Friday, July 21, 2006; WE25
Alain Nu's Mind Games
Mentalist Alain Nu wants audiences at the end of his show to leave "questioning everything they just saw."
A recent demonstration in front of the National Theatre suggests it's likely he'll accomplish that goal. Nu shuffles a deck of cards and puts it back in the box. He asks a woman to think of a card and then to select another person from the small group watching him. She points to a tourist standing nearby who, at Nu's request, thinks of a number. The cards come back out of the box, the woman says she was thinking of the two of spades, the tourist says his number was nine and Nu asks what are the chances that the two of spades will be the ninth card down. Well, in Nu's deft hands, 100 percent.
So obviously audiences are going to leave asking, "How'd he do that?" But Nu also wants them thinking about the "powers of the mind" in hopes it will "lead to personal inspiration about your own powers and abilities."
He'll try to provoke such thoughts with a "very dynamic, interactive show" called "Circus of the Mind." It debuted a couple of months back and contains the "first dangerous stunt" he has performed live, one involving a ladder and six-inch gutter nails (and a disdain for superstition).
Nu, whom you may know from the four-episode 2005 series on TLC called "The Mysterious World of Alain Nu," adds that because his shows are often either on the college circuit or at high-end corporate events, he hopes to use the opportunity of the more free-form Fringe Festival to "explore his own fringe-iness." Considering that he's a big fan of both punk godfather Iggy Pop and a wide range of hip-hop, it should be a fun ride.
-- Curt Fields
ALAIN NU Friday and Saturday at 6 and 7:30. At the Helen Hayes Gallery at the National Theatre. Free.
Feeling a Little Punchy? So Is He
He is lazy, overweight and unattractive. Bawdy and brash. Rude. And in spite of it -- nay, because of it -- he is funny.
Meet Pulcinella, the slow-moving-but-fast-talking character from 17th-century Italian commedia dell'arte. Think Rodney Dangerfield in Harlequin drag.
Which brings us to "Punch's Progress: A Pulcinella Story," a one-man show created and performed by Aaron Cromie. His series of burlesque skits traces Pulcinella's influence on comedy, from British Punch & Judy-style puppetry to vaudeville ventriloquism to modern stand-up. There are masks, puppets -- and a lot of dirty jokes.
It is not a show for the pretentious and unbendingly proper, which may be why Cromie opens with dirty limericks; they're a kind of "moral barometer" to gauge the audience's bawdiness threshold. Expect a guest appearance from a local, such as the Redskins' Clinton Portis or President Bush, by way of mask or puppet. Memo to the White House: Former Eagles player Terrell Owens did a bobble-head cameo at a recent show in Philadelphia. He was decapitated.
Puppet violence may sound weird -- though Cromie swears it's funny -- but Owens's fate speaks volumes: If you can put aside propriety, you'll laugh your head off.
-- Julia Feldmeier
PUNCH'S PROGRESS: A PULCINELLA STORY Friday at 5:30, Saturday at 7:30, Sunday at 4, Monday at 10 and Tuesday at 8. At Flashpoint's Mead Theatre Lab. $15.
Taking Risks on a 'Deaf Musical'
What can you say about a musician who goes deaf, loses his home in the 9/11 attacks (enveloped in the cloud of dust, he feels the explosions in his feet), considers suicide and then rehashes it all in a one-man multimedia show that requires him to sing, play piano and sign as well as speak?
Roll over, Beethoven.
"It's definitely a risk to sing live," admits Jay Alan Zimmerman, 39, the eponymous star of "Jay Alan Zimmerman's Incredible Deaf Musical." (The interview was conducted by e-mail.) "My singing success will depend somewhat on my hearing that day, as it fluctuates, and with the ringing in my head, I never know what I'll be dealing with. If I have a bad ear day, I'll keep the singing to a minimum. This is reality theater, folks!"
The question at the heart of "JAZIDM" is not whether a deaf musician can continue in his profession -- it has been done, obviously -- but why would he if he can't even enjoy his own work? Initially, the onstage Jay compensates for his hearing loss by ratcheting up the volume on the mixing board. As it continues to deteriorate, he tries his hand at film and stand-up and architecture, but no other outlet slakes his passion for music. "It's part of my soul," he says. Eventually, his inner debate turns even darker: "Not just why do it, but why continue living at all? Who cares? And the answer comes as a surprise."
