Corey Bechelli and Gina Fontana try to walk the harmonious walk with their art. As the charm/strange experience, Corey and Gina are putting up Let Go of the Ego, an interdisciplinary show of music and projected drawings. They write in with this haiku:

Universe explored—
vibrating, one harmony.
Blissful existence.

We hope so! Let Go of the Ego opens on Friday, September 4 at 8:00 pm, and runs for four other performances over the course of Philly Fringe. First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut Street, Rittenhouse Square. Various dates, $10. For details and tickets, click here.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Image by Corey Bechelli.

Dear blog readers, we know you like the behind-the-scenes stuff that we can give you. Well, that artists share with us, and that we in turn share with you. Where else do you get it? Nowhere but here. Show us the love!

Today, video from a rehearsal sent to us by Misty Sol, the playwright behind the 2010 Philly Fringe production American Nigga Zoo:

Some kids grow up watching cartoons. Daniel Barrow, a Montreal-based media artist whose practice centers on drawing and collection, watched public access. Yes, that public access, where you can watch taped recordings of school board meetings, PSAs about fire safety and alternative religious programming.

But in the 1980s in Winnipeg, Manitoba, public access was a little different. Daniel's film Winnipeg Babysitter, which will be screened at the 2010 Philly Fringe, is a collection of archival footage from Winnipeg's golden age of public access. I got him on the phone to talk about the making of the film, the YouTube generation, and what we lost when the big cable companies destroyed public access.

Live Arts/Fringe: Tell me a little about your project Winnipeg Babysitter.

Daniel Barrow: I'm best known for overhead animation work. I make manual animations using an overhead projector, and the piece that I'm presenting in Philadelphia is different in that I'm projecting video and using an overhead projector on top of the video projection to create a pseudo-documentary. Do you remember Pop-Up Video?

After the jump: archives from memory, the advent of user-generated content, and Winnipeg as a conduit to filmic fame.

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Marie Cleaves Rothacker from Rev9 Dance and Performance Company offers you this haiku journey through their 2010 Philly Fringe performance. Factory is a tour through the fabulous and drug-addled (and arty!) world of Andy Warhol's eponymous art machine. Here we go!

"Factory"

flesh moving through space
superstars strut, making art
Andy Warhol lives

After the jump, much like Biggie Smalls, the haiku just won't stop!

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It's hot. It's damn hot. Fool, you think I was born on the sun??? This weather bores and irritates me. Distractions, cometh!

Friday:
>>>Awww, Josh McIlvain, who's streamlined the production of the Festival Guide (soon to be in your hands!) is leaving us, again. Jerk. So we're taking him out for drinks. He'll be back for Philly Fringe, though—his SmokeyScout Productions will present Boat Hole, an evening of Josh's comedic short plays, at the Performance Garage September 15 through 18.

Saturday:
>>>Here's something to do outside! Because when the heat index says the world will feel like 108 degrees, outside is the jam! So: Sun Ra Arkestra with Scorch at "the green space behind the Walnut Street Free Library." You know Sun Ra Arkestra. You should know Philadelphia Fire Arts, who produced SimpLaFire last year at the Piazza (and came by the bar once in a while for impromptu shows in the parking lot that were awesome). They return to 2010 Philly Fringe with their show Scorch, which is also what will happen to you on Saturday. 6:00 pm.

>>>If space is not the place for you, then hit up the First Person Arts BBQ and Grand Story Slam at the Painted Bride. Oops! BBQ side is sold out. Move fast if you want slam tix.

Sunday:
>>>Punk Rock Flea Market (we'll be there with a table come say hi!). From this week's R5 newsletter: "Someone once told us that some crazy weird men magazine like Details listed it as a top place to meet women. So if you cant find anything to buy, maybe shop for a girlfriend." 461 North 9th Street, weird unnamed post-/quasi-industrial/concert venue neighborhood (Callowhill?), Philadelphia. 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, $3 suggested donation.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo stolen without permission from Josh McIlvain's Facebook page, and poorly doctored by Nicholas Gilewicz

There's a new collective in town. They go by the name of Hybridge Arts. This Monday the 28th they're kicking off with their first Last Mondays event at 7pm at Broad Street Ministry.

