AMNESIAC

Sky Shriver is a young local woman finding her way in the world. She loves dance, having evolved from free-form modern dance to classical ballet. Largely self-taught, Amnesiac was a series of gestures en pointe to the music of Philip Glass (who I adore). It was beautiful but it ain’t Swan Lake.                  

NIGHT JUST BEFORE THE FOREST

 

Lazaros Theodorakopoulos is a young Greek man living in New York. He is touring with a most unusual play, a nearly hour-long rapid fire monologue. It’s called Night Just Before The Forest, written by Bernard-Marie Koltes. He is said to be a successor to Samuel Beckett, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet. The unnamed character is homeless, unemployed and very alone. He may also be mentally disturbed, His thoughts race through his present and into the future. Stimulating stuff.     

PROFESSOR LONGHAIR’S MAGIC SHOW

 

Working my way through my favorite shows at the Fringe. The man who performs as Professor Longhair (accurate, but hard  to see under the hat) is a professional mental health counsellor. He uses magic tricks as entertainment, of course, but also as a form of therapy. Unlike most magicians, he shows how many of the tricks are done. The purpose is to challenge people’s perceptions, to illustrate that what you think may not be at all accurate. Sounds like a good technique.     

By the way, I stayed up to watch President Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. It made me feel so good. We 🩷 Joe.         

BROKEN BONE BATHTUB

 

This may have been the most unusual show I’ve ever seen, and one of the best. Siobhán O’Loughlin was a young woman riding her bicycle on a rainy night. She collided with another cyclist and seriously broke her left hand. She lived alone and had only a shower in her apartment. She couldn’t shower one-handed and feared getting the cast wet. She started asking a series of friends if she could use their bathtubs to bathe.

This was the origin of her show Broken Bone Bathtub. It is literally performed in a bathtub, naked and strategically covered with bubbles. She engages with the small audience, exploring loneliness, vulnerability, fear, embarrassment, and emotional recovery. O’Laughlin asks the audience to help with uncomfortable activities she can’t do herself like washing her back, putting conditioner in her hair and applying lotion to her good limb. The show ends with a kind of emotional catharsis.

O’Laughlin has performed the show all over the world. Check out https://www.siobhanoloughlin.com/ .           

GOOEY BUTTER CAKES

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Lots of places have favorite local foods, and St. Louis in no exception. It’s just that ours are a little…strange. Toasted ravioli, or T Rav -  small, meat-filled ravioli, deep fried, dusted with grated parmesan and served with marinara as a dipping sauce. Cracker-thin crust pizza, cut into squares. An unusual cheese blend we call provel, a blend of provolone, swiss and white cheddar, extruded into little worm-like pieces, used on pizza and with some pastas. And then there is the diabetes bomb called gooey butter cake, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gooey_butter_cake. 

One of the Fringe acts was an old guy’s rock and roll band called the Gooey Butter Cakes. It was like, return with us to those thrilling days of yesterday. Honk if you get the reference.

Sorry no post yesterday. Out too late shooting, up too early to shoot more.