Comedy has taken on a bigger role at Philly Fringe in the past two years. For the 2010 Fringe, Matt Holmes offers something unique in the genre: one-on-one improv with a random audience volunteer.

"I always assume they're scared out of their wits," Matt says about his partners in improv repartee. "I'll ask for somebody who's never been to an improv show before. I try to put them at ease, telling them that anything they can say or do is perfect. It's all on me—it's my show, after all."

Matt recently returned to Philly from the Baltimore Improv Festival, where he says he had one of his best one-on-one shows ever. He also gave a workshop teaching his approach to improvising.

In the workshop, Matt taught "how to improvise without getting in your own way. People have the tendency to over-think—improv teaching supports that by giving a lot of rules. I try to strip it down to making a choice and committing to that choice."

In one-on-one improv, Matt's gotta commit, because nobody's there to bail him out but himself.

"A lot of improv out there," says Matt, "is five to ten guys in a big group that support each other, like an orchestra. I've been doing smaller and smaller groups, and I'm used to working on smaller teams," like his projects with Rare Bird Show.

"The idea started as, 'Maybe I'll do what Susan Messing in Chicago does [in Messing with a Friend], where I get a chance to perform with great improvisers who are out there."

But, Matt says, he had a nagging fear.

"In the back of my mind was the idea: what if I schedule a show and the person doesn't show up? And how could I do a show with an audience member?"

And so his one-on-one project was born. He makes a point of making audience members feel comfortable, and of offering them the opportunity to make their own choices as well.

"I say they can even try to mess me up," says Matt, "and sometimes that yields the funniest lines. In the first show, [when working with] a younger woman, I gave her a name: 'Karen, your breakfast is ready.'

"She came back with, 'My name is not Karen.'"

Think you can trip up Matt? Find out at m@& (that's pronounced "Matt and"), which opens Saturday, September 4 at 9:00 pm. Mainstage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, Rittenhouse Square. Five other performances, dates and times vary. $10. For details, and to purchase tickets, click here.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

In this series, get to know your 2010 Philly Fringe artists.

After the jump, meet Jeff Soles and Mala Wright, two performers from Wawapalooza 4: Damaged Goods.

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Comedian Matt Holmes writes in with this haiku about his 2010 Philly Fringe show, m@&:

Meeting a stranger
Fear and excitement for both
Let's you and me play

In Matt's show, he uses an audience member—preferably one with no improv or performance experience—to, basically, perform opposite him in one-on-one improv. Crazy, right? We're gonna make him come by and show us how it's done, so stay tuned for our hard-hitting report.
--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo credit: Musher-Lovelund Photography

Last year we solicited poems from Philly Fringe artists about their shows. As you read, we got a wide range of responses, with a wide range of intents. This year, we're going back to the well.

First up: Gerre Garrett insists insists that you know in no uncertain terms what it is, exactly, The WaitStaff does:

There once was a troupe called The WaitStaff
Who worked very hard to make folks laugh.
But many don't know
They write and rehearse every show,
Serving up SKETCH (not improv) The WaitStaff!

If you can't wait until September for your dose of SKETCH (not improv), The WaitStaff will present Christmas in July: A Surprise Birthday Party for Jesus at World Cafe Live on Sunday, July 25 at 7:00 pm. $20-$30. On the third day after the first performance, the show rises again on July 28 and 29 at L'Etage as well: 8:00 pm, $15.

At 2010 Philly Fringe, The Waitstaff presents The Real Housewives of South Philly September 5, 8, 12, 14, 19. Times vary. $15, at L'Etage,

--Nicholas Gilewicz

P.S.—Philly Fringe limericks and haiku can be emailed to me at nicholas[at]pafringe[dot]com. Hook it up!

When was the last time you got out of the city and into the beauty of the great outdoors? The Groundswell Players invite you to do just that at their upcoming Barn Stompin' fundraiser, a down-on-the-farm party with live bluegrass music, barbecue, and an auction with a "country" caller on June 26th at their head writer Alex Cohen's farm in Newtown, Pennsylvania. I skyped with two of the collaborators and actors from Groundswell's new play How to Solve a Bear, which will debut at the Fringe Festival: Jesse Paulsen, 24, a Haverford College graduate and development and outreach coordinator at Mill Creek Farm, and Scott Sheppard, 26, another Haverford graduate and 9th grade English teacher at Friends Central School. We chatted about how one does solve a bear (no spoilers) and what a Chinese post-apocalyptic survival equipment company, Waiting for Guffman, Moby Dick, and a taxidermied bear all have in common.