For Zimmerman, being deaf does not mean living in silence. In fact, he says, "it is very noisy. I hear a cacophony of sounds in my head" -- he suffers from tinnitus, which can fling at its victim a furious range of buzzing, ringing, whistling and chirping sounds -- "in addition to real sounds below middle C, like air conditioner hums. So it never leaves me alone."
"It," meaning Zimmerman's deafness, is represented by the video screen, which continually goads him. During the song "Press Play," as he sees his own works on video, he sings:
"Her lips say, 'love' -- I swear I heard / Swear she's caressing my face with the word / And when she's singing now, I'm singing too / Watching her, I remember what to do."
Although Zimmerman hadn't originally intended to sing, he was persuaded to dare his own stunts, so to speak (he's a pop-ish high baritone and relies on the lower notes in his music to "cue" his mental pitch). He uses prerecorded tracks with background singers on all but one song, which he performs solo at the piano. There will not be a sign language interpreter, but he will do some signing during the show.
-- Eve Zibart
JAY ALAN ZIMMERMAN'S INCREDIBLE DEAF MUSICAL Friday at 7:30, Saturday at noon, Sunday at 5:30, Wednesday at 10 and Thursday at 5. At the Canadian Embassy. $15.
For Two Dancers, Lofty Aspirations
It all started with a walk through Penn Quarter. Dancers Sharon Witting and Andrea Burkholder were looking for inspiration in the neighborhood's physical context.
Naturally they looked up.
Naturally because Witting and Burkholder are directors of Arachne Aerial Arts, a dance company that defies gravity by hanging from rafters using trapezes, hoops and lengths of Chinese silk. "When we took our first walk, as far as the eye could see there were cranes, there was scaffolding," Witting says. Immediately the pair saw both opportunity and metaphor in the heavenward reach of construction equipment at work changing the city's face.
Though initially they wanted to perform dangling from construction cranes, they couldn't get past a few District regulations. Instead "Luxury Lofts Coming Soon!" will float above the audience at Woolly Mammoth Theatre's main stage.
"We connected with the idea of displacement and vulnerability, of people being caught in the rubble," says Burkholder, who notes that she recently felt the ramifications of redevelopment when her District-based Pilates studio, Pure Joe, was forced from its downtown quarters to make way for office space.
"This idea of luxury," Witting said, "comes at a significant cost to the residents being forced out. Progress and redevelopment has to happen to revitalize, but you can do it responsibly."
Burkholder wondered: "If all developments are Class A, what happens to the middle class and the artists?"
-- Lisa Traiger
LUXURY LOFTS COMING SOON! Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 6. At the Woolly Mammoth Theatre main stage. $15.
A Different Kind of Lounge Act
Say, Eddie, what's a lounge act like you doing in a Fringe Festival like this?
"It's very easy and fun to watch but a little hard to categorize," says Eddie Lounge (Ed Spitzberg), leader of the Cosmos and host of "The Eddie Lounge Show."
"It's a lounge act, but it has characters; it has music, comedy and a very, very loose plot," he explains. "It's a little of everything, and it's off the beaten path, not something you'd see in a main stage theater or a concert club. It's its own thing on the fringe, so a fringe festival is the perfect place for it."
Spitzberg, development director at Arena Stage, birthed Eddie in 1999 when he was living and working in the Bay Area. What started as lounge lizard Eddie and a pianist gradually grew into a small ensemble after the Internet bubble burst in 2001 and Spitzberg (who'd been working for a Web company called Comedy World) and some of his creative pals found themselves with enough time on their hands to come up with a daffy plot involving a one-night gig at a posh lounge that could lead to a big contract and star billing, only to be thwarted by romantic shenanigans and jealous intrigues.
Ironically, when Spitzberg was invited to perform the show for one night at Harrah's Las Vegas, "they didn't want any shtick, and I realized halfway through that I really was a lounge singer!"
"The Eddie Lounge Show" played off and on in the Bay Area, but only Eddie made the transition when Spitzberg moved to Washington in early 2002 to work at Arena. He talked to Warehouse owner Paul Rupert early on about doing the show there, but it wasn't until Spitzberg applied to participate in the Fringe Festival that he was able to relaunch it.
"It's new and improved, and I'm five years older and wiser," says Spitzberg, suggesting "San Francisco was an out-of-town tryout with a big rest in between."
"The Eddie Lounge Show" sure sounds like it would have been welcomed in the early '90s, when a national lounge revival was in full swing.