Hybridge Arts was recently formed by all-star alumni of the Headlong Performance Institute (HPI), which is starting its third year of intensive "study-abroad-in-Philadelphia" semesters in interdisciplinary performance (taking students from various colleges as well as post-grads). Marcel Williams Foster, a founding member of Hybridge Arts, explains that the group of young "hybrid" artists (incorporating dance, theater, poetry, music, etc.) wants to create a "bridge" that connects emerging artists to a welcoming audience.

The inspiration for Last Mondays came from HPI faculty member Mark Lord. He and his company Big House (plays and spectacles) used to put on a monthly Last Mondays event where $5 would get you a home-cooked spaghetti dinner and a night of experimental performance by emerging artists, and when Hybridge Arts formed they decided to resurrect Last Mondays.

"The idea of continuing what Mark Lord began was an honor," says Marcel, "and an amazing opportunity for us to continue working together and to provide opportunities for Philly's emerging artists in all disciplines."

HPI fosters the bonds of community that Hybridge Arts's Last Mondays hope to embody. Lauren Dubowski, program coordinator for HPI, says that of the 30 alums since the program started in 2008, 17 have continued to live and make work in Philly--and will be featured in Philly Fringe shows like Louis DeVaughn Nelson's Man Bites Dog, Hyphen – Nation Arts' The Jane Goodall: Experience, Media Res Theater Company's A Lesson in Dead Language by Adrienne Kennedy, Movement Brigade's Constants, and Bright Light Theater Company's PRECIPICE, to name a few.

The first Last Monday (it'll never get old) will feature Jaamil Kosoko showing material from his upcoming Live Arts piece American Chameleon, Kelly Turner, whose work Marcel calls "one of the most fluid and virtuosic interactions I've ever seen between a chorus of dancers and a soloist. Not to mention gut-wrenching, heart-breaking," Rose Luardo of local band Sweatheart, and Triberious, a Philly trio who Sam Towers, another Hybridge Arts member, says create an experimental quality "through a darkly complex blend of drums, bass, and the extremely talented Mark Allen on the saxophone." All that and dinner prepared by one of Broad Street Ministry's chefs sounds like some serious bang for your five bucks.

Hybridge Arts will host Last Mondays at Broad Street Ministry every month from now until July 2011.

--Ellen Freeman

Photos by Lauren Dubowski and Andrew Simonet.

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.

Friday
>>>First Meet the Artist event of the year! As we've been hammering home to you all week long, the fine folks of Elevator Repair Service are coming to our humble home at 919 North 5th Street. Did you watch the awesome videos we've been running all week? You're coming, right? Did you RSVP to robin@livearts-fringe.org? OK good. See you there! 7:00 pm. Don't be tardy.
>>>If you're on the jazz tip, the West Oak Lane Festival kicks off. Especially promising is the Jazz Hang Suite at Relish, which features the absolutely scorching (in the very best way) Jaguar Wright at 6:30 pm, and Kindred the Family Soul at 10:00. Also, if they still serve that two-way banana bread pudding, pick that up—one of the best desserts I've had in Philly, no joke.

Saturday
>>>The Summer Solstice Festival at the Kimmel Center has emerged as one of early summer's most fun events, and is definitely the single Kimmel event that brings together the most diverse crowds in terms of age and race of anything they do. Among other things: 3:00 pm, Philadelphia Zoo on wheels—they bring the animals to you; 6:00 pm, Rennie Harris RHAW; 6:30 pm, Miro Dance Theatre; 9:00 pm, First Person StorySlam; 2:00 am 'til dawn, dancing.
>>> You may know EgoPo from their brilliant 2008 Woyzcek (which is when I fell in love with them) or from their production of Samuel Beckett's Company at last year's Philly Fringe, which was a smash. Saturday night is their Bordello Ball at the American Swedish Historical Museum. 5 pm seems a bit early to hit the bordello, but $50 is a relative steal, and you get to hang with one of the best theater companies in the city. And—is that right?—their production during 2010 Philly Fringe should be sick. I'm gonna call them and make sure they're doing what I think they're doing, and report back to you, sir.

