court) and her cruel fate are emotionally forceful enough.
"Murderous Mary" tells a story that feels contemporary, though it occurred a century ago. Media exaggeration, mob panic, and cruelty to animals are far from extinct.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: Before/after photos of Berlin.
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: Sounds & Rhythm of Resistance
GENRE: Dance/Music
GROUP: Taller Puertorriqueño
ATTENDED: Fri., April 12, 6 p.m., Barnes Foundation
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: Taller Puertorriqueño travels back in time to celebrate Puerto Rico’s Emancipation Day; the day when slaves from African origin were set free on the island in 1873.
WE THINK: Taller Puertorriqueño long ago established itself as the hub of Philly-based Puerto Rican art and activism. For its joyous interpretation of Emancipation Day in Puerto Rico (March 22, 1873), the barrio gallery brought out its finest musicians and practitioners of Bomba dance for a densely percussive call-and-response performance.
The musical/vocal ensemble and its dancers welcomed audience participation, which was essential to the groove and the communal sensation of liberation. The sensuous, clave-heavy sound demanded interaction, especially when additional colorfully dressed dancers became part of the fray.
The only problem I had with the performance (as well as my own level of participation) wasn’t the fault of the Taller Puertorriqueño ensemble: It was the space. The Barnes’ largish community room that serves members and its friends on Friday nights was too big and airy to accommodate the sweaty intimacy of the band, its sound, the dancers and their glorious intent.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: Seriously, a small town put an elephant in a courtroom and tried her for murder.
We always get a ton of stuff that doesn't make it into the official agenda for one reason or another. Or sometimes it does! Anyway, this is some of the stuff that CP staffers are attempting to get to this weekend their own selves. You have no excuse for boredom.
FRIDAY 4/12
- John Train's got a new non-concept album. See them play stuff from it during happy hour tonight @ Fergie's.
- If you haven't heard Divers yet, get your ass to The Fire tonight.
- The Making Time lineup tonight is pretty sweet: Delorean, Autre Ne Veut, Doldrums and Jacques Greene.
SATURDAY 4/13
- The Manayunk StrEAT Festival isn't a typo — it's a hilly place where you can eat food.
- The good people at Single Girl, Married Girl Records are celebrating a Winter Zine Relese @ Space 1026.
- Passyunk Square's Second Saturday will be it's largest yet with music and all that good stuff, but we're going for Pollyodd's free strawberrycello cream samples and heaps of complimentary food.
- Daisy Fried (judge of this year's poetry contest!) and Brian Teare (who judged it a couple years ago) and both reading as part of an afternoon double-bill juggernaut @ Penn Book Center.
- The School of Rock curriculum starts off with the Ramones for beginners (they do really only use those three chords) and culminates in Zappa. Therefore, when The Ramones are on the bill of a School of Rock show, as they are at Johnny Brenda's tonight, you can generally expect to find really tiny kids doing their best Joey impression; the effect is really just fantastic.
- Because there weren't enough festivals this month, Subaru is putting on a cherry blossom fest. There's a 5k race for the athletic types, tea ceremonies and martial arts demos for Japan enthusiasts and a Prettiest Pet in Pink contest for the crazy cat ladies.
- Snuff, gore, guts – when we think lazy Sunday we think back-to-back horror movie screenings (Cinedelphia Film Festival).
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: Berlin: Landscape of Memory
GENRE: Lecture/Exhibition
GROUP: James B. Abbott
ATTENDED: Thu., April 11, 5 p.m., Center for Emerging Visual Artists
CLOSES: April 26
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: A challenging, in-depth exploration of an important moment in time [the fall of the Wall] and the resulting changes in landscape and Berlin neighborhoods 24 years later.
WE THINK: Culled from a body of work spanning more than 20 years, James B. Abbott's photography exhibition shows Berlin during a period of major transformation, but in a subtle way. Tucked away in an elegant space overlooking Rittenhouse Square, the modest-sized landscapes, while devoid of expressive faces, manage to carry an emotional heft usually reserved for portraits.
As would be expected, sections of the exhibition depict how Berlin has changed in a before/after fashion: a beach club filled with canoodling couples sits in the former no mans land, a McDonalds has sprouted next to Checkpoint Charlie and the area behind the Reichstag, once neglected, now gleams with modernity. Yet the exhibition does not always afford such convenient comparisons. One wall commemorates those shot while trying to flee East Germany, making time and place irrelevant, while another mixes disparate images as if to show that Berlin has not changed that much: after all these years, the city still has a raw, unfinished quality to it as its monuments loom and its graffitied edifices remain undisturbed.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: Buffoonery on the soccer field.
We are crazy excited to announce that we have a judge for this year's poetry contest! Daisy Fried was a staff writer at City Paper when I started working here during the Jurassic (Park: The Lost World) era, and went on to become a poet of renown in places where poetry is properly renowned. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program in North Carolina and writes for the New York Times, Threepenny Review and Poetry. Her latest book, Women's Poetry is funny and touching and a joy to read. Here's what the New York Times had to say:
Fried is a poet who will “tense up” when she hears “an affirming poem,” finding “Sourness a kind of joy I try for intricately.” Her present-tense poems vividly record the impressions of our moment: road rage, smartphones, magnet loops, Facebook, a “gun megachurch.”
