Hip Shot: ‘My Way Little Girl’
My Way Little Girl
Warehouse Arts – In the Alley
Remaining Performances:
Friday, July 27 @ Midnight (Warehouse Arts)
Saturday, July 28 @ 10:00pm (Warehouse Arts)
They say: “Controversy surrounds this installation experiment. Through imagery of stereotypical iconic pop-symbols the piece depicts sex education, its boundaries, sexual taboos, and eventual consequences as perpetuated by contradictions in the advertising world versus the political sphere. Conceived, directed, choreographed by Andrew Zox.”
Trey’s take: Whoa, now: Why are the five ladies in the fishnets and furs lounging so provocatively on the hay bales? What exactly does the latex-gloved, white-coated gent have in mind? Why ’s that guy with the eyepatch wearing a plaid sofa cushion like it’s armor? And what is that man playing on the banjo?
I jest — though all of those things are in fact happening. What I mean to say is: My Way Little Girl is the first seriously Fringewhack show I’ve seen. I watched it with precisely 8 other people sitting on a tarp in the alley beside the Warehouse, with Zox running the sound from a PowerBook six feet behind me. The night before, apparently, they did it for like 200 people on the Kennedy Center’s free-to-all-comers Millennium Stage — which I would actually have paid to see.
It’s about much the same stuff, as it happens, as Super Glossy (see below): It’s about how we teach women what they’re supposed to be, and teach them to be ashamed of what they are. It’s about the codifying of femininity, the commodification of beauty, the pathologizing of sexuality and childbirth — and while it doesn’t have much terribly revelatory to offer on those topics, it’s communicating what it does have to say pretty clearly. And stylishly: The stage pictures are striking, the movement carefully designed, and the cast utterly committed. It totally rang my bell.
See it if: You’re looking for a nice wordless movement-based something that ain’t a solo confessional — or if you’re just feeling adventurous.
Skip it if: You ain’t sittin’ in an alley for no damn pinko feminist-leaning actor-boy and his wussy bleeding-heart girl apologia.
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10:59 am
I dug the whole movement thing–the choreography was precise and the actors incredibly disciplined. I LOVED sitting on a tarp on the pavement–being that close to the ground meant that the stench of rat piss was that much stronger. So Fringey. I also loved how bewildered the audience seemed. I think it’s BRILLIANT when an audience doesn’t know what response is expected of them. But I’m starting to think being a former Cherry Red girl has ruined me for life, because I wanted to be shocked or revulsed or challenged or disturbed in some way and I wasn’t. But that’s just me. Off to see four more shows today!
12:08 pm
I caught the midnight show last night. Trey, you will be happy to know that a great many more than eight people were in the audience. I didn’t count, but I would have placed it at about 20 souls.
It also provided my first truly out-there Fringe moment of the year, for as we, the adventurous performance-art going audience were ushered back to the alley behind Warehouse, it began to rain. I checked my watch. Yup. It was the very stroke of midnight. God, it seems, is a Fringer.
Distancing myself from the exposed (and rained-on) electrical outlets near that wonderful tarp, I watched in wonder as the rain seemed to fall in tune with Dan Mazer’s banjo. The pure weirdness of the moment, coupled with the stylized tableau of those women on those hay bales, reminded me a lot of sitting outside the Georgetown swimming pool last year for La Corbiere. That sort of communal experience that can come to define a festival.
As for the show itself, my thoughts were along of Callie’s above. Well-trained and committed performers show us stylized versions of pretty typical feminist ideas. Women are shaped by our cultures expectations of them as mothers, and men’s hopes for them as lust objects, etc. I got it. I agreed with it. But I wasn’t particularly stirred by it.
3:28 pm
Ok, I’ll try this again. I was purged out as I submitted my comment.
DO NOT MISS THIS WONDERFUL PIECE. It definitely takes the Fringey-est award from me – and even beat out Pabst & Popcorn Faustus and Cautionary Tales for something truly Fringey. One more show at 10pm Saturday – and its 30min and $10. Really well presented in parking lot/alley next to the Warehouse, amazing imagery, committed performances (though I wish the two men in the background with the big hands were utilized more), a great soundscape to underscore it, along with terrific banjo picking (this shouldnt have worked but it did). You might not get it all, but you’ll get enough to appreciate this smart show. And I believe there were more like 40-50 people there last night at midnight, not 20. Grab a beer in the Warehouse bar and take this in. Congrats to Andrew Zox who conceived this – excellent work. Here’s to more of this type of provocative and visually interesting work next year.
12:28 am
I second, third, and fourth the enthusiasm from the three folks who commented above. I just wanted to comment as someone who was there tonight (Saturday) at the final Fringe performance of this piece to say that 1) tonight, the tarp was filled …. There were people standing, and some sitting on the bare asphalt (with Callie’s rat piss), and 2) I wish we could see more of this kind of thing at Fringe. … Next year, maybe?