Remaining Performances
Friday, July 24th at 7:45 pm and Sunday, July 26th at 11:30 am

They say:  “Presenting in its signature classical and contemporary style with original musical scores, TMDC’s dancing is precise, athletic and theatrical. The themes run the gamut of emotions. The message may be personal or political but it’s always relevant to the times.”

Caroline’s take: Who knew presidential politics could be interpreted through traditional Indian dances?  I certainly didn’t before seeing this production of the Tehreema Mitha Dance Company, but the combination of traditional choreography with contemporary subject matter landed with surprising resonance.

The evening consists of four dances, two traditional solos and two contemporary ensemble pieces.  In each case, a brief introduction told the audience what was going on, but these were hardly necessary, since all the dancers clearly embodied their respective characters.  The first classical solo, performed and choreographed by Praneetha Akula, is about a woman exhausted by a demanding job: With rows of bells around her ankles, her motions complemented the music so well that the story became unimportant.  The same can be said for the other solo by the company’s founder, Tehreema Mitha, whose dancing overpowered the music and story perfectly.

But a dance show is supposed to be about dancing, not about daily news events, which is where this show gets a little more complicated. The two contemporary pieces are well-executed, but the accompanying stories were just a little awkward.  “Cherry Blossoms in D.C.,” a reflection on the beauty of the Tidal Basin in April in contrast with the sinister forces of politics in this city became complicated and messy.  The highlights were Akula and Meredith Hope, dressed in pink and purple to represent the blossoms; but when two other dancers enter, dressed as Secret Service agents, and begin to frisk audience members, the level of believability plummets.  Add to that a presidential character who looks like Hillary Clinton and speaks like Sarah Palin, and suddenly, the performance becomes pure agenda. The second contemporary piece, a solo by Mitha about a bi-polar homeless person, is less distracted by her message, her spastic motions representing the mania that run through this woman’s body. You understand her frustration when passersby run away…but when she keeps chanting “I used to work at Lehman Brothers,” current events supersede the motions and the audience is left pondering economics, not dance.

See it if: You want a message to correspond to each dance or want to see a cat walked on a leash.

Skip it if: You don’t want to see a Secret Service ballet.

Remaining Performances:
July 19th at 3 pm
July 23 at 10:15 pm
July 25th at 6:15 pm

They say: “Get intimate. Enjoy an evening of conversation and poetry in this one woman show combining a dancer’s grace with language laced in feminine sensuality. Join in her discovery.”

Caroline’s take: Part monologue, part performance poetry, and part traditional Indian dance, Neelam Patel delivers a deeply personal show that attempts to find some middle ground between her American and Indian heritage.  As much as she brings the audience into her stories, the result is most therapeutic for Patel herself: Using the performance as a form of release, she shares her experiences, all of them true, as a way of connecting with her past.

The show starts with a series of monologues, beginning in infancy when Patel’s family immigrated to New Jersey.  Adolescence ensues: There are parties with boys, conflicts at school, and disagreements with her parents about Bon Jovi.  When she starts describing her need to fit in among the big-haired blondes however, the reflections turn inward and you can hear Patel reverting to her teenage mentality to tell the story.  That she is so in touch with her ideas and emotions at different times in her life is powerful and makes the show all the more poignant.

As the show proceeds, the monologues transition into performance poems that Patel admits yet more personal.  A particularly intense poem about a passionate relationship with a boyfriend goes over well, but she does not hit her stride until she fuses the aspects of both of her cultures together.  In “Nationhood,” she admits to not feeling at home in either culture—she’s at once too Indian and too American.  But instead of dwelling on the frustration, she sees her nation as the path she creates everyday.  This acceptance of her experience gives the performance even more power.

Incorporating traditional Indian dance is important to Patel (she only started performing her poems after she quit dancing due to an injury) and even though it’s nice to watch, it does not add significantly to the concept of the show.  The dancing allows the audience to step back rather than remain immersed in the stories she tells.  Really, her dances are another narrative altogether, but when each element comes together at the end, you finally understand Patel’s whole story.

See it if: You want to know more about Indian culture, laugh about coming of age in New Jersey, or enjoy Bollywood music.

Skip it if: You’re not interested in 45 minutes of serious self-reflection.

