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There are just a few more days to catch Jewish performers at the Fringe, which runs until Sept. 15. For tickets, call 604-257-0366.
Spending 45 minutes with Susan Freedman at her one-woman play at the Fringe Festival was like visiting a good friend. Sixty With More Lies About My Weight played to a full house on a rainy Sunday afternoon and the only disappointing moment came when we all realized it was over too soon.
A follow-up to her Fifty-Seven and Still Lying About My Weight at the Fringe three years ago, Sixty left us all hoping to hear what was going to happen at 61.
The performance takes place on a stark stage, bare except for a chair, a slide screen and a bag with d^ glasses and a red feather boa, but it felt like Freedman's living room. We had all been invited over for a family slide show and hilarious stories.
"Once you've had a friendship for over 25 years it is really too late to end it, even if you can't stand the person," she states, making you feel like she's confiding in you, and she's so relaxed and enjoying herself that you have to do the same.
A slim, graceful and lovely woman, she never weighs in.
"One really good look in the mirror can give you all the bad news you really need," she jokes. "Why stand on the scale and make it official?"
And about her husband, who so skilfully finds his way to any destination in any unknovm city but can't find a thing around the house, she remarks, "If it doesn't jump out and hit him in the face, he declares it lost. I swear if God hadn't attached it, overpopulation wouldn't be a problem."
The show was a mixture of stories, with adept use of sHdes of her and her family, as well as perfectly placed songs piped in. It was an entertaining show.
"I am going to keep celebrating the good parts [of getting older]," she states, "It has worked so far." Indeed it has, Miss Freedman, and we'd love regular updates on how it's going. More information on Freedman's work can be seen at www.susanfrecdman.ca.
Sixty With More Lies About My Weight runs Sept. 13 at 1 p.m. and Sept. 14 at 4 p.m. at the Ballard Lederer Gallerj', 1540 West 2nd Ave.
- Jannette Edmonds
Truth and fiction
Also at Ballard Lederer is Where You Are, with Karl Knox
and Razielle Aligen. Knox and Aigen explore the world of relationships and dating and how film versions compare with reality. The performance includes song, dance and comedy. It runs Sept. 13 at 8:15 p.m. and Sept. 15 at 3:45 p.m.
Women's role reversal
Everybody plays a certain role in society: as a mother, a wife, a lover, a diild. We try hajd to play our role as well as possible and we seldom think to change it The play Eve and Lilith suggests, using extreme examples, that women should try to change their roles in order to gain this new viewpoint.
In the play, two contrasting women meet each other. Eve Maria Schackle, a faithful wife for 20 years, visits Lilian Moonback, her husband's lover.
The two meet in a dream as the archetypes Eve and LiHth. Eve, wearing a long, white dress, her voice soft and smiling, is in complete bondage to a male voice, which represents Adam. In contrast, Lilith is dressed as an aggressive cat, self-confident, vrith a strong voice. Lilith tries to help Eve to escape from Adam's captivity, but without success.
Back in their characters of Lilian and Eve, Lilian persuades Eve to switch roles. Eve is reluctant at first, but finally slips from her conservative clothes into Lilian's tight dress.
Although the characters eventually return to their original roles, they are happy having had the chance to play such different personas. Both express their belief that, in this way, they could learn to understand and accept each other better.
The play presents some interesting points but, judging fiiom the reaction from the audience, the subject matter hits home more with women. Perhaps with the involvement of a male character, such as Adam, the play would reach out to both sexes dike.
Eve and Lilith shows at the Waterfront Theatre Sept. 14 at 7:30 p.m. and Sept 15 at 6:15 p.m.
-Omer Raglan
Second helpings please
Take two parts music, one part story, add a smidgen of standup comedy and you have the basic ingredients for A^b Feet in the Pie, Please! - a sexy, dark and vivacious glimpse of human nature, as seen through the eyes of Derek Brans, one of Vancouver's most mischievous solo artists.
Brans's unique recipe blends intimacy and emotion with an edgy sense of humor to create an
atmosphere all his own. Funny, inspiring and offbeat, his songs and stories are sure to leave you wanting a second helping.
No Feet runs at Studio 16,1545 West 7th Ave., Sept. 13 at midnight and Sept. 14 at 3:30 p.m.
As cheesy as they come
According to Rob Bosse, the secret to finding success on Broadway is as simple as being as cheesy as you can possibly be. Fortunately, Bosse is just a character (a musicd director) in the Fringe Festival play How to Be Cheesey in Showbiz Without Even Trying.
Starring Richmond Jewish community members Matthew RossofT and Shira Elias, How to Be Cheesey takes a fun look at the personalities and dreams of Broadway hopefuls.
In a play within the play, the group is nearing the final stages of preparation for a performance about how Canadians should separate their ties from the United States, when a rocky relationship causes the male and female leads to quit the show. The couple ends up fmding happiness, but not before two other hopefiuls are convinced that they can carry the show on their own.