"These things go in cycles," says Spitzberg, adding, "I'm on the cusp of the new lounge revival."
-- Richard Harrington
THE EDDIE LOUNGE SHOW Friday at 5:30, Sunday at 10:30, Tuesday at 7:45, Wednesday at 10:15 and July 29 at 10:15. At the Warehouse Next Door. $15.
Dating in the Next Millennium: Same as It Ever Was
Anyone who doesn't see dating in the District as theater of the absurd hasn't been out there lately. The singles scene in our transient city is a ludicrous mix of ambition, sex, politics and moving vans, so it's natural that the game of love finds its way onstage. Playwright Callie Kimball sets her new comedy, "May 39th," in Washington, circa 3006. She combines futuristic fantasy with a plus ça change philosophy, her play adding up to a hopeful vision tinged with dark humor.
Kimball's characters, Louisa and Sam, meet online at a virtual-reality bar, then make a low-tech leap: "They decide to meet in person, which is kind of risky for them," she says. "They have a one-night stand, and the next morning they have to get to know each other."
Kimball -- who writes a blog called Luckyspinster.com -- says she had long wanted to write something futuristic. In "May 39th," her imagined future is a technologically enhanced version of the present. "The technologies we have, even though they tend to isolate people, they also really make people connect," she explains. With a millennium's worth of techno-glut, could it really be so different?
The future, according to Kimball, is a place filled with clones, where a country called Japandia is on the warpath in Asia and a fast-food chain (Mac Universe) continues to exert economic dominance. But when it comes to the human heart, the landscape looks strikingly familiar.
Kimball says forging connections is a major reason she's participating in the Fringe Festival -- to meet other artists who will collaborate on new projects and explore new worlds. As for her play's message, Kimball declares: "There's always, always hope. No matter how bleak things seem, there's always hope."
-- Christina Talcott
MAY 39TH Friday at 5, Saturday at 9, Thursday at 6, July 28 at 9 and July 29 at 8. At the Touchstone Gallery. $15.
What Do You Know -- the Joke's on Cheney
"Get that pan of doo-doo out," director Dolores Gregory commands one of her actors during rehearsal for a scene that opens with a constipated Army colonel squatting and grunting over a box. The young man mimes carrying the imaginary bedpan offstage.
It's the first working run-through of "Freedom Fries," one of five 10-minute scenes in "You Don't Know Dick," a thematic collection of satirical skits by five area playwrights, each inspired directly or indirectly by Vice President Cheney. Soon, the first broad joke kicks in, setting the tone for what Gregory calls the "kind of twisted" sketch: The officer instructs his son, a green but gung-ho military recruit, to help his father wipe using not toilet paper but -- wait for it -- pages from The Washington Post.
Written by Audrey Cefaly and spoofing a surreal Defense Department photo-op, the unsubtle "Fries" is a bit of a departure for the award-winning dramaturge, who describes her usual fare as "Southern, feel-good, Beth Henley-type stuff." Along with Gregory (a former freelance critic for this paper), Cefaly is a member of Playwrights Gymnasium, a local theater-writing workshop that founder Gregory only half-jokingly describes as "graduate school on the cheap." Several months ago, the group started brainstorming ideas to put on during the fest.
After tossing out the initial idea of power and identity -- too "generic" and not "fringe-y" enough, according to member Mary Watters, whose "Morning Has Broken" imagines Cheney confronting daughter Mary's girlfriend -- the group seemed to settle on the perfect theme: nuns.
Then the veep accidentally shot a lawyer in the face while hunting. The dramatic potential of a man Watters believes is torn between his "inner conflict" and the "outer wall" he presents to the world was too good to pass up.
-- Michael O'Sullivan
YOU DON'T KNOW DICK Saturday at 3, Sunday at 10, Tuesday and July 28 at 6, and July 29 at 8. At Flashpoint's Mead Theatre Lab. $15.
The Measure of the Woman
Height. Wealth. Home. Clothing. Popularity. Breeding. Strength. Power.
Penis size.
A man's worth can be measured. A man's worth can be compared with that of the man standing next to him. He is better than his best friend. He is not as good.
Come, sit before Frank and Bill a while, and they'll show you. Give the two, friends since childhood, 13 rounds to take each other down, convincing you -- judge and jury -- of their relative superiority. Acting as referee of this verbal boxing match is the pale but lovely girl in the bathing suit. She has known these guys for ages. She also knows, tragically, how much can be lost to competition.
