Life

The Fringe in full effect

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

By Jim Rutter
CORRESPONDENT

In Philadelphia, September means more than just the start of the football season. When the 2009 Live-Arts and Fringe Festival opens this Saturday, Sept. 5, it kicks off two weeks of comedy, dance, theater and performance that features more than a thousand artists in over 200 shows. More than a dozen stages will field performers from Delaware County who’ll offer choices as wild and varied as the festival itself.

Think you can go all night? Keep up with Media’s Mary Carpenter when she joins Barrymore award-winning actress Karen Getz, Nathan Holt and five other comedians in Philly Improv Theater’s (PHIT) 24-hour endurance test of improvisation. Starting at midnight on Sept. 12, these actors will struggle to stay awake while creating skits and musical numbers for an entire day. Recommendation: Show up after the bars close and stay for some Cheerios at dawn.

If you want your laughs in more measured doses, catch Media’s Joseph Gribbin and Chadds Ford’s Daniel Stabb performing with PHIT crew spin-offs. Gribbin features in The Action Section’s “Life,” an absurd existential comedic meditation told through sketches and videos. An earlier version of “Life” sold out in April, so get your tickets fast.

Stabb adds laugh to corporate bailouts in “CUBED’s” improv driven take on the American workplace, and Carpenter teams up with Los Angeles’ Thomas Fowler to create “Dangerous Fools,” a don’t miss hour of unscripted comedy. Drop in later at L’Etage Bar for laughs dished out by Brookhaven’s Gerre Garrett and the Waitstaff, now serving sketch comedy for the seventh year at the Fringe.

In the mood for a little adult entertainment? Tuck in the kids and wink along with Wallingford’s Joseph Quirk as he plays in “Felon Fiercely’s Open Mic Night in Hell.” Here, John Felon and Joe Fiercely die and go to hell, where they have to entertain Satan himself as punishment. If you’re actually the devil, there’s no cover charge.

Or you can skip the improv shenanigans and watch Delco-based dancers shake it on Philly’s stages. Labor Day weekend opens when Alchemy Dance Company presents world premieres by Collingdale choreographer Amy Harding and Ami Dowden-Fant, whose works promise a “fluid abandonment of the body” in a carnival dance-theater atmosphere. For just a few nights that weekend, Chester’s Stafford Berry will spiritualize the stage in Berry and Nance Dance Project’s African-dance-styled “Enlightenment,” while Upper Darby’s Scott Park struts onstage and in video during “Are We They?” a multimedia-dance exploration by Dangerous and Movin’ dance company.

Later on in the Fringe, Havertown’s Lisa Welch will kick it hip hop style in “Satellite Submission/Nutmeg Overdose” by Indigenous Pitch Dance Collective. Expect to see a dazzling array of acrobatics, vertical tricks, and explosive moves. For more cutting-edge performance, catch Aldan’s Michael Roberts with Stray Cats and Wayward Bats in “Death and Destruction.” Hopefully it doesn’t live up to its name.

My personal dance pick: “The 9 Muses,” an exploration of the sources that inspire art and science performed by Steven Weisz’s Drexel Hill-based youth dance company Music and Motion. Count on Weisz to infuse styles ranging from ballet and jazz to hip hop and acrobatics, and count on his young and talented dancers to present something truly inspirational.

Finally, you can travel on three theatrical journeys with Delco artists as Swarthmore sends two to the Fringe: Daniel Perelstein packs his bags in Matchbox Theatre’s “Preparations for Departure,” and Stephanie Duncan dons an aviatrix’s goggles in Earth Speed Productions “Meeley, or the Fun of It,” about the doomed flight of Amelia Earhart. Want to get a higher? Take a seat on “Ships,” a romantic comedy about two brothers in outer space written by Upper Darby’s Shawn O’Shea.

When you touch back down to earth in two weeks, the Eagles will still be here.

Find out more about the Festival at www.pafringe.com

http://njmonthly.com/events/5003.html