Live Arts: What are your roles in the show?
Jesse Paulsen: My character is named Pete. He's a loner who lives in the woods of the Watchupee State Park, much to the chagrin of Ranger Seth. I was abandoned in the park by the band "The Happy Goats" with whom I was on tour as a roadie. Ever since, I've fallen in love with the park and have learned to communicate with nature.
Scott Sheppard: Connie La Pire is my name in the play.
LA: Is that a woman or a man?
SS: He's the kind of rugged individualistic frontiersman that could take a woman's name, and somehow it makes him even more masculine for doing so. La Pire means "the worst" in French, and Connie says this every time he is introduced to someone.
LA: I was going to have you answer my questions from the point of view of your characters, but I want to talk about your fundraiser, and what would they know about that?
JP: Nothin! Dude's a woodsy freak!
LA: So how did the Groundswell Players form?
JP: All of the performers are friends and members of Leo Callahan [their LOL-arious improv comedy group]. A director, Matt Decker of Theatre Horizon, will be joining us in August once we've finished and polished our script.
LA: Where did the idea for the show come from?
JP: Well, like any collaborative process, we went through many incarnations of "our play." It started out being about a Chinese company wanting to test equipment for a post-apocalyptic world and hiring a group of 5 random people to live in an artificial post-apocalyptic environment for a year to test the equipment. We had ideas for how all the instructions would be in Engrish, like "Secure a fort with the materials provided by no more sun time. Wolf attack tonight."
LA: I can't imagine how this eventually came to Groundswell.
JP: One of the original ideas we had running through all of our various scenarios was this idea of an "everything-proof suit." You should check out these videos of the bear-proof suit. So somehow we came to actual bears and we started talking about a state park.
LA: And that's Groundswell? Is it a real place?
JP: Well, actually as this project was just getting underway Jack Meaney [one of the five Groundswell Players] and I started a fake newspaper called The 'Swell News, which was an imaginary paper about the imaginary town of Groundswell, Montana.

SS:: Groundswell is the kind of place that is hermetic enough that it can be an incubator for wild ideas. Their obsessions feed off of each other. We are really trying to enter that space. Bring viewers along with us.
JP: Waiting for Guffman and other Christopher Guest movies have been source material for the level of seriousness/comedy we are aiming for, the way that they find comedy in the obsessions and passions of average and unglamorous folks.

Click more to find out what the citizens of Groundswell are obsessed with and where the taxidermied bear comes in.

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Chances are if you're reading this, you've heard of Philly Fringe--but did you know that New Orleans has a Fringe Festival too? Well duh, it's New Orleans, the First City of Jazz, and home of the freakiest mass performance art there is! (Mardi Gras) The New Orleans Fringe Festival is taking applications for shows until July 1st.

The three year-old festival, which will taken place November 17&endash;21, is a fantastic opportunity for artists, complete with plush amenities. The people at N.O. Fringe care about the festival so much, that executive director Kristen Evans called me from Peru to talk about it. As she puts it, "We want you to take artistic risks, and we'll take on the financial risks."

That means that they line up and pay for venues, which range from traditional theaters to "a big, old, gorgeous, 150-year-old church that's really deteriorating." There's also a Bring Your Own Venue option for those with site-specific shows, but you cover the costs. N.O. Fringe also generates publicity--including free advertising and posters--funds tech staff, and splits the box office with you 50/50. Did I mention there's no performance fee? Plus, last year they let performers camp out in a warehouse half-filled with pianos under construction for $20/week, and this year they have their fingers crossed for free billeting for all artists.

Here's what they're looking for: cabaret, comedy, dance, drama, improvisational, magic (New Orleans is a voodoo hotspot after all), multimedia, musical theater, performance art, puppetry, storytelling, variety, burlesque, spoken word, street theater . . . phewph! Shows have to be between 30 and 60 minutes long, and they discourage artists from entering shows that will be produced in New Orleans during the four months before the festival. Your show doesn't need to be done by the application deadline, but you should be able to provide a very good description of what you've got in mind. There's an application fee of $25, and if you're selected you must cover your production and travel costs--but after all that free stuff, you can afford Greyhound!

Past works have included an opera, a swamp zombie wedding, and Live Arts and Philly Fringe performer Makoto Hirano's interdisciplinary dance piece Boom Bap Tourism. "It's a wonderful time, there are free parties every night after the shows, and we have this great scrappy parade on Saturday which all the performers get involved in," says Kirsten. "It's a great way to come and see what's really one of the 'fringiest' cities there is."