Sunday
>>>You know what? I'm not sure what's gonna be awesome on Sunday, except maybe sleeping off the Summer Solstice thing. Want to come over for barbecue?

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo by Alex McKnight

"I always come back every 2 years or so," says Greg Bowers. "Something draws me into Philly—I don't know what it is."

Since 2002, in one form or another, Greg has performed off-and-on in the Philly Fringe Festival. What brings him back to Philly tonight is Festivale! The 2010 Philadelphia GLBT Arts Festival to perform Cabaret Wonderland: Songs From a Lost Decade, a drag suite inspired by Alice in Wonderland. The show is at the Arts Bank at Broad and South Streets, at 10:00 pm.

"Four years ago I was commissioned to write a full-length musical on Alice in Wonderland. I fell down the rabbit hole and became a bit of an Alice scholar myself. The musical was for children and families, a kind of straight-up show. It's been fun putting together some of the works inspired by Wonderland—there are great characters there for a drag queen."

Greg performs as Ginger Moloko, a persona created in 1997 during his work with the New York performance group Ultraviolet.

"We were really a performance art group masquerading as a rock band," Greg says, and they performed at venues like PS122, The Kitchen, and the Knitting Factory.

"The New York drag scene is really fierce and into fashion and creating the illusion of a woman. I couldn't and didn't really want to compete with that. I don't think that drag is really about being a woman, at least that's my take on it," Greg says.

"Drag has become really diverse as a performance vehicle. I don't particularly see drag as a feminine thing. I don't think that drag queens are what women really look like. I don't know any woman who would look like me in drag, or know any woman who would want to. I think of drag as more a construction of identity."

After the jump: getting ugly.

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When Jaamil Olawale Kosoko was a kid growing up in Detroit, he broke into the ice cream truck that his father, a Nigerian immigrant, drove for a living, and gave out free frozen treats to anyone who wanted them. "I didn't have any friends," he says. "I thought people would want to be my friend if I gave them free ice cream!"

Memories like this one, at times painful but always tinted with Kosoko's sense of humor, form the inspiration for the 28-year-old choreographer's dances like Or Maybe My Mother was an American Chameleon? A preview of this work-in-progress will be performed this Thursday, June 10th at 8pm for Second Thursday at the Live Arts Studio. The finished piece will be 1/8 of the Festival's 8 (eight choreographers / eight new works).

Though the piece's title is a reflection on the "ghost" of his schizophrenic mother, Kosoko is something of a chameleon himself. In addition to choreographing with his company KOSOKO PEFORMANCE GROUP since 2006, he is also a comedian, performance artist, arts manager, experimental vocalist, and sometimes drag bird (you may be familiar with his alter-ego, J-Luv, who co-hosted the 2009 Rocky Awards). "In one piece I'll have drag, then stand-up comedy, then pure dance and then a soap opera scene. I like that puzzle of 'How do you make that make sense?'" he says of the interdisciplinary nature of his work. That element is less intentional, he notes, than simply a product of his multi-faceted background.

Kosoko's childhood was split between Detroit, where he was born and raised, and his mother's native Natchez, Mississippi, where he moved by himself when he was 11 to take care of his ailing grandmother. Back then, his ability to move seamlessly between worlds had yet to be honed. "The nature of society in the South is different, and my mother's reputation had preceded her. To be an afro-centric, neo-soul, alternative, schizophrenic who had moved North . . . the whole town knew this crazy black woman." Through the teasing at school and caring for his grandma at home, Kosoko kept a journal of poetry--a journal he also kept private.

Find out whether anyone ever read those poems by clicking more.

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