WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GO
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ing applicants. (Some fringe festivals select significant numbers of participants by lottery.) Other Fringe events include the Goodchildren Social Aid & Pleasure Club parade (2 p.m. Sat.), and there is an afternoon of kid-friendly activities at the festival’s Fringe Tent headquarters (corner of Press and Dauphine streets) from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday. There also are after parties each night. See the festival website for a complete schedule and breakdown of shows by category (ie. puppet, circus, with nudity, kid-friendly, etc.). Gauging future growth is simple, Evans says. “It’s up to audiences,” Evans says. “If they fill seats and want it, [the festival] is going to keep growing.”
Below are previews of some of the shows included in the festival.
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Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > noVember 15 > 2011
7 p.m. Wed., 9 p.m. Fri., 5 p.m. Sat., 11 p.m. Sun., Shadowbox Theatre (2400 St. Claude Ave.) Jazz singer Bremner Duthie singlehandedly invokes a cabaret from the strangely creative and socially permissive period of experimental theater and performance in Weimar Berlin in 1933. The rise of Nazism unsettles the bohemian enclaves of cabarets, and Duthie’s characters weigh the making of art and war.
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BUTTON WAGON
7 p.m. Thu., 9 p.m. Fri., 5 p.m. Sat., 11 p.m. Sun.; Mardi Gras Zone (2706 Royal St.) The New Mexico-based duo of Ember Bria and Poki look like scruffy mimes, and they present an offbeat combination of clowning, contortionist poses, object illusion and circus arts (pictured on page 39).
DOMESTIC VARIATIONS
7 p.m. Thu., 9 p.m. Fri., 11 p.m. Sat., 9 p.m. Sun.; Den of Muses (Architect Street) A Seattle-based trio of dancer-aerialists perform an often high-flying piece examining the meaning of home — exploring how domestic space and ritual shape gender roles, relationships, dreams and identity.
HIP-HOP IS ALIVE
9 p.m. Wed., 11 p.m. Fri., 7 p.m. Sat., 5 p.m. Sun.; Cafe Istanbul (New Orleans Healing Center, 2372 St. Claude Ave.) Hip Hop is Alive explores music and culture with a narrative incorporating hip-hop lyrics in choreographed vignettes.
LA CONCIERGE SOLITAIRE
11 p.m. Wed.-Sun. & 3 p.m. Sat.; Southern Rep (The Shops at Canal Place, 365 Canal St., third floor) Cecile Monteyne stars in this one-woman drama. A lonely hotel concierge passes the time by animating hotel guests and their stories.
EE ME AND POLLOCK THEE
7 p.m. Thu., 9 p.m. Fri., 11 p.m. Sat., 7 p.m. Sun.; Marigny Opera House (725 Ferdinand St.) Local musician Jonathan Freilich and playwright Adam Falik present an opera about the relationship between poet E.E. Cummings and painter Jackson Pollack. Performed to live music, the piece explores art, inspiration and obsession.
SHUT UP, YOU’RE FAT
9 p.m. Thu.-Fri., 5 p.m. Sat., 7 p.m. Sun.; Shaolin-Do Martial Arts Studio (4120 St. Claude Ave.) Nancy Hartman’s (pictured above) mostly one-person, nonpolitically correct, often confessional comedy of travelogues recounts everything from her days performing with Penn and Teller at renaissance fairs to humiliating experiences in show business to the pitfalls of watching children’s theater. Inspired by John Waters’ scratch and sniff film Polyester, there is a smell to go with every vignette and lucky audience members can partake of the multi-sensory show.
THE BRIDE OF BLACK LAKE
9 p.m. Wed., 11 p.m. Thu., 7 p.m. Fri., 5 p.m. & 7 p.m. Sat., 3 p.m. & 11 p.m. Sun.; Mudlark Public Theatre (1200 Port St.) The Mudlark Puppeteers present an original work based on the Jewish folktale of a dead bride returning to the world as a spirit (also adopted by Tim Burton for the more whimsical Corpse Bride). Set in Russia in the 1880s against the backdrop of anti-semitic pogroms, Lida drowns before her wedding and is tempted by a supernatural bargain to rejoin her betrothed.
FAUX REAL
7 p.m. Wed.-Sun.; Deity Arts (830 N. Rampart St.) Popular San Francisco performance artist/dancer Monique Jenkinson transforms into drag queen alter ego Fauxnique in this one-woman show exploring the link between female gender issues and the male-dominated world of drag. Fauxnique reflects on gender, ballerina fantasies, beauty secrets, gay prom dates and more. It’s one of three queer-themed shows at Deity Arts.
UNROUTE
9 p.m. Thu., 9 p.m. Sat.; Michalopoulos Studio (527 Elysian Fields Ave.) Reese Johanson’s Artist Inc. organized a 90-minute contemporary cabaret showcase with three of its dance/ physical theater pieces plus short works by other performers visiting Fringe with other full shows. Chair is a solo piece about obsessions with people and things that are ultimately as toxic as they are desirable.