We’re thrilled to pass along the Overall Excellence Award Winners for 2011 FringeNYC.  Some of our very favorite shows and performers are being celebrated and we’re so thankful that we were able to experience these talented performances this year.  Congratulations to all the winners!

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August 28, 2011 — Winners of the 2011 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Awards, as selected by an independent panel of nearly 50 theater professionals, are as follows:

Overall Production/Play

• PigPen Presents The Mountain Song
  • What we said: As always the only disappointment with PigPen is when the play is over; it’s hard to watch them leave the stage – the same way it is hard for a child to watch that
    

    favorite relative go home at the end of a giddy day of make-believe. The good news is PigPen is relocating to New York City so those who can’t get enough of them will now be able to see them a lot more. And as long as they’ll be putting on shows, I’ll be in the audience, watching: amazed and dazzled.

• The More Loving One

Overall Production/Musical

• Yeast Nation
• Pearl’s Gone Blue

Performance

• Jennifer Barnhart (The Legend of Julie Taymor,or The Musical That Killed Everybody!)
• Ryan Barry (In the Summer Pavilion)
• Miles Cooper (Elysian Fields)
• Patrick Byas (Sammy Gets Mugged)
• Casey McClellan (My Name Is Billy)
• Brian Charles Rooney (Winner Takes All)
• Lauren Hennessy (Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story)
  • What we said: [Hennessy] is breathtakingly real … often funny, sometimes sarcastic and deeply sexy … her chemistry with Choura (not only during their intimate moments
    

    but during her moments of longing as well) can be felt all the way in the back row, and considering this show is playing at The Ellen Stewart Theatre that’s saying a lot. When she sings she seduces and bewitches everyone in the room.

Playwriting

• Nicholas Billon (Greenland)
• A.D. Penedo (The Three Times She Knocked)
  • What we said: Writer A.D. Penedo has successfully taken a different type of relationship and made it not only understandable but accessible. By giving Eric a mechanism where he constantly breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience we’re given a unique look into the mind of a man consumed not so much by a woman but by a way of operating. By Eric himself explaining his little quirks and foibles to us we are left free to sit back and watch as his confessions to us pave the way for his actions toward Tara. And sure, while he may seem a little out of his mind, at least he’s explaining his motives to us.
    

• Bella and the Pool Boy (Dennis Flanagan)

Music Composition

• Chris Rael (Araby)
• Dusty Brown (The Ballad of Rusty and Roy)

Ensemble

• Jersey Shoresical
  • What we said: Fans of (or those who admit to watching) Jersey Shore will love Jersey Shoresical for the extreme attention to detail paid by the creative team.  People who have
    

    never seen one moment of Jersey Shore will also love Jersey Shoresical – because the final product is just that good.  Either way, this was one hour of entertainment that left me clamoring for more.

• The Bardy Bunch: The War of the Families Partridge and Brady
  • What we said: What delights so thoroughly is how faithful each character remains to their Brady/Partridge origins while faithfully moving the Shakespearean plots along.  This story was just waiting to be done.  Thanks to the fantastic team of Garvey and Stern it has now been done perfectly.
• Stimulated!
• Crawling with Monsters

Costume Design

• Stephanie Alexander (Le Gourmand, or Gluttony!)
• Mark Richard Caswell (Parker and Dizzy’s Fabulous Journey to the End of the Rainbow)
• Tara DeVincenzo (Technodulia Dot Com)

Directing

• Greg Foro (Hamlet)
  • What we said: At mid-performance, just after Hamlet has rigged a play to prick the conscience of his murderous uncle, Claudius, the two characters circle the stage silently for a beat, eyeing each other variously as hunter and quarry, before Claudius calls -”Give me some light!”- at which the house is plunged into darkness and we are moved to intermission. This delicious moment is a sample of the thoughtful direction and stagecraft on display here.
• Joshua Kahan Brody (Fourteen Flights)
• Alaska Reece Vance (The Disorientation of Butterflies)

Solo Performance

• Donna/Madonna
• The Day the Sky Turned Black
• Be Careful! The Sharks Will Eat You!
  