Get your act together, cause applications, which can be found at http://www.nofringe.org/application.html, are due July 1, 2010. Contact Kristen@nofringe.org with any questions.

--Ellen Freeman

Photos courtesy of New Orleans Fringe Festival.

Last week, we were thinking about how best to get you to come meet Elevator Repair Service (remember Gatz? yeah, that's them) on Friday night. It's the Live Arts Festival's first Meet the Artist event of the summer. ERS will preview a scene from chapter 12 of their upcoming production of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and talk about working with novels on stage. Afterwards, reception! With local beers and food from Cosmic Catering.

So, we're rooting around the bowels of the internet, as we often do, and have for you a series of extra special videos: homemade trailers for The Sun Also Rises, we kid you not. To answer your question, getting paid to do this is, in fact, awesome.

TODAY'S INSTALLMENT: Interpretive Dance!

Meet the Artist Event with Elevator Repair Service actors Ben Williams and Mike Iveson, and Director John Collins. Friday, June 18, 7:00 pm. Live Arts Studio at 919 N 5th Street in Northern Liberties. Free! But you MUST RSVP to robin@livearts-fringe.org. Otherwise, how do we know how much beer to get?

Last week, we were thinking about how best to get you to come meet Elevator Repair Service (remember Gatz? yeah, that's them) on Friday night. It's the Live Arts Festival's first Meet the Artist event of the summer. ERS will preview a scene from chapter 12 of their upcoming production of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and talk about working with novels on stage. Afterwards, reception! With local beers and food from Cosmic Catering.

So, we're rooting around the bowels of the internet, as we often do, and have for you a series of extra special videos: homemade trailers for The Sun Also Rises, we kid you not. To answer your question, getting paid to do this is, in fact, awesome.

TODAY'S INSTALLMENT: "Drive Everywhere"

Meet the Artist Event with Elevator Repair Service actors Ben Williams and Mike Iveson, and Director John Collins. Friday, June 18, 7:00 pm. Live Arts Studio at 919 N 5th Street in Northern Liberties. Free! But you MUST RSVP to robin@livearts-fringe.org. Otherwise, how do we know how much beer to get?

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Last week, we were thinking about how best to get you to come meet Elevator Repair Service (remember Gatz? yeah, that's them) on Friday night. It's the Live Arts Festival's first Meet the Artist event of the summer. ERS will preview a scene from chapter 12 of their upcoming production of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and talk about working with novels on stage. Afterwards, reception! With local beers and food from Cosmic Catering.

So, we're rooting around the bowels of the internet, as we often do, and have for you a series of extra special videos: homemade trailers for The Sun Also Rises, we kid you not. To answer your question, getting paid to do this is, in fact, awesome.

User timhallbooks offers this precise sypnosis of the book, in case you're not a big reader:

Meet the Artist Event with Elevator Repair Service actors Ben Williams and Mike Iveson, and Director John Collins. Friday, June 18, 7:00 pm. Live Arts Studio at 919 N 5th Street in Northern Liberties. Free! But you MUST RSVP to robin@livearts-fringe.org. Otherwise, how do we know how much beer to get?

--Nicholas Gilewicz

But it's so tasty! Here's some favorite-beer reportage from two more Philly Fringe artists, who straggled in after we posted our rundown of drinking, places to drink, and drunky photos last week.

Jesse Kimball, Rookie Card Improv
Favorite local beer: Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA
Favorite place to drink: Memphis Taproom. The members of Rookie Card are also partial to the Pabst specials at the Raven Lounge, which hosts our monthly show.
What's on tap: Rookie Card has two upcoming shows at the Raven Lounge, with CUBED on June 28 and with Leo Callahan on July 26. Both at 9:00 pm, and both are free. This fall, they're at Philly Fringe, performing Rookie Card: Too Big For Our Britches.

Brie Hines, director of The Jane Goodall Experience

Favorite beer: The cast (above, left to right: Lindsay Anderson holding Flint, Marcel Williams Foster as Jane Goodall, and director/performer Britney "Brie" Hines) likes Victory Golden Monkey. Jane especially loves downing a cold one with her favorite cast member, Flint.
Favoite place to drink: The Arts Parlor patio.
What's on tap: The Jane Goodall Experience will be presented in the 2010 Philadelphia Fringe Festival at the Adrienne Second Stage, September 15-18th, at 8:00 pm. You can check out a preview on July 26th at Broad Street Ministries as part of the new "Last Mondays" series presented by Hybridge Arts Collective.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photos courtesy of the artists.