Freakshow

Remaining Performances:
July 17th at 8:45 pm
July 23 at 6:30 pm

What they say: “Freakshow at a crossroads — the Dog Faced Woman sniffs freedom — the Ringmaster seeks redemption — and what lies in the mind of the Woman With No Arms and No Legs anyway? Step right up…if you dare.”

Caroline’s take: The description makes this show sound like some sort of spectacle that will disturb the audience;  really, it’s nothing like that.  Burrowing into the minds of the various players involved, the show illuminates what keeps them exploiting themselves (and each other) day after day.  It’s a simple enough premise—what goes on in the minds of 1900s “circus freaks,” people who are born with or develop various strange qualities that turns them into spectacles?  But to hear their own perceptions changes your assumptions immediately.

It all begins with Amalia, “The Woman With No Arms and No Legs,” who introduces the cast and crew of “Mr. Flip’s Freakshow and Traveling Jungle.”  There’s Aquaboy, the human salamander, who started off as a kid with extra skin between his fingers and toes and eventually grew gills after spending so much time in the water.  There’s also Pinhead, who appears to be mentally retarded and lives on his hands and knees in a cage.  Their attendants are Mr. Flip, the owner and ringleader, Judith, his assistant and a former star of the show, and Matthew, the young animal lover who just wants to help these people as they travel around the country.  At one stop, a young girl falls in love with Aquaboy and joins the motley crew.

Amalia serves as narrator, spotlighting the trials and tribulations of each character and pinpointing what brought them together.  Amid the love triangles, battles for attention, and attempts to escape their oppressive environment, the show keeps returing to the fact that none of the stars ever fit in among their peers.  It might be because, like Pinhead and Amalia, they will always be different, or it could be that they are so profoundly unhappy with their family lives that they literally run away to join the circus.  All the actors are so conscious of their characters’ neuroses and characteristics that the small conflicts seem real, regardless of how different the people may look.  The differences between the humans and “freaks” are often too difficult to reconcile, which pulls them apart in the end: They long for a sense of community that is never fully achieved.

Even the set captures the freakish quality of the show.  The legless woman sits on a stool behind a podium, disguising her actual limbs, the Pinhead has his own straw-lined cage to play in, and Aquaboy has a makeshift tank that he can splash around in. And it all happens under a tent, which is so fitting for a show about a circus—a more appropriate venue couldn’t be found.

See it if: You’re looking for a comic and poignant reflection on what’s weird about all of us.

Skip it if: You are scared of circuses.

Remaining Performances:
Saturday 7/18 at 11:30 pm, Sunday 7/19 at 7 pm, and Sunday 7/26 at 4:15 pm.

They say: “A satire on the news business, is set in the Worldwide Broadcasting newsroom, where people in charge come and go. As the news ebbs and flows, the play highlights the crises in their lives.”

Caroline’s take: Yes, it’s a satire on the news business, but it’s more of a satire of workplaces in general.  Whatever happens in this newsroom could happen anywhere else in the world.  The group of characters spend the seventy minutes struggling to report the news, proving that regardless of the final product, not all news organizations run like well-oiled machines.

The play starts with a typical day at Worldwide Broadcasting, a government-run radio network.  Larry, the chief editor, simplifies his problems by delegating all tasks to Elizabeth, the assistant editor.  Two of the staff writers are too concerned with their own interests to contribute to the broadcast, and the only person invested in getting the news out is Mary, the ambitious young reporter who happens to be sleeping with Larry.  After seeing the results of one broadcast, it becomes clear that covering the news is nobody’s strong suit, so the emphasis switches to the pitiful personal lives of the characters.

Whenever the characters sit down at the table opposite the newsroom set, they reveal some somber fact about their lives and plead with each other for better opportunities.  Alene, an older copy clerk and aspiring writer, sits down with Elizabeth to announce that she plans to sue Larry and the company for age and sex discrimination and asks Elizabeth to testify on her behalf.  As soon as she reveals her motives, both women strike a suddenly depressing note when they discuss what brought them to Worldwide Broadcasting in the first place.  For Alene, becoming a writer was her first step to becoming independent after leaving her abusive husband.  For Elizabeth, working her way up the masthead was a way of coping with the death of her child.  Their messages are powerful, but the hectic pace of the newsroom swallows their emotions.

