Heyo, the Festival Guides are here! For a fancy-pants virtual guide, hit up our website, and "turn" the "pages" to browse what's on offer at the 2010 Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe.

Need a print guide? Watch for us on First Friday in August, when we're running around passing 'em out. For now, you can find one at these hotspots, which I'm told will always have guides available, now through the festival:

Bella Vista
Whole Foods
929 South Street

Center City
TLA Video
1520 Locust Street

Fairmount
Mugshots Coffee House
2106 Fairmount Avenue

Northern Liberties
North Bowl
909 North 2nd Street

Old City
Artist and Craftsman Supply
307 Market Street

South Philly
Black N Brew Cafe
Passyunk Avenue between Dickinson and Tasker

West Philly
Satellite Cafe
50th Street at Baltimore Avenue

Go go go!

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Emma Gibson, the Philadelphian-by-way-of-Britain producer of Abi Morgan's Tiny Dynamite at this year's Philly Fringe, sends us this recipe:

Because of the British connection I thought it might be pertinent to include a very British meal, Toad in the Hole. Not, I should add, what it sounds. Also, as I am vegetarian, I substitute veggie sausages for the meat. The origin of the name "Toad-in-the-Hole" is often disputed. Many suggestions are that the dish's resemblance to a toad sticking its little head out of a hole . . . go figure!

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of plain flour
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups of milk
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 lb good-quality sausage
salt and pepper

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Sift flour into a bowl with a pinch of salt and pepper. Make a well in the center of the flour. Whisk the eggs and the milk into the center of the well in the flour, gradually to smooth out lumps. Cover and let stand 30 minutes.

Brown the sausages in a little olive oil and cook through, about 10 minutes.

Put sausages in a roasting pan, pour the batter over the sausages and place in oven. Cook for about 20 minutes or until the batter is risen and golden. Serve at once.

Serves 4 to 6.

Are you a Philly Fringe artist who cooks, or do you cook for a Philly Fringe artist? Email your recipes to nicholas[at]pafringe[dot]com.

Tiny Dynamite runs September 9 through 12 and September 16 through 18 at 2nd Stage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia. Various times, $15.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo by Robert Gilbert via Wikimedia Commons.

There's no such thing as just an 'event' going on this weekend—everything is now a festival. Hey, I don't mind as long as they're all free!

Thursday – Sunday:
>>>The Black Women's Arts Festival will feature readings, performances, parties, and more, all celebrating the work of black women. And yes, even you white males are welcome.

>>>Pack a picnic and take the whole family to enjoy Shakespeare in Clark Park's free performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Saturday:
>>> It's not often that there are free, all ages events where face painting and the petting zoo don't get the highest billing. The Mad Decent Block Party at 12th and Spring Garden might have those things (they're certainly hyping the dunk tanks) but it's also got Diplo, Kid Sister, The Deathset and Blaqstarr. Sounds sorta better than decent . . .

>>>Did you know that July 31st is National Dance Day? Neither did we, but you can act like you did by joining Philly Dance Fitness for seven free workshops with LindyAndBlues, Messiah Dance Works, and Major Moment Studio. There's guaranteed to be at least one style you've never tried.

Sunday:
>>>We'll be down the street enjoying the live local music, moon bounce, venders, and, oh yeah, four beer gardens at the NoLibs 2nd Street Festival. Stop by our table and say hi!

--Ellen Freeman

Last week we headed to Christ Church to hear a little bit more about the 2010 Live Arts Festival production FREEDOM CLUB. Not being able to do justice to the physical side of things—the layering of action and words, and the occasional repudiation of one or another—that characterizes the work of New Paradise Laboratories and The Riot Group, I thought I'd go with the reductivist route, and give you a litany of decontextualized quotes from the discussion. Discussants: Adriano Shaplin and Whit McLaughlin. Enjoy.

Adriano: "Our work tends to have words, but words tend to be the connective tissue between physical movements."

Adriano: "My early scripts weren't really plays. They were just text I wanted to hear out loud. We came up with materialistic story-based excuses to stage the invocation of text in a fixed location."

Whit: "New Paradise has been really interested in the body as the locus of human experience."

Whit: "Our pieces don't read like plays, they read like events."

Adriano: "We didn't like plays."

Adriano: "When I see New Paradise's work, I see a mirror realm of my company. [We want to get the audience] high off this ecstatic investigation. If we can combine these things we can form like Voltron and make complete theater."

Whit: "FREEDOM CLUB is in some ways about the American project in an evocative and horrific sort of way."

Adriano: "My project for the Royal Shakespeare Society was a colossal failure. I pretty much shit the bed. I chose to write an English history play about the English civil war. They didn't take kindly to that. I got raped for doing that."

FREEDOM CLUB runs September 1 through September 5, and September 8 through September 11. Arts Bank at the University of the Arts, 601 S. Broad St. Various times, $20 to $30.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo by Bill Hebert.

