Category Archives: In Other News

CFF17: My Fringe Schedule: Day 10

Three more shows (#25-27) on the agenda tonight.

CFF_White PriviledgeFirst up is WHITE PRIVILEGE from new local participant Mad Prophet of Doom, starring Jim Hopkins and directed by Torie Wiggins:

WHITE PRIVILEGE tells the story of a middle-age white man and what it took to finally wake him from his privileged slumber. A hard humorous look at racial bias, and the uncomfortable conversation that White America needs to start having with itself.

CFF_8x10Also a new participant, the Solitary Project out of Brooklyn, NY offers 8 x 10:

Imagine you’re locked inside an 8”x10” room for 23 hours a day. You’re allowed to exercise for one hour a day in a small chain-link cage. You haven’t touched another person in decades. You don’t know when you’re getting out. This is the reality of solitary confinement in the U.S. An intimate and harrowing experience, 8×10 tells the story of one man’s path to solitary, and illuminates his fight against the invisibility he experiences there.

CFF_Velveteen RabbitFinally I am headed to VELVETEEN: OR HOW TO BE REAL, the third offering from Thought Plane Theatre of Manchester UK:

Welcome to our variety show of reality, where we guide you through the struggle of adulting and help you discover how to be real. Presenting our most successful candidate at becoming real, the Velveteen Rabbit, we will take you through the most difficult challenges of realness. A piece of interactive devised theatre, based on the children’s book, “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams, we interrogate our obsession with the authentic self.

Previous entries by the duo include AND ALL THE REST IS JUNK MAIL (2013) and PREFER NOT TO SAY (2015).

 

Leave a comment

Filed under In Other News

CFF17: My Fringe Schedule: Day 9

Back to the three show track tonight. On the agenda are:

CFF_Romeo + Juliet + AnybodysFrom New York City, new participant The Functional Shoes brings their rock musical ROMEO + JULIET + ANYBODYS to Know Theatre.

She’s a loudmouth rascal with a wicked roundhouse kick. She puts the POW in Girl Power. And she could save those two dumb lovebirds—if somebody would just listen! Ladies and Gentlemen, the musical character you love to forget: Anybodys! Featuring original grunge folk music, this play will make you wanna laugh, squirm, dance, and burn the patriarchy to the ground.

CFF_Zelda and Haldey_1x1Next it’s local new participant E Cubed Productions with ZELDA AND HADLEY: TOGETHER AT LAST,

ZELDA AND HADLEY: TOGETHER AT LAST – the entirely fictional, absolutely true story of what happens when F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway’s wives have had enough of their husbands’ philandering ways and get even using a radio drama. To begin, the audience decides which literary masterpiece to tackle. The ladies then improve that story by playing all the characters, creating all the sound effects, and reminding the audience that “hell hath no fury…” Also, there’s gin.

Written and directed by Eileen Elizabeth Earnest, the cast features Elizabeth Chinn Molloy as Hadley Richardson & Alison Rampa as Zelda Fitzgerald.

CFF_vapers at the GateReturning for their fifth Fringe appearance, local group Burying Beetles closes out my night with VAPERS AT THE GATE:

Three people: a survivalist, an artist and a Silicon Valley bro – hunted refugees blown out of their comfortable lives by a universal catastophe. Hopeless, exhausted, they meet a “coyote” – a guerilla fighter with fashion sense who will take them to the New World only if they expose their true selves through Native ritual and Hollywood trivia: Ultimate Vetting at the end of the world.

Written by John Ray and directed by Daniel Winters, the cast includes Mafer Del Real, Daniel Britt, Kearston Hawkins-Johnson, Olaf Eide, Gabriela Medina, Aiden Dalton, Zoe Cotzias & John Ray.

Shows 22-24 here I come…

Leave a comment

Filed under In Other News

CFF17: My Fringe Schedule: Day 8

Heading into the home stretch, I’m seeing two new participant performance tonight.

CFF_Where There Were WoodsFrom Seattle, Samara Lerman offers WHERE THERE WERE WOODS:

What happens when your family lineage stops with you? What happens to the stories and memories of generations past? When the ghost of her grandmother starts visiting her at night, Samara is compelled to travel through interwoven family stories of survival. WHERE THERE WERE WOODS is a train-hopping, border-crossing story of danger, adventure, magic, loss, and the power of storytelling.