As the play drags on, editors come and go, eager to chase their next opportunity, and yet nothing changes.  The action is static, and even as the writers rush to cover press conferences, nothing happens that affects anyone for the better or worse.  Each day is the same as the one before and after a while, even the news begins to repeat.  Scenes in the play blend into one another and it’s difficult to determine why the characters are so concerned about everything.  By the time the lights go down, the characters discuss closure—something the audience isn’t getting, either.

See it if: You don’t know a lot about the news business and enjoy behind-the-scenes drama more than what is happening to begin with.

Skip it if: You want to see something out of the ordinary or want to see a show with some sort of central plot.

Self-Service

Remaining Performances:
July 12th at 7 pm, July 18th at 9:30 pm, July 22nd at 8 pm, and July 25th at 7 pm

They say: “Like sugar in Carolina iced tea, Sheldon sprinkles a lot of comedy into his tale of a precious rural Southern boy, ‘sissified but dignified’ who transforms to an urban man looking for love and settling for sex and sour candy.”

Caroline’s take: A show about coming to terms with one’s sexuality while growing up in the South might be expected to play up the tragedy of being cast aside by friends and relations.  But Sheldon Scott does the opposite in his one-man-show. It’s actually less of a show, and more a set of anecdotes relating to Scott’s current life as a performer and the manager of Marvin on U Street.  With plenty of humor and  good dose of self-reflection, he brings the audience back home with him, to rural South Carolina, where everything begins.

Scott starts with the story of meeting his biological father for the first time before his great-grandmother’s funeral in 1989, the day Hurricane Hugo pounded the South Carolina coast.  It begins with a look of recognition, from top to bottom, as a thirteen-year-old Scott tries to figure out his connection to this man.  But how could he be related to a man who dressed so horribly, in a polyester, airplane-collared shirt, with a ring around the collar?  At the same time, his father turns to his mother and announces, “You know, he doesn’t look like a faggot.”  It’s this dichotomy, of his struggle to fit in while knowing that he doesn’t always need to, that motivates him throughout his life.

He makes the connection through several other childhood stories, as when he struggles to find a talent among a family of “Wayans and Jacksons.”  It turns out that his greatest skill is public urination, which entertains the neighbors, but it’s the ingenuity he demonstrates, in conjunction with the humor, that makes him entertaining.  Like the fact that he used to escape punishment by sliding through a hole in the bathroom of the family’s mobile home.  Or how, when a flower he planted in kindergarten didn’t bloom, he used the pot as a desk organizer.  The randomness of these ideas and how they dawn on him make the situation even better.

The second part of his story starts in 2000, as Scott drives up Interstate 95 to make a new life in Washington.  His motivation is sex: all he wants is more of it.  Of course, his dream of falling in love at the first gay bar he goes to, adopting little brown children from Somalia or Southeast, and joining the ANC to turn down liquor licenses doesn’t come easy—and here’s where the show gets a little awkward.  The lure of anonymity, especially on the Internet, becomes the focus, and here that aforementioned ingenuity is missing.  Scott relates this anonymity to his experiences at health clinics (which is where all the hot guys are, apparently), but soon, the motif involves somber consequences, and the tonal change is somewhat jarring.  As the story becomes less about Scott and more about the groups he belongs to, the burden of self reflection transfers to the audience as the lights go down.

See it if: You want to laugh at childhood anecdotes, enjoy jokes about mobile homes and the people who live in them, or want to know about life south of Richmond.

Skip it if: You’d rather not know the details about nameless hookups or don’t want to know what it’ really like inside the Whitman-Walker clinic.

Hometown: Silver Spring, MD

Years in DC: 20 years (my entire life!) living less than a mile from the District line.

First CapFringe? No, my friend brought me to a show last summer.

Shows I’m Seeing: So far, Self Service and Immoral Combat.  Maybe Slow News Day, The A Cappella Party, and This Is NOT My Life.

Random Thing You Might Find Interesting About My Sensibilities: I go to a college where the majority of student-produced plays resemble Fringe productions, only a lot more serious and with less planning.  I’ll probably never audition for one because watching the “art” happen is far too entertaining.