A little bit of this, a little bit of that: KC Fringe Fest looms again.
July 16, 2014 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Summertime is Fringetime, and as in past years, KC Fringe Festival kicks off with a big preview night — this year, Thursday, July 17 — when you can sample brief snippets of half of the festival’s offerings of theater, music, dance, comedy, burlesque, film and spoken word. It’s a hodgepodge of professional and amateur productions, works in progress, works fine-tuned, works with awards. Here’s a short list of a few acts that we think are good places to start.
Central Standard Theatre presents IHOT (International House of Theatre), with several shows from around the country and from abroad. Returning from an appearance at CST’s British Invasion last December is the inventive Bond! — An Unauthorised Parody, in which the talented Gavin Robertson has expertly crafted a hilarious and imaginative spoof of the Bond franchise, enacting multiple characters (sometimes in the same scene) and incorporating physical theater and minimal props (including a toy car — you have to see it). Appreciated by non-Bond aficionados as well.
Other returning British Invasion shows: Spitfire Solo, about a former Battle of Britain pilot; and Woodbine Willie, based on the poetry of the Rev. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, about a man in a World War I trench. At Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, cstkc.com.
The Piano Store Plays, by playwright and director John Clancy (co-founder of the NY International Fringe and a winner of multiple awards, including an Obie for direction), comprises three short plays that grew out of off-off-Broadway indie theater and take place in an early 1990s Lower East Side piano store, where independent, guerrilla — think “fringe” — works were being produced. Starring Clancy Productions principals Nancy Walsh and Clancy. Also at MET, cstkc.com.
A salty playwright, a pornographic website admin and a not-so-aerial acrobat spar in a secluded Missouri farmhouse in Dangerous to Dance With, Bill Rogers’ latest script. Martin Tanner Productions stages the premiere at Off Center Theatre at Crown Center. Expect dysfunction, damaged goods and strong performances from a quintet of veteran actors, including Victor Raider-Wexler and Vincent Monachino.
At Phosphor Studio, Play On Productions presents playwright Pete Bakely’s Drunks, about a screenwriter and two film stars who sequester themselves in a motel room to fine-tune a script. Alcohol hampers negotiations, but the hangover proves worse: One of the stars has disappeared, and those left behind have to solve the case through a fog of yesterday’s booze. Bryan Moses directs.
Reimagining King Lear as a homeless veteran with PTSD, Alan Tilson inhabits a different sort of Shakespearean tragic figure. He has adapted and stars in the one-man, one-hour Lear makeover, Poor Lear, at MET.
For Woody Guthrie fans — and those not acquainted with Guthrie’s life and music — Hard Travelin’ With Woody features the songs, stories and artwork of Guthrie, who came out of the Dust Bowl and Depression of the 1930s and came to influence Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Paxton, and others. Actor and playwright Randy Noojin, whose works have appeared at FringeNY, Circle Rep Lab and Actors Theatre of Louisville, has written and stars in this one-man show at the Fishtank.
And anyone bemoaning the lack of women playwrights gets a crash course at Just Off Broadway Theatre, where the Playing Field — a local playwriting trio — presents Girl on Girl, new works on love, lingerie and weaponized womanhood. Andre du Broc directs three pint-size plays by Cynthia Hardeman, Michelle T. Johnson and Teresa Leggard.
See kcfringe.org for a complete schedule.