CFF_Wilderness SurvivalThen it’s Jimmy Grzelak from Philadelphia with WILDERNESS SURVIVAL:

Jimmy Grzelak is an Eagle Scout, spiritual voyager, and “winningly offbeat imagination” (Washington Post). Sometime in the early 2000s, somewhere in rural America, young Jimmy was initiated into the ways of a world ruled by adolescent boys. In 2017, older Jimmy woke up and realized that knowledge is now nationally relevant. He comes to Cincinnati to do his duty as a scout – to serve as your guide into the wild.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under In Other News

CFF17: My Fringe Schedule: Day 7

Tonight is Two-fer Tuesday as I cross over into the two-show path.

CFF_Balls of YarnsFirst stop is BALLS OF YARNS, this year’s entry from the Troubadour of the Trailer Park, Paul Strickland:

Four-time Best of Fest Winner Paul Strickland’s new hilarious one-man musical adventure! David Lynch meets The Wizard of Oz. Songs! Yarns! Balls! In a strange town where creaky doors sing with you, libraries are separate from truth-braries, and extraordinary stories are shared through yarn and tin can, an ominous lurking evil has threatened to make things normal. NOT ON PAUL STRICKLAND’S WATCH. Jokes! More Yarns! Again, Balls!

CFF_Invisible GirlShow number two is INVISIBLE GIRL from ImagiNation Incorporated, a new local participant.

Sarah is the Invisible Girl; a fugitive who has taken residence in the bottom of the city sewer to avoid being bought and sold for currency in an alternate America. Her refuge, however, is short-lived as she is haunted by a series of specters that force her to confront her societal wounds. Loosely based on the Ralph Ellison novel, “Invisible Man,” Sarah’s invisibility is psychological rather than literal; a transformation through a series of vignettes.

After tonight, 19 shows down, 11 to go! Just keep fringe-ing.

Leave a comment

Filed under In Other News

CFF17: My Fringe Schedule: Day 6

I’m kicking off the second week of Fringe with three more production on Monday.

CFF_Pet FishFirst up is winner of the 2017 longest title award, pet fish are for killing by accident somehow it’s really quite inevitable from local new participant, Dehydrated Mermaid Productions:

Tabitha is questioning her relationship of nine years with Marc – with a “C.” Antioch is smugly secure in her relationship with grad school. And whiskey. Marla has a pet fish. Also, everything is terrible. What is love? Baby don’t hurt me.

Written by Sara Tripp Swartout and directed by Shelby Becker, the cast includes: Sarah Durham, Candice Handy & Erin Ward.

CFF_mOtherNext, Stacey Vespaziani of Odds and Ends Productions returns to the Cincinnati Fringe Festival for the 5th time this year with her new solo show, mOTHER:

What happens when you find yourself questioning a perceived norm and ultimately choose to step outside of it? This is the query that the solo show mOTHER examines through one woman’s first person journey of exploring and ultimately rejecting motherhood.

Her previous fringe shows include: BETTER/WORSE (2008), I TAKE IT BACK! (2007), RUNNING MY ASS OFF AND GETTING NOWHERE (2006) and BRITNEY SPEARS AND ALL THE OTHER SHIT WE DEAL WITH! (2005).

CFF_Nine Short Plays logoI end the night with NINE SHORT PLAYS FOR THE THEATRE, written and directed by Joe Stollenwerk:

A fast-paced and fun collection of short pieces that explore various facets of theatre, performance, and storytelling, ranging in topics from race and casting to falling in love with theatre, and from Henrik Ibsen to Shirley Bassey. It is an eclectic collage in a variety of styles from realism to meta-theatre, autobiography to absurdism, parody to poignancy, including group pieces and monologues.

The cast includes Burgess Byrd, Joe Hornbaker, Barbara Karol, Mindy Seibert & Tara Williams.

Stollenwerk’s previous fringe entry was CATALINA in 2013. Long time local theater patrons may remember Joe as the Artistic Director of the late, great Ovation Theatre Company for nearly a decade. Most recently, Stollenwerk wrote the acclaimed adaptation of THE HANDMAID’S TALE presented by Know Theatre of Cincinnati in early 2015.

Leave a comment

Filed under In Other News