Posts Tagged ‘poetry’
Hip Shot: ‘The Girls Inside’
The Girls Inside
Bodega
Remaining Performances:
Jul 19th 12 pm
Jul 25th 3:15 pm
They say: You didn’t even know we existed. But now? Now. You do. A new play that tells the spirited stories of four ‘juvie’ girls living on the inside
Suzyn’s take: “The Girls Inside,” Leayne C. Freeman’s new play about teenage girls in juvie, is memorable and exciting from the first moments as the four girls run around in darkness with flashlights, soon getting caught by the police. The much-maligned Bodega, with its stifling heat and peeling paint, is the perfect venue.
This is not so much a play as a 45-minute slam poem, and the directing—the best I’ve seen at the Fringe Festival this year—is more like choreography. There are snippets about the girls’ lives; one girl deals with the drug-addicted mother she adores, another was essentially made to sign adoption papers that she couldn’t read. But mostly there is a sort of anonymity to the characters that the girls play, which allows lines like “The world didn’t want us the first time, so why would it change its mind if we got out?” to speak for everyone.
Hip Shot: “Sari to Skin”
Sari to Skin
The Apothocary at the Trading Post
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Hip-Shot: ‘Beyond Dark Corners’
Beyond Dark Corners
Warehouse — Next Door
Remaining performances:
July 19 at 8 pm; July 23 at 9:30 pm; July 25 at 1 pm
They say: Black, and Gay in struggle with identity. Christopher Prince and Terry Sidney, seasoned Performance Artists push the envelope another notch by creating a riveting evening of poetry, music and stories exploring conflict between self-value, culture and social politics.
Sheffy says: November 4, 2008, was historic. African-American voters turned out in record numbers to elect Barack Obama. In California, that record black vote has been blamed for ensuring passage of Prop 8, where 7 in 10 blacks voted in favor of a measure that bans gay marriage. While both the black community and gay community have struggled for their civil rights, traditionally the two have not gotten along. So what if you’re both black and gay? Chances are “Beyond Dark Corners” is not just a metaphor for you.
‘The Disappearance of Jonah’
The Disappearance of Jonah
The Shop at Fort Fringe
Remaining Shows:
Thursday, July 24 @ 6:00 PM; Friday, July 25 @ 8:30 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 5:00 PM; Sunday, July 27 @ 12:30 PM
They say: “When small town golden boy Jonah Thompson moves to New York City, he dreams that the city will be his playground but soon he disappears. Two years later his brother Finn sets out to find Jonah, or at least some answers.”
Brett’s take: It’s painful to review a show that clearly has benefited from hours upon hours of effort and attention from thoughtful, hardworking people (who have traveled to D.C. from New York) but that nevertheless leaves you cold. You can see the conviction in the actor’s faces, hear it in their voices, and even see it in the way one of the leads’ limbs shake with apparent nervousness before going into a big scene. But sincerity can’t save this production from pretentiousness and hollowness.
The plot concerns… well, the disappearance of a college student named Jonah. It leaps back and forth from the time leading up to that event and some years afterwards (two years, as far as I could grasp), when Jonah’s younger brother Finn goes to New York City to search for him on Jonah’s birthday. In quick succession, we meet a coterie of educated New York characters, including a writer, a professor, a photographer/physics student, and an aspiring actress/waitress, all of whom had some connection with Jonah and all of whom begin to have new connections to each other. Just why these new connections start happening right when Finn is arriving at the city – besides convenience for writer Darragh Martin- is an unanswered question that points to the problems with the play.
