OMG no way! Yes way! At uwishunu, you have until September 10 to enter to win a pair of tickets to our new fundraising event, FEASTIVAL! Have you seen the list of all the restaurants that will please your pie hole? It's a good one! I exclaim! Go enter!

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Let's jump right in:

>>>City Paper cover story is more like a cover package: A.D. Amorosi interviews Charlotte Ford about CHICKEN, Mark Cofta on all the Billy Shakes, a piece on all the undead (so many undead), Shaun Brady on Bang on a Can and Release, and more.

>>>Philadelphia magazine's website has a slideshow of 11 of your favorite Festival performers.

>>>Daily News: Jonathan Takiff interviews Joe Blake, former DN reporter turned playwright and writing teacher, about his Philly Fringe show A Separate Sun.

>>>Edge Philadelphia: What's gay at the Festivals? They've got us covered.

>>>Edge redux: Article on the very talented Meg Foley, whose choreography will be featured next week as a part of 8: eight choreographers/eight new works.

>>>TheaterMania: J. Cooper Robb covers the opening of the theater season in Philly, with plugs for the Live Arts production Cankerblossom and the Philly Fringe show The New & Improved Stages of Grief.
>>>First Person Arts shares their picks too, focusing on memoir and documentary, of course. Click on over, and find out how to get an FPA discount to Cedric Andreiux.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo by Jay Dunn.

When Dito Van Reigersberg first entered the cube, as the set for the 2010 Live Arts Festival show TAKES has come to be called, he had just stepped off a plane to an early rehearsal in Los Angeles.

"I come into this space, watching my image fly around, and I almost ralphed," Dito says.

"We called it the blender," says Nichole Canuso, who, along with Lars Jan, conceived and will direct TAKES.

"And I had to be the sacrificial daiquiri," says Dito, who will perform alongside Nichole in the dance duet.

Lucky for me, when I stepped into the cube—a four-walled space where the echoes of a room are set up, and where the walls are 10-foot by 20-foot scrims—I had just strolled down the street from the office to the Festival Hub. Nichole and Lars Jan, creators and directors of TAKES, invited me into the space, where, thankfully, I did not ralph. I did, however, experience the strange sensation of moving in reaction to slightly delayed video of my movement.

"I'm interested in having the audience step inside of the work," says Nichole. "In a gallery [setting], you pay attention to how you move through the space."

During the Festival, audience members have the opportunity to experience the box for themselves. (Reservations here—it's free.) In its installation mode, Lars says that visitors will wear an iPod with a track that tells them what to do, creating a dance with two people at a time.

"It's a mix of formal instruction of where to be and a playful interaction between you and the other person."

But the box isn't just for playtime, it's for showtime too. After the jump: filmic, theatrical, and dance performance overlap—and get edited.

[More]

J. Cooper Robb is on Live Arts and Philly Fringe Festival beat for Philadelphia Weekly, picking 10 don't-miss shows, including, among others, CHICKEN, TAKES, and Festival editor emeritus Josh McIlvain's show Boat Hole. On Josh, Robb writes:

"When Josh McIlvain isn't editing the official Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe guide (a Herculean task), he's a frequently produced playwright; and 15 of his funniest short plays (each runs between one and 10 minutes) are rounded up in Boat Hole (Sept. 15-18). The briefly met characters involve a pair of ordinary guys who see a career opportunity in terrorism and orcas who bicker over performing tricks for tourists."

Yay, go Josh! We miss you, buddy!

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Image by Lisa Modica

Big lovely feature on, well, us in the Inquirer today, focusing on not just the Festivals but also on the Live Arts Brewery project. Howie Shapiro writes:

"With major grants, an expanded new space in Northern Liberties, and a determined leader, the festival is tackling research and development - a concept generally associated with new drugs and new cars, but not new works of art.

"It has developed a program called LAB - the Live Arts Brewery - that pays a handful of theater artists, dancers, and musicians (at this point all local) to create work. It gives them the space to do it, the equipment to do it right, small audiences to react as it evolves, and the oversight of a major-festival producer to guide it to polished completion."