• Paper Cut
  • What we said: Rasooly supplies all the voices while working the miniature mechanics and characters. It’s an inspired visual performance. To a movie-literate audience, it’s catnip.
• Heroes and Other Strangers

Dance

• Wallstories
• When the Sky Breaks 3D
  • What we said: The choreography of When the Sky Breaks 3D is nothing short of amazing. Several scenes stand out in my mind – one in particular is a scene where the dancers are fighting. At first two, then four, in a syncopated expression of movement; they struggle against each other, and ultimately themselves. The movements are strong and forceful, falling and rising, breaking apart and coming together – mirroring so many different struggles within our lives. The audience held its breath until the final resolution, as the dancers stood in unity together under the threatening sky.

Video Design

• Cinty Ionescu (Nils’ Fucked Up Day)

TheaterMania Audience Favorite Award

• COBU – Dance like Drumming, Drum like Dancing.

Congratulations again to all those recognized for overall excellence!!

Related Posts:

• Hamlet (Fringe Festival 2011)
• Ampersand’s Rockstar – A Chat With Lauren Hennessy
• Paper Cut (Fringe Festival 2011)
• PigPen Presents: The Mountain Song (Fringe Festival 2011)
• The Three Times She Knocked (Fringe Festival 2011)

Get seated early to see Classically Trained, Practically Broke (Franca Vercelloni’s solo show, directed by Myrna E. Duarte and John David West) and you’ll get an earful of what Franca is subject to on a nightly basis – the caterwauling of half drunk patrons who gather around her piano at the bar she works at and who beg for show tunes  - blithely singing in their own key and verbally abusing her at will as if she’s worth nothing.

But she’s not nothing.  Franca Vercelloni  is Classically Trained – not only a proficient pianist but a soulful and interpretive one as well, one who throws herself (as well as her Self) into her music and lives there; it’s where she celebrates the good times and waits out the bad times.  Franca, you see,  is so much better than this dingy piano bar with its smelly keys (no telling what’s wedged down in there) and its drunken patrons. Ms. Vercelloni is living just a short distance away from her dream – 88 keys away to be exact, and her talent is both her blessing as well as her curse.  Yet she doesn’t give up this thankless job because ultimately - she’s terrific at it.

Watching Ms. Vercelloni’s fingers fly across the keys is like watching FloJo run the 100 meter dash – only with this specific blur of motion comes the most wonderful music – a Bach Fugue, A Beethoven Sonata, a Gershwin Tune.

Between dazzling the audience with brilliantly played songs, Ms. Vercelloni gives her life story in the same carefully crafted notes and meters – and always punctuated by a piano chord.  She tells of being a piano teacher to snotty, precocious, over indulged children with equally annoying parents.  She reminisces about playing the church organ and sneaking in a few secular songs during communion.  Ms. Vercelloni even brings out the ole accordion and plays a catchy song about “Walmart At Midnight”.

A lively tune called “Extra Medium” addresses the specific challenges of being a gal who is considered too large to play the ingenue, but too pretty to be a character actress.  Too tall to be petite, but too short to be tall . . . you get the picture.  Problem is, changing one aspect of her appearance would cut off particular opportunities and paths in another area.  What’s a girl to do?

Franca Vercelloni

As Ms. Vercelloni continues to break it down for us the situations get funnier and funnier – “I’m playing Evita, you’re singing Cole Porter” she points out in her rousing singalong “Shut The Fuck Up and Sing With Me!” all delivered with a manic smile but a smile nonetheless.  And gosh darn it – we sang along!  When told to!

Talent just keeps flowing out of her as she laughingly illustrates the fights she must break up “Do Judy!”  . . .”No!  Do Sondheim” . . . and then grandly manages to do a mash up worthy of Glee – “The Man That Got Away” to a signature Sondheim score.  Of course, eventually the mania builds up, the poking and prodding and little voices and booming voices and off-key voices all manage to create a terrible storm that brings poor Ms. Vercelloni to “The Last Midnight“ . . .

