by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 28, 2011
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
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 27, 2011
Kevin Mannering and Matthew Michael Hurley (Photographer: Alona Fogel)
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me? Wait a minute now – what? Just what is Danny Mitarotondo’s new play, What the Sparrow Said, at CSV Latea, trying to say? Or is it really trying not to say anything? The language has certainly been put through a crafty shredder, stripping it of any natural clarity, eliptically hinting that there is more going on than is apparent, morphing into indigestible poetry, and flashily playing at nonsense while preventing any speaker from actually finishing a sentence. The actors rattle off their lines as if they were in some over-paced 1930s screwball comedy, overlapping sentences in a manner that defies clear communication and challenges listener comprehension. Strain as you will to grasp what is being said, it is all but hopeless. And when this difficulty is pointedly compounded by the decision to stage separate scenes on top of one another, and having characters in different scenes talking simultaneously so that your attention is split in the rising din, and you are forced to abandon at least one set of exchanges… well; really? Yeah, I get life can be confusing; chaotic even. Yes, and life can be annoying. Very annoying. Verisimilitude, however, is definitely not a part of this playwright’s vocabulary. Absurdism? Perhaps.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 26, 2011
Jersey Shore is a show on MTV that, in and of itself, is already parody – boldly mocking an easily mockable subculture known as the Guido and Guidette. All executive producer SallyAnn Salsano had to do was sit back, let the cameras roll, and watch as these buff, well tanned, dark haired over-accessorized not-too-bright kids perfected the art of GTL (Gym, Tan, Laundry), avoided making out with Grenades, beat up the beat on the dance floor, got drunk, then got into each other business (and beds) and just generally ran amok. The formula was keyed into the system early on and everyone involved with this runaway hit just had to sit back and ride the wave of success ever since, following their cash cows from the eponymous Jersey Shore to Miami, to Italy and back again. So, frankly, does a show this rife with built in self-mockery require a parody … in the form of a Rock Opera no less? If that show is Jersey Shoresical: A Frickin’ Rock Opera then the answer is (cue the fist pump) oh hell yeah.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 26, 2011
Schadenfreude, the German word meaning pleasure derived from the pain and suffering of others could almost be a word to describe the dry, witty, quite thoughtful, and generally dark comedy of 74 Minutes of Stereo Radio Theater. This concept was wonderfully explained in Avenue Q in 2003, but has been referenced in many other places including the Simpsons in 1991. However I think this play requires the audience to utilize schadenfreude differently – as rather a recognition or appreciation of suffering (which would be something like Schäden Anerkennung OR recognition/appreciation of pain). Since there is always a lesson to be learned or an observation to be had by the characters in Stereo Radio Theater, it plays much more like a parable than a satire of people’s lives.
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 26, 2011
At the conclusion of Yael Rasooly‘s one woman “paper and object theater” performance, Paper Cut, the small stage at CSV Kabayitos is littered with piles of crumpled, shorn and torn paper props. This destruction is testament to the intensive, energetic and exhaustive show the actress has just presented in the past fifty minutes. It moves at a cracking pace as Rasooly acts, sings, animates, and shreds her way through a romance, set some time in the 1940s, about a solitary, put-upon secretary, who keeps one foot firmly in an escapist dreamworld. Well, maybe more than one foot. Continue Reading…
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 25, 2011
“Facebook me later …” is as ubiquitous a request these days as “Call me later … ” or “Text me later …”. For most people Facebook has become their main source of communication these days. Why, I’d even wager you found this review on Facebook.
As adults we all know how we’re using it to keep in touch, get our news (or our “news”), stay connected, and be in random chatter streams with our friends, our “Friends” our friends-of-friends and our frienemies. We’ve learned the art of the passive-aggressive post, learned how to limit our feelings to the right amount of characters, learned that by randomly quoting songwriters, celebrities, philosophers and politicians we can let their words speak for us when we’re too lazy to encapsulate our own feelings. But of course – it’s desperately important that we DO transmit our feelings at least once a day (though some have inner Facebook timers that go off on the hour …) or else our friends, “Friends”, friends-of-friends and frienemies start to wonder how we’re doing. And we can’t have that.