Leah Stein Dance Company's piece for the 2010 Philly Fringe, Japan House/Philadelphia, began as a collaboration between artists living and working in a 200-year-old traditional Japanese house on the Izu peninsula of Japan. This clip of that performance gives you an idea of their traditional-meets-contemporary work:



Their Fringe performance will be in an even older Japanese house—OK, so the Shofuso Japanese House and Garden in Fairmount Park is only a replica of an authentic 17th century Shoin-style house, but can you really tell the difference?

Japan House/Philadelphia runs from Sept. 9th - 11th at Shofuso Japanese House and Garden, 4301 Lansdowne Drive.

--Ellen Freeman

A secretary of state and a queen met in Philadelphia last night, but it was no political summit. Condoleezza Rice and Aretha Franklin performed together at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts to raise money for the Mann's educational programs. One of the perks of being a Hurford Humanities Center intern is that sometimes you get free tickets to things, which is especially great when the bill boggles your mind like this one. And if a duet between Condoleezza Rice and Aretha Franklin seems unusual—well, that's probably the best word to describe last night's performance.

Read all about it after the jump:

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Haiku not for you? Here's a limerick from Rick Horner, whose show ZACHERLE a prequel to the last mummer will be performed in the 2010 Philly Fringe:

A man finds his life he must lose,
As fear helps him get lots of clues,
For good mental health,
He becomes someone else,
Come see this show, all of Youse.

ZACHERLE a prequel to the last mummer runs from Sept. 12th - 18th at Upstairs at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street.

--Ellen Freeman

Photo by Bobby Beeman.

In this series, get to know your 2010 Philly Fringe artists a little bit better. Today, say hi to the creative force behind the show THE IMPEACHMENT OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND OTHER SIMILAR, RELATED, NOTABLE AND WORTHWHILE CONCERNS, which will be performed as part of iNtuitons Experimental Theatre Company's Alternative Theatre Festival:

Name:
Will Steinberger

Age:
21

Where do you live now?
In an abandoned, plumbingless, mosquito-infested, moldy, asbestos-riddled, unhappy barn in Berkshire County, MA. But only for a bit, then it's back to West Philly.

Where were you born?

Pennsylvania Hospital.

What's your show title?
Why does everybody ask me this? My producer e-mails me twice a day asking me this question. It was called DID for a bit. Then it was POLITICAL TRIALS PROJECT. Anyhoo, it's currently called THE IMPEACHMENT OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND OTHER SIMILAR, RELATED, NOTABLE AND WORTHWHILE CONCERNS. Some New York writer told me long titles are in. Last year my Fringe play was called THE INTELLIGENT THEATREGOER'S GUIDE TO COSTUME AND PROP, WITH A KEY TO 4100 WALNUT STREET.

Click more to find out what vomijackiarrhea is.

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Our individual giving manager here at Live Arts/Fringe, Meg Clifton Mitchell, has a "secret life." When she's not making sure we have the funds to keep the Festival going, she's crooning jazz tunes around the city. Tonight she's performing at the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent's event Sounds of Philadelphia: Conversations on Jazz with Bob Perkins. The night of performance and talk will be hosted by legendary jazz DJ Bob "BP with the GM" Perkins and will explore the history of Philly jazz.

"It's exciting to be celebrating Philly jazz because I've been singing in this city for a long time," says Meg.

Meg got her Master of Music in Jazz Studies at UArts, and her style has been described as "swinging with a fresh and sexy quality" and "rich with the knowledge of jazz vocal history." Listen to her sing modern and classic jazz standards with bassist Lee Clark tonight at 6 PM at Conversation Hall (room 201) at City Hall. Can't make it tonight? Meg also performs regularly at Chris's Jazz Cafe.

--Ellen Freeman

Why is it that the second installment in a series doesn't live up to the first? I may be treading on dangerous territory by saying this, but Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was the most boring book in the series, ditto the movie version of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers—don't even get me started on New Moon. Whatever your opinion, the sophomore effort—however great the series—can be disappointing, and Wawapalooza, IdRatherBeHere's hilarious series of videos and sketches that have lovingly examined Philly's particular brand of crazy for the last three years at the Philly Fringe, wasn't immune to this effect.

"At a show the second year a sketch just dived," says Eric Balchunas, creator/writer/director of this year's iteration of the Fringe show Wawapalooza 4: Damaged Goods. "There's nothing like sitting backstage and hearing people not laughing when you expect laughs. It hurts."

Eric has a pretty foolproof plan to prevent that from ever happening again. At his job as a financial analyst he takes raw data and makes something with meaning out of it. It may seem like there's nothing funny about that, but creating a comedic show, as it turns out, isn't so different from crunching numbers.

"People need to have at least one drink, they need to be sitting close together, and there needs to be air conditioning," he says of the three essential factors for successful comedy. "That gives the material a head start."

In terms of tracking audience response, IdRatherBeHere uses techniques a lot more sophisticated than the old laugh-o-meter. Eric sets up a focus group to screen the show a month before the festival, with a cross-demographical audience that watches and ranks the material so that he knows what, if anything, to cut. "We try to figure out what's universally funny," he says. They also sent out a survey this year to audience members of the last three paloozas asking for feedback on not just the shows, but venues, too.

There is, of course, the most essential factor—material—but it seems like Eric's got that covered. Click more to read about it

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