Silence.

And in that moment without music . . . what  a terrible void.

Soon enough, though, Ms. Vercelloni finds her happy place and her anthemic “Living It Day By Day” (“I can’t be mad because I didn’t take an express route . . .”) melds into a heartfelt  - and heart melting – “A Song For You“.

Part concert, part comedy act, part real life, part hyper real, Ms. Vercelloni finds the truth and shares it with those who listen along with her in the dark . . .”we’re alone now, and I’m singing this song for you . . .“

It’s what she does – and she does it beautifully.

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Classically Trained, Practically Broke
Writer: Franca Vercelloni in collaboration with Myrna E. Duarte and John David West
Director: Myrna E. Duarte and John David West

Related Posts:

• Women’s History Month: Celebrating Women In The Arts – Spotlight On Franca Vercelloni
• Omarys Concepcion Lopez Perez Goes To Israel (To Speak To God At The Wailing Wall) – (Fringe Festival 2010)
• Get STUPEFIED By Paul Hutcheson
• Heather Litteer Shares Some LEMONADE With Us
• It’s A Triple Play For Natalie Menna!

This one woman show at the New York International Fringe Festival is the stuff we live for here at The Happiest Medium; as managing director Karen Tortora-Lee will tell you, our mission is to highlight, showcase and celebrate our favorite medium, and that is exactly what writer/performer Leila Arias does in Omarys Concepcion Lopez Perez Goes To Israel (to Speak to God at the Wailing Wall). It takes a certain kind of performer to pull off a solo-show, and Ms. Arias has the spunk, chops and enthusiasm to transport us to Jerusalem, the Bronx and Puerto Rico in a 40 minute journey.

Her main character, Omarys, is a Persian/Puerto Rican in search of enlightenment and spiritual answers ever since she was a young girl; always getting different messages from God, yet never really knowing if he is listening to her pleas. On her 27th birthday, her father bestows her with the gift of a lifetime – a trip to Jerusalem that will bring her closer to her Creator (or at least she thinks it will). Once at the Wailing Wall, Ms. Arias introduces us to her Persian mother (who gives her tips on how to protect herself from the evil eye and aging), an Israeli/Jamaican guard (who wants to show her a good time), her adonis-dominican-turned-out-to-be-a-lazy-couch-potato fiancee, and a Jewish Spiritual Teacher. All characters are brought to life with Ms. Arias’ great physical and vocal work.

For someone who has been searching for answers all her life, her conversations with God at the wall are a bit exasperated, as she recounts different moments in her life when “the signs” she once thought came from a higher power, turned out sour and mundane.

She was raised Catholic, but in her search for answers, has been open to everything regarding Spirit that comes along her way.  You can tell by the different trinkets around her neck, be it a crucifix, an evil eye charm, or a Tree of Life chain. Not to be mistaken with a religious pamphlet piece – Ms. Arias is not trying to convert you to Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism or convince you to be a non-believer. This is a universal interpretation of the most important message of all: the answer to all our questions lies within.

Filled with colloquial flavors, music, dance and traditions that feed not only the humor in the story, but the humanity of the piece, this is a must see swift experience at the Fringe.

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Omarys Concepcion Lopez Perez Goes to Israel (to speak to God at the Wailing Wall)
Writer: Leila Arias

0h 40m
VENUE #11: Players Loft
Click on a date for ticket information:
Mon 16 @ 9 Fri 20 @ 10:30 Sun 22 @ 7:30 Sun 29 @ 3

Related Posts:

• Classically Trained, Practically Broke – Beautifully Done (Fringe Festival 2010)
• Get STUPEFIED By Paul Hutcheson
• Heather Litteer Shares Some LEMONADE With Us
• It’s A Triple Play For Natalie Menna!
• Dandy Darkly’s Trigger Happy!: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)