"Never Swim Alone" is a play that asks, according to director Bradley Moss, "How far are you willing to go to win at all costs?"
A darkly shadowed comedy that debuted in Canada during the early '90s, Daniel MacIvor's work has been given a provocative update for the Fringe Festival: Frank and Bill are played by women.
"I think with women it's just more articulate as to 'Holy [expletive], that's what [men] really are when you get right down to it -- we will destroy our own friends' lives just to further our own safety, our own livelihood, our own wealth,' " says Moss, artistic director of the Edmonton theater company staging the play.
And don't worry, despite certain revisions, the essence of the original production is preserved. Crotches are still grabbed, size is still made to matter.
-- Ellen McCarthy
NEVER SWIM ALONE Friday at 10, Saturday at 6, Sunday at 8, Monday at 10 and Wednesday at 6. At the Canadian Embassy. $15.
The Lunatic Fringe
It seems that even the fringe has a fringe element, which is to say that a few of the festival's offerings promise to be either daringly original, riveting as train wrecks or some terrifying combination of the two. In any event, a visit to the following is strictly at your own risk.
FROZTY THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN A corn cob pipe, a button nose and an uncontrollable bloodlust meet in this tale of a beloved wintertime figure made evil by a botched science experiment. Oh yeah, it's a rock musical, too. Saturday through July 30 the Woolly Mammoth Theatre rehearsal hall. $15.
LA CORBIÈRE You know how, during World War II, the Nazis filled a boat with French hookers, intending to deliver them to love-starved troops, but then the boat sank? Nope, we didn't either. Still, we're intrigued, not least because this site-specific production was still looking for a site at press time. Thursday through July 30. $15.
UNMAPPED Choreographer Daniel Burkholder and musician Jonathan Matis may well be the hardest-working men in fringe business. The pair will attempt to stage 24 consecutive one-hour improvisational dance extravaganzas (Kiefer Sutherland, eat your heart out) on Friday and Saturday at the Warehouse Theater main stage. $15 buys a 23-hour pass; the 24th hour requires a separate $15 admission.
RIDING THE DRAGON: RAW AND BAREBACK Three gay men ponder the dangerous appeal of condomless sex in the age of AIDS. Vivid public service announcement or theater of titillation? You be the judge. Sunday through Wednesday at the Warehouse Theater main stage. $15.
AN EVENING WITH GEORGE BURNS So, when an oft-caricatured celebrity dies, what is the statute of limitations for impressionists? Find out for yourself when Alan Devalerio makes an ill-advised decision to conjure up the cigar-smoking centenarian. Friday through July 29 at the Goethe-Institut. $15.
VAUDE RATS Two questions to ponder: 1) How often do you get to see a ukulele operetta? 2) Is there a reason for that? K. Brian Neel's musical creation posits a romance between a dwarf and a vaudevillian (of course!). Sunday through July 30 at the Warehouse Theater main stage. $15.
BEAUTIFUL FREAKS AND FEATS OF WONDER And if that's not enough, the name of the production team is Cheeky Monkey Sideshow. Want more? The salute to old-timey sadistic thrills promises sword swallowing, a bed of nails and a not entirely PC-sounding "gender-bending half-and-half." Sunday through July 29 at the Warehouse Theater main stage. $15.
POP UP DANCES Surely the first terpsichores to unabashedly claim VH1 as an inspiration, the artists of Momentum Dance Theatre plan to just, well, show up at places around town and start dancing. Where can you find them? At that celebrated venue "Various Locations," of course! Free (if you can find them). Check the festival's Web site for news of sightings.
JILL KILLS VOLS. I & II Meet Jill, the love child of Quentin Tarantino and Dear Abby, a pistol-packing relationship expert with a penchant for gunpowder conversion. Expect a revenge fantasy of which Uma Thurman would be proud. Saturday through Tuesday at the National Building Museum. $15.
POE AT THE WILLARD Lucky you, oh tourists from Peoria who happen to be vacationing at the Willard Hotel. Edgar Allan Poe is staying there, too. Well, actually Poe doppelganger David Keltz is staying there, performing a show about Poe, who once stayed in that very hotel. Well, actually it was the predecessor to the Willard on the same site. Oh, forget it. Sunday at the Willard InterContinental Washington Hotel. $15.
-- Scott Vogel