Yay! We likey. Please go read the story now. Then come back here for more stories from the fringe.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

TAKES, the much-anticipated new dance from Nichole Canuso Dance Company, opens on Friday. The dance takes place in a four-walled space where the echoes of a room are set up. The the walls are 10-foot by 20-foot scrims projecting a live feed, variably delayed, of the characters danced by Dito Van Reigersberg and Nichole Canuso.

You and me, baby, you know we got a connection. Let's figure out how we're going to plan our Festivals, share our schedules and meet up at the Festival Bar for opening night:

iPhone app:
I don't have an iPhone, I must admit, but girl, I won't embarrass you by rocking the StarTAC. That was a sweet phone, but it ain't 1996 no more, even though I'm busting out the quilted flannel jackets in about eight weeks. Watch for it.

I know you only roll with the iPhone, because it's sleek and pretty just like you, so I Kevin Lee made you an app, because I'm he's sweet like that. And Philadelphia Weekly loves it, and we both know you do what they say, because you're always on the local tip. I like that.

Facebook:
Girl, you and I aren't friends on Facebook because we gotta keep our thing quiet. You know why. Still, girl, you're welcome, to stop on, stop on, stop on, stop on by the Festival blog and like our stories with that button that says "Like," and let me know you love us. Me and the crew work hard to put those together, and it's for you. You know it's always been for you.

Now, almost 2,500 people like us on Facebook, but you know only I like like you. You know that. But if you use our Facebook app, I'll know what your interests are, who you be with, things to make you smile, what numbers to dial. If you goin' be here for a while, I'm goin' go call my crew, you go call your crew, we can rendezvous at the bar around two. And you don't even need to make those calls, just use that app, girl, and then your crew already knows. My plan for Friday? Below. But shhh—don't tell anybody.



Commonspace:
I know what you're thinking. "Commonspace? Are you a Communist?" Naw, I'm just a community organizer. I'm a local don, I do local things, and I share my steez with the people. It's what's right. You know that. No, wait, all these apps are free—I am a Communist! But you like that. It's transgressive, and your daddy would hate me if he knew about me.

Commonspace lets you plot out the local spots where you need to be. Me, I got three shows and a bar night on Friday. So I head on over to Commonspace, where I'm all, "My car got destroyed by some thief so now I only got two wheels. Here are the three shows where I gotta be, and how can I get there on my bike???"

And then boom! Like your boy Isaac Asimov said about technology becoming indistinguishable from magic, I drop my Friday shows into my plan, click "Create Route," say I'm getting around by bike (damn you thief!), and it spits out my Google path:

If you like, you can email the link to your friends. If you like, you can plan to be on the sidewalk as I ride by, my golden locks flowing in the breeze as I roll from show to show to show. It will be a sight to behold, with our fleeting contact made possible only by the glory of our apps.

I like you and you like me and I am you and you are me and we are all together, at least when we're being creepy and our identities break down at 1:00 or so when I get to the bar after CHICKEN. Be there, and we'll make out by the bike racks. It's just what's done.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

I call him that because we're family.

In what will hopefully be an avalanche of lovely stories about all things Live Arts and Fringe, J. Cooper Robb reports for the Philadelphia Weekly on the adventurous Shakespeare and Shakespeare-inspired productions as part of the two Festivals. Quoth Robb:

"[Shakespeare]'s technically been responsible for thousands of hours of dull, turgid theater over the last few centuries (even though he obviously needs to be credited with thousands more of great theater), and the festival is all about breaking those conventions. This year, though, there's a subset of groups taking on the Bard instead of dodging him, with at least five shows based on the words, images and ideas of Shakespeare."

We'll go with the hours of great theater, thanks. Shows like: Romeo and Juliet, Jester's Dead, ¡EL CONQUISTADOR!, Titus Andronicus, and Cankerblossom, all of which Robb discusses.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Image credit: Rhett Henckel.

You know that there's a Bang on a Can Marathon this year as part of the Live Arts Festival, and you're totally coming, right? Even so, we think you'd like to get better acquainted with the musicians who you'll be seeing on September 12, in this handy video series.

Today, we're digging on the Spoken Hand Percussion Orchestra: