Philly File's Fringe Festival guide: Top 10 shows

By Carrie Caine
Collegian Reporter
September 13, 2006

With a few days left in the Philly Live Arts and Fringe Festival, it’s probably a good time to catch up on those fantastic cutting-edge shows that you have to see to convince your parents that you’re getting a little culture for all those tuition dollars. You have until Sept. 16 to catch a performance of an urban hip film, play, skit, etc., but the festival’s lineup is a bit overwhelming. For the people who know only that awkwardly placed piercings are more common at these venues than anywhere else in Philadelphia, this quick guide will help you find the show that fits your love of:

1. Stairs—Love Unpunished takes place on four levels of staircases in an office building similar to the World Trade Center. The 65-minute film shows the evacuation of the building as people from all walks of life run up and down the stairs towards whatever aftermath awaits them. It’s an unusual and interesting way to remember Sept. 11 just after the five-year anniversary passes.

2. Global Catastrophe—With AIDS, avian flu, tsunamis, nuclear war and terrorism, how could anyone resist enjoying a musical snack cooked up at the University of the Arts? Disaster: The Musical! will allow you to enjoy watching bad things happen all over the world and revive your sense of Daria-like detachment from the rest of humanity. Hit it!

3. Cats and Heroes—A two-woman improv team created some badass cats to save the day at the Khyber every night at 5:30 p.m. Killer Pussy features half-cat, half-people characters who go on adventures and take care of really important business like saving lives and licking up spilled milk. O.K., O.K., at least admission is cheap.

4. Unclean Puppetry—“Let’s do the Time Warp again!” Except your favorite cross-dressing bonanza of a time warp, The Rocky Horror PUPPET Show, will happen in Philadelphia this week with socks on people’s hands, or some other fashion of puppet. For only $15 a ticket, The Theatre at 2111 Sansom Street will explore pressing issues of the day regarding sexuality and gender and remind you how much you miss watching Jim Henson’s Muppets.

5. Roller Skating—This 1972 throwback to Roller Derby days will explore the “heroes and demons” of the roller skating world. Who knew roller-skating even had heroes or demons? Bitch on Wheels offers physical comedy at its finest, with rink owners and paramedics cleaning up skaters, all unaware that roller-skating will once again be lame in about 10 minutes.

6. Awkwardness—P’s & Q’s is the result of The Pig Iron Theater Company’s research trip to an etiquette school in South Carolina. Six players engage in a dinner party and amuse the audience by tripping up their high-class manners at the table.

7. Romantic Comedies—Fat Pig plays at the Walnut Street Theater and dares to ask the world how people might feel about a non-anorexic librarian loving a good-looking businessman. Girls, bring your tissues and throw away your scales so you can prepare to laugh at yourselves and the crazy rules of 21st century dating.

8. Mobile Phones—You may have heard about Valley Forge National Park’s new cellular phone tours that take you through the park at any hour of the night or day. Cell is the Headlong Dance Theater’s way of bringing everyone’s favorite new crutch into the performance art arena. For $20, you buy a ticket and show up to wait for an unidentified caller to ring you up and tell you what to do for an hour. Bring your walking shoes and enjoy whatever madness your mystery date plans for you.

9. Choose Your Own Adventure Books—Remember being 10 years old and reading the same book 12 times, each with different plot twists and shifting endings? If you miss the fifth-grade life in today’s stuffy higher-education culture, check out Flip the Script at the Brick Playhouse Theater. It costs only $10 to coerce the characters into one of 48 possible endings.

10. La Salle—Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco doesn’t sound like something that the Christian Brothers would usually dream up, but if you love watching La Salle alums succeed in life, this is the show for you. Senior Chris McBride crews the production and La Salle’s resident theater director Tom Reing directs the performance. The Inis Nua (Celtic for “new island”) Theater Company takes on this contemporary Welsh play as part of its mission to explore Celtic-American cultures in a realistic context.

cainec1@lasalle.edu