Post Tagged with: "Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe"

Philadelphia Live Arts and Philly Fringe productions are no longer limited to a one- or two-week run in late summer. The Live Arts’ premiere venture into year-round offerings brings an innovative fusion of performance and science to Philadelphia in February with the world’s first full-scale ROBOT-HUMAN THEATER. A collaboration between [...]

Monday evening I attended the 2012 Philly Fringe Festival piece EDGES, directed by Ben Smallen, musical director Trevor Pierce, co-produced by A&B Productions and Parallax Theatre Company.  The four person show stars Will Connell, Amanda Curry, Jennie Knackstedt and Chris McGinnis. This 2005 “Song Cycle” was originally conceived by Benj [...]

One of the great things about the Fringe Festival is the opportunity to see independent companies perform works unlikely to be attempted by more established theater groups. This year brought two pieces I’ve long desired to see: THE MAIDS by Jean Genet and GHOST SONATA by August Strindberg. Of course, [...]

Edgar Allan Poe–the popular but tormented 19th-century American literary genius whose death remains a mystery—is the theme of this year’s Live Arts entry by Festival veteran Thaddeus Phillips and his Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, and the subject is a fascinating one. The current fully-staged incarnation of RED-EYE TO HAVRE DE GRACE, [...]

Director Tina Brock and her absurdist-themed Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium have soundly reaffirmed their position as the foremost purveyors of the genre in Philadelphia with their new Fringe production of IVONA, PRINCESS OF BURGUNDIA. Polish playwright Witold Gombrowicz (1904-69), whose works were banned under his country’s Nazi occupation and subsequent Communist [...]

I’ve been asked a few times, “What makes a production eligible for Philly Fringe?” I’ve not had a good answer to that, and in fact have asked myself several times whether shows I’ve seen during the Live Arts-Fringe Festival have been “Fringe” shows. Dancing her way to our rescue, Charlotte [...]

Found Theater Company’s latest foray into the Fringe Festival is everything the Fringe should be: experimental, inventive, boundary-breaking, and thoroughly engaging. Devised by Found’s young ensemble of multi-talented Temple University students and recent alumni, ELECTRIC JUNGLE explores the evolution of sound through a refreshing mix of original music, text, movement, [...]

An outrageous send-up of the Philadelphia theater community, JEFF COON AND BEN DIBBLE MUST DIE provides non-stop laughs from the minute the audience arrives till the final musical mash-up of white rap and Broadway show tunes. It is satirical, iconoclastic, and wildly accurate, and is sure to be one of [...]

RETURN RETURN DEPARTURE considers the fleeting nature of time and the human compulsion to capture it, and there can be few more poignant examples than an ephemeral dance duet at sunset, videotaped for posterity by the performers themselves. The bittersweet work by Nichole Canuso Dance Company was commissioned by the [...]

The historic High Pressure Fire Service Building on the corner of Race Street and Columbus Boulevard will have a new life as the permanent headquarters of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival.  The brick-and-terracotta pump house, built in 1903, is soon to be converted into a year-round performing and visual arts [...]