However, unless you’re a parent, and a “cool” parent at that – one whose teen daughter is divulging everything she’s thinking and feeling (unlikely) – do you have any idea how 13 – 15 year old girls are using Facebook? Girls who are already challenged with navigating the socially awkward minefield of adolescence now must deal with the added pressure of projecting it all onto The Social Networking Site. facebook me, created by and starring The Arts Effect All-Girl Theater Company (with script by Katie Cappiellois) is based on the lives and experiences of these young company members as they maneuver through fitting in, standing out, trying to be noticed (but not for the wrong reasons), all while attempting to not alienate their best friends, their boyfriends and their families. Because at any given moment a fatal mis-step will get posted on Facebook by those best friends, boyfriends and family members and damage control worthy of that necessary by BP after the oil spill doesn’t even begin to describe what these girls must summon. Continue Reading…
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on August 24, 2011
Katie Northlich has that commanding sort of physical presence that can hold a room with ease. There is a boldness in her look, an assuredness in her movements that can compel you to watch, whether she’s meekly sipping a glass of tea, or absently raking a hand through her hair while at the end of her tether. But, as her self-authored, one woman show, The Panic Diaries, playing at the Studio in Cherry Lane Theatre, amply demonstrates, she is a consummate actress, and no doubt can make herself invisible in a crowd if she so desired. Some dark glasses might be useful to this end, as she is possessed of a pair of large, glancing eyes that betray the intelligence and watchfulness within. Likely she is aware of this, as she uses their impact to focus an audience, and their watchfulness in appropriating the behavioral niceties of different character types. As an actress she is altogether self-possessed. Which makes it most interesting that the several characters she brings to life in this show are very much the opposite; people who have somehow lost themselves in the act of becoming what they believe is expected of them. On a psychological level, this particular malaise must be the classic actor’s dilemma. Adept at becoming someone else, they experience difficulty merely being themselves. So, for all her poise here, we can believe that she knows something of what she speaks.
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by Michelle Augello-Page on August 24, 2011
Before Placing Me on Your Shelf, a Lunar Energy production directed and conceived by Philip Gates and featuring the talents of Jonathan Horvath, Caitlin Johnston, Adam Scott Mazer, Josh Odsess-Rubin, Elizabeth Romanski, Theo Salter, and Nadia Sepsenwol, is inextricably tied to the poetry of James Tate.
Nearly all of the dialogue in Before Placing Me on Your Shelf is taken directly from Tate’s poems, and the vision of this play rests in bringing the enigmatic, associative, and absurd worlds created in his poems to life, which is a very interesting concept and makes for an intriguing work of Art.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 24, 2011
As we get closer and closer to the futuristic realm of cyberpunk, that has been active in our collective imaginations since we first started understanding what computing was or what it could be, one has to ask the questions:
What about the people it could hurt? Would we even know what it meant to feel that way? Would dysfunction be the first glimpse into a greater ability to truly live on or beyond “the net”? If the first person in this new space were alone, would he make friends with virtual projections of himself?
Virtual Solitaire written and performed by Dawson Nichols is a fast paced drama which does an amazing job of exploring these themes in a very real and human way — in an artificial world.
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by Michelle Augello-Page on August 23, 2011
Break dancing, waving, popping, locking, and expanding the very definition of hip-hop style, the dancers in Decadancetheatre’s When the Sky Breaks 3D weave a radiant and essential story, moving beyond narrative dance and into an abstract world where environment is infused, challenged, and released through the body.
When the Sky Breaks 3D is directed by Jennifer Weber and choreographed and performed by The Deca Crew: Megan “Megz” Alfonso, Ann-sylvia Clark, Lucile “Frak” Graciano, Taeko Koji, Casandra “Defy” Rivera, and Adaku Utah.
The performance is set in an urban landscape with 3D visuals by Holly Daggers, reflecting city streets, buildings, and fences, transforming and morphing the physical environment by the elements and the rising and setting sun. DJ Boo keeps the beat and the energy high, creating a musical immersion into the world when the sky breaks.
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