Art meets asphalt?

The Weekend Pilots perform during the 2012 Phoenix Fringe Festival

Art meets asphalt next weekend as Asphalt Arts performs “Food for Thought” — a work featuring spoken word, drama, dance and audience participation — at Warehouse 1005. It’s part of the 2012 Phoenix Fringe Festival that kicks off Fri, March 2 — and includes more than 20 original works performed at five different venues.

“Food for Thought” was created in collaboration with homeless youth served by the Tumbleweed Center for Youth Development. Asphalt Arts also collaborates with ArtsWork: The Kax Herberger Center for Children and the Arts, a program of the ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, to bring “the expressive power of the theatre and digital story-telling” to Tumbleweed youth.

Actors Alchemy also performs three short plays during this year’s festival. Their “Short Play Festival” consists of “The Yard Sale,” “Holly,” and “Make This Go Away.” Sounds like a tour of my garage, though I’m certain it’s something more. “Short Play Festival” is being performed March 2-4 at Space 55.

Come Thurs, March 8, you can enjoy a performance of “The Weekend Pilots’ Musical Comedy Show,” the only other Fringe offering at Space 55 that looks tame enough to mention here (though looks can be deceiving). These three snappy dressers (pictured in pink above) promise a “fusion of comedy, rock, rap, electronica, dancing, and costumed characters.” Let’s hope they leave a certain politician’s new hairdo out of the mix.

The 2012 Phoenix Fringe Festival (March 2-11) features theater, dance, music and poetry

This year’s Phoenix Fringe Festival has a pair of offerings particularly well-suited to dance and music lovers. Dulce Dance Company performs March 2 & 4 at Warehouse 1005. The venue welcomes “Cool Like That: A Tribute to Miles Davis” March 2, 3 & 10. It’s “a poetic narrative by and about Miles with chronological sequencing that reflects upon the social and political climate of his time.” Think poetry/spoken word, live music, vocals and dance.

Five works are being performed at Modified Arts and three at the FilmBar in Phoenix. The four works being presented at The Studio at Phoenix Center for the Arts include “The Other Side of History,” written and performed by The Soul Justice Project and “SWAN dubstep” performed by SWAN (Devan Martinez).

The Soul Justice Project describes their work as a piece of hip hop theatre that fuses poetry, dance and music to “address key political issues facing the AZ community.” Martinez is “on a mission to educate the world about common misconceptions” surrounding pop music (think Top 40 tunes).

Learn more about the 2012 Phoenix Fringe Festival, and their projects supporting Tumbleweed Center for Youth Development, at www.phxfringe.org.

— Lynn

Note: Many Phoenix Fringe Festival works include mature content and language suitable for adults rather than youth. Review the Raising Arizona Kids Magazine calendar in print or online to find family-friendly fare.

Coming up: Five festivals for families, The fine art of Freud?, Celebrating World Theatre Day

Update: The Soul Justice Project performance has been cancelled. Click here to find this and other updates on the Phoenix Fringe Festival Facebook page.

An idea takes flight

Childsplay costume rendering (Lyf) for With Two Wings

Playwright Anne Negri says the “seed” for future writing was planted during childhood, but admits she lost her zeal for creative writing for a good decade or so after taking so many middle and high school writing classes focused on academic style writing. Negri shares that “a graduate school playwriting class brought it back out of me.”

Negri now lives, and teaches theater to public school students, in Illinois. But she earned an M.F.A. in theatre for youth from ASU in Tempe, where she took a playwriting class because she “wanted to be around playwrights and talk to them.” The professor told her she had to write, and a ten-minute version of her first full-length play was born.

The initial piece took “a few weeks to a month” to write, according to Negri — who says she “shopped it around” with various playwrights at ASU and other folks in her college program. Negri recalls the day associate professor Pamela Stewart chased her down to adamantly tell her, “You have to see where this goes.”

Negri says the play grew with each draft as “new themes came to light.” Eventually Negri submitted it to a Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences playwriting competition, which recognized her work with its 2009 playwriting award.

Childsplay costume rendering (Meta) for With Two Wings

The play, though performed by friends of Negri at Space 55 the following year during the 2010 Phoenix Fringe Festival, wasn’t yet in final form. Even the name needed changing — because the original title referencing the name of the boy at the heart of the story puzzled those who tried to pronounce it.

It didn’t help that a man who saw Negri’s “fly/lyf” (pronounced like “life”) at the festival approached her after a performance to say, “I love those little flies.” Negri says the winged characters in her play “are sort of human creatures.” Despite the bird language used in the play, she says, they’re not birds. Or bugs.

Negri took her play, complete with new title, to a biennial national playwriting competition and symposium presented by Indiana Repertory Theatre. The Bonderman Playwriting for Youth event is “a forum through which each playwright receives constructive criticism and the support of a development team consisting of a professional director and dramaturg.”

“With Two Wings,” which shares the name of a folk song by Red Grammer, was selected as one of four 2011 Bonderman finalists. And it caught the eye of David Saar, who was there that summer directing a different production. “He heard me read the play,” recalls Negri, “and saw the finished product.” But then he did something more. He gave the play wings.

Childsplay costume rendering (Taur) for With Two Wings

Saar shocked Negri by calling soon thereafter to say he wanted to produce the play during Childsplay’s 2011-12 season. Normally, says Negri, the road from initial interest to full production takes many years. But Saar, founder and artistic director for Childsplay, was eager to bring the play back home to its Arizona roots.

It’ll take flight later this month as a Childsplay world premiere –perhaps inspiring other young writers to try their hands at playwriting. Negri’s advice for aspiring playwrights is simple — just write. And share your work with others. You never know when an idea might soar from page to stage.