How to Be Cheesey combines the melodramatic, over-eager personalities of the characters with cute, slapstick humor, dancing and catchy tunes. It doesn't take long for the somewhat naive characters to grow on the audience.
Everyone involved in the show is part of a new theatre group called Breaking Broadway. This was the first Fringe appearance for all of the performers.
How to Be Cheesey runs at Performance Works Sept. 13 at 4:15 .p.m. and Sept. 14 at 10:15 p.m.
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Future of community
Do you feel buildings are infringing on your lifestyle? Has the concrete jungle become just too much? Fingdly, an opportunity to make your voice heard. Join the Vancouver Fringe Festival's urban think tank at the Future of Community, a round-table discussion featuring Arthur Erickson, John MacLachlin Gray, Stephen Hynes, Steve Burgess and Michael Gordon for a discussion on how our cities make us tick. The event takes place on Friday, Sept. 13, at 7:30 p.m., at the Emily Carr School of Art and Design on Granville Island. Tickets are $10 in advance or $8 at the door.
Humor from the fringes
University-based Jewish group planted seeds of improv.
DANIEL MATE SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
At this year's Vancouver Fringe Festival, two local-bom Jewish performers are pushing the improv comedy form in an exciting and lai^gely unfamiliar direction. Theatre in a Box, featuring Becky Johnson and Noah Lepawsky, is a charming, low-key and imique-ly engaging improv experience. Unlike most improv shows, which use audience suggestions to create short, imrelatcd bursts of absurd comedy, Johnson and Lepawsky create a continuous one-act play based on only a few bits of information provided by the crowd.
Since each show is completely unique, I won't be giving anything away by describing the performance I witnessed. It had been decided beforehand by Lepawsky, without consulting Johnson, that the play would be a mystery of some kind. The audience then gave each actor a secret that they were to try to withhold from the other. From these scant beginnings, the two performers created a hilariously convoluted but strangely compelling story about a detective who longed to be a gardening journalist, a former high school jock living in Michigan over a nuclear dumping site, a flighty Gap girl and a woman named Anan-da Smith who is Michelle Pfeif-fer's illegitimate daughter.
I had a blast watching the actors working on their feet to explore the details of these characters' personalities, move the story forward and keep the surprises coming for each other and the audience. Adding to the fun is the interplay between the actors and the sound and light technicians, who are also improvising as they go. Mostly, I appreciated the total absence of cheap, overused gags. The laughs come from the struggles of both the characters and the actors as they strive to work through and make sense of what's happening around them, and the humor feels fresh and mature.
Speaking to Johnson before the show, she pointed out that while the Theatre in a Box company is doing something rather imique in this day and age, it's not the first company to do long-form improv. In fact, the roots of all spontaneously created theatre go back to the work of companies like The Compass, a University of Chicago-based group formed in the 1950s. Made up primarily of liberal Jewish students, The Compass created improvised stories based on loosely prepared scenarios, often from newspaper stories.
"They were not actors to begin with," said Johnson, "they were simply informed and opinionated young people with interests in performing."
The work of The Compass grew to be very popular and was highly influential for later comedy troupes like Second City, which led to shows like SCTV and Saturday Night Live.
Asked why she and Lepawsky were drawn to the long-form style, Johnson cites a dissatisfaction with the current state of comedy.
"Everything was flippant," she said. "The new persona of the comic was one of distant judgment, and some of the craft of comedy was gone. I was seeing a lot of improv shows that felt more like a string of jokes than a stoiy."
Since the two performers consider themselves to be actors and not comedians, she explained, they wanted to be able to play with theatrical fimdamentals like character and relationship, and to engage audiences on a sophisticated level.
"I wanted an audience to be rooting for a character the way they would in a dramatic play, and for it to be sustainable over a longer period of time," she said. Through doing this sort of work, they have found that audiences appreciate the chance to get to know the characters over the course of the whole show.
Theatre in a Box also carries on the great tradition of Jewish performers making people laugh.
"Laughter is one of the things that keeps an oppressed people hopeful," Johnson said. "Today North American Jews are also in a unique social position. We are largely white and middle class, and yet we are also outside the western ideal."
While the content o^Theatrc in a Box is not explicitly Jewish, there is a tinge of twistod outsider humor present that is consistent with that of Jewish comics from Lenny Bruce to SCTVs Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin, all the way through to Jerry Seinfeld. With any luck, these two talented performers and their long-form medium will continue to grow in popularity and recognition.
Theatre in a Box runs at Studio 17,1565 West 7th Ave., Sept. 14 at 12:30 p.m. and Sept. 15 at 1:45 p.m. For more information on tickets, call 604-257-0366 or visit the Fringe site online at www.vancouvcrfringe.com. □
Daniel Mate is a freelance writer and performer living in Vancouver.