Point is they loved it. Read the whole review here.
SO: Get to it poets! And fiction writers!
The deadline is Tuesday. Here are all the details.
Dr. Frank Lee and colleagues from Drexel's video game design program managed to convince the Cira Centre to let them play a 29-story game of Pong on their building, which will happen as part of Philly Tech Week on April 19 and 26.
We'll have a story on it (and a better-quality video) coming out Thursday in our Science and Tech issue, but for now, here's some video we took at last night's test run of the system, wherein Tech Week organizer Chris Wink defeats project developer Marc Barrowclift in what we assume is the largest shutout in Pong history. (They're going for a Guiness Record.)
(On the actual nights that the public will be able to play, the Cira Centre's window shades will all be down and the lights will be off.)
NOTE: This post originally stated that Barrowclift defeated Wink. We very much apologize for impugning Wink's honor!
These huge arts festivals can be overwhelming — how to figure out what's worth seeing? CP's sending someone to nearly every event PIFA's putting on over the next month to help you decide, so check back with Critical Mass all month long for comprehensive, ongoing reviews.
SHOW: The Hand of Gaul
GENRE: Theater
GROUP: Inis Nua Theatre Company
ATTENDED:Wed., April 10, 7 p.m., Off-Broad Street Theater
CLOSES: April 28
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: When French soccer superstar Thierry Henry single-handedly knocks Ireland out of the 2010 World Cup with an unchecked foul, three fiercely proud (albeit not overly bright) Irish fans decide to avenge their team.
WE THINK: Jared Michael Delaney's new play is a barrage of ridiculousness. Delaney, Adam Altman, and Harry Smith engage in non stop non sequiturs, arcane movie references, and Three Stooges-style violence. They pull together enough to hire a hit man — Le Falcone (Damon Bonetti), an English-mangling Belgian with a pencil-thin moustache also obsessed with Henry — to avenge Ireland's stolen honor.
This would be enough for great fun, but director Tom Reing adds witty live accompaniment by Langabeer & Machiz on guitar, bass, accordion, drums, banjo, penny whistle and saw, plus video by Janelle Kauffman of hilarious dueling press conferences from Irish president Mary McAleese (Megan Bellwoar) and French president Nicolas Sarkozy (Leonard Haas) — AND convenient pop-up facts about soccer, beer, and bad movies. Some of J. Alex Cordaro's fight choreography is rendered in gloriously silly slow motion. Delaney's script is boldly politically incorrect (the debate about national slurs is outrageous), yet concludes with a constructive moral.
The Hand of Gaul is performed with a comfortable looseness, a knowing wink to the audience that the cast is having as much fun as we are. I can't think about it now without shaking my head and laughing.
PREVIOUSLY IN PIFA: Parents with cameras disrupt a solemn Holocaust play.
A couple weeks ago, I watched directorial duo The Harrys shoot a video for Kurt Vile's "Never Run Away." I wrote about it for today's paper. Below are my (amateur) shots from the shoot.
View gallery
Never question Hova. Though we found out here that Made in America 2 was all but a done deal the day after MIA 1, you had to wonder what the sequel would look like bill-wise since Jay-Z is playing with Justin Timberlake throughout late summer (including stops in Philly and NJ). By now you know that Jay, Live Nation and Budweiser has two Philly dates, Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, with Beyonce, her sis Solange and Nine Inch Nails topping the bills. Along with announcing MIA2 news, Hova dropped a new tune today on his website is response to Congressional hassles with his Cuban links.
Billy Weiss, the co-owner of Woody’s, just opened his Rosewood lounge on 13th and Walnut, a Hollywood-themed cocktail spot done up in purples and golds with lots of chandeliers that you can enter on Walnut or through Woody’s.
- Activism
- Arts
- Arts Events
- Books
- Dance
- First Person Fest
- Last Chance
- Museum
- On the Fringe
- Philly Artists
- The Curator
- Theater
- Visual Art
- Arts News
- Artist Profile
- Arts Preview
- Street Art
- Been There, Done That
- Big Ups
- Comedy
- LOL With It
- Stand-up
- Critical Mass
- DVD
- Events
- Friday Fill-in
- Ice Cubes
- In Memoriam
- Interview
- Just Do It
- Just Opened
- Kaleidoscopic
- LGBTQ
- Art Phag
- Mailbag
- Movies
- Film Fest
- Movie Review
- On set
- Scenester
- screening
- trailer!
- Music
- 10 Track Mind
- Album
- Album Review
- Concert Review
- DJs
- Local Support
- Now Hear This
- One Track Mind
- Philly Bands
- Show
- Somebody Else Was There
- Song
- The Showdown
- concert photos
- jazz
- DJ Nights Blogged
- Night Watch
- Now See This
- Poetic License
- Printed Matter
- Radio
- Shopping
- Coveted
- Fashion
- What We Heart
- TV
- 24
- Idol Hands
- Mad Men
- ProjRun
- True Blood
- Useless Lost Recaps
- Couch Potato
- Shore Trash
- Turned ONN
- TopMod
- Video Games
- Free Online Game
- PSP
- PlayStation 2
- The 1-Upper
- Wii
- Web Junk
- CAGE MATCH
- Free Online Toy
- Weekend Omnibus
- Win