— Lynn

Note: Costume renderings in this post feature designs by D. Daniel Hollingshead for Childsplay’s production of “With Two Wings.” Click here for show and ticket information.

Coming up: More wings & things

Big Bird or Elmo?

Some say Elmo has got to go. At the very least, he’s got to get off the public dole. And what about Cookie Monster? Isn’t he eating up valuable taxpayer dollars?

I got to chatting with Tom Tiding, writer of all sorts of things he proudly dubs “twisted,” about moves by some politicians to end federal funding for things like NPR and PBS.

Tiding will be in Phoenix this weekend to perform an original work in the “Phoenix Fringe Festival” — but was gracious enough to chat with me about other matters when we spoke by phone the other night.

Elmo, world-famous artist, teacher and Sesame Street character--putting my taxes to good use

I wanted to get his take on the controversy surrounding federal funding for public broadcasting — but erred in leading with “Elmo,” the one thing on PBS Tiding says he could definitely live without.

Tiding is more of a “Big Bird” kind of a guy, but we still managed to enjoy a civil conversation. Because truth be told, the “Sesame Street” gang will rise or fall together whatever their fate.

Some suppose that an end to federal funding won’t hinder our furry little friends in any way, since most of public television is funded through corporate and individual contributions. But Tiding disagrees, in his usual “twisted” fashion.

“If you lost twenty percent of your body,” he muses, “it wouldn’t just grow right back.” Even folks who are terribly fond of public broadcasting won’t be in a position to make up the difference when they’re struggling to meet their own basic needs.

I asked Tiding why some folks are making so much noise about needing to defund public broadcasting. He suspects it’s a bit of a ruse. The more attention supporters of PBS and NPR pay to its naysayers, the more distracted we’ll be as other perilous policies move forward.

Seems “Elmo” and “Big Bird” are mere pawns in that old political strategy called “bait and switch.” I see where they may be going with this, but public broadcasting opponents seem to be forgetting that we’ve got “Miss Piggy” in our corner of the ring.

I chose the sports analogy because, oddly enough, it was sports-related content that Tiding most enjoyed as a boy growing up in Minnesota and East Texas. Seems public broadcasting was his only real lifeline to the soccer he loved as a boy.

He’s also keen on shows like the “PBS News Hour,” describing it as “one of the few places you can go and get really intelligent people from both sides.”

Those who live in large urban areas with thriving cultural resources might see NPR or PBS as mere niceties, but they’re necessities for Americans living in outlying areas that don’t have access to many of the things they offer.

Think live theater, music and dance. History and literature. Science and medicine. Health and fitness. Civics and education. Think easy, affordable and equitable access to elements that form the very foundation of a free and democratic society.

There’s plenty of noise out there about all sorts of budget-related issues. For today, it appears, public broadcasting has been spared the ax. But policy and budget discussions involving NPR and PBS will no doubt resurface. So I’m keeping my eye on the prize — preserving federal funding for both.

Trust me, you don’t want to get between me and my “Elmo” — or Tiding and his “Big Bird.”

— Lynn

Note: Click here to learn more about this weekend’s “Phoenix Fringe Festival” (which features mature content fare) and the schedule for Tiding’s performances. Click here for details about “Sesame Street Live” coming to the Comerica Theatre April 29-May 1.

Coming up: Conversations with “Cosette”

Chicago envy?

I spent an evening in Chicago once — if a trip to and from the airport and a concert venue counts. It was many years ago, and I made the journey with my youngest daughter after a foiled attempt to meet the Jonas Brothers during a Phoenix meet and greet.

The Phoenix concert venue erred in getting us the wristbands and details needed to attend the Phoenix meet and greet, an opportunity Lizabeth won through a contest sponsored by one of her favorite stores. So we tried again in Chicago, but fared no better.

I’ll spare you the details, although I have Chicago on the brain this weekend because Lizabeth, now a 17-year-old high school senior, is there visiting one of her top three college/conservatory choices — and seeing the play “God of Carnage.”

This poster (from All Posters) features a Richard Cummins photograph of the Chicago Theatre

When I think Chicago, I think museums. I think deep-dish pizza. I think Barack Obama. I think cutting-edge theater, and plenty of it. And sometimes I even get “Chicago envy” — wishing Phoenix had the same wealth of diverse theater options.

But I enjoyed a bit of an attitude adjustment Friday when I read some thoughts sent via e-mail by Tom Tiding, writer and sole performer in the 2011 Phoenix Fringe Festival piece titled “Twisted: Greeting Card Moments Gone Bad.”

“I chose to debut ‘Twisted’ in Phoenix,” wrote Tiding, “partly because there’s such a can-do attitude in Arizona.” Then he added the following:

“Phoenix has this fantastic growing arts scene where it just feels like anything is possible. When I began researching the arts scene in Phoenix, I was blown away by the diversity of people’s experiences– I started reading your posts, and it’s just like a breath of fresh air. It’s so inclusive and positive.”

“I’ve got long-time friends in Arizona,” wrote Tiding, “so I know the past few years have been tough, but I think that can-do attitude is what will get everyone through the tough economic times and some of the divisions that go with that.”

I think I’d like this fellow even if he didn’t have such fine taste in blog posts. Seems he grew up in a family that always made homemade greeting cards for each other. “Mine,” he quips, “tended to be on the more sarcastic side.”

After seeing his cards displayed at an art exhibit, Tiding got requests from folks who wanted to buy them. Once retailers got ahold of the cards, they started asking Tiding how he ‘got so twisted.’ Tiding began sharing “snippets on the true stories behind the cards” — and the play “Twisted” was born.

There’s nothing like uncovering evidence to support one’s own convictions. So when Tiding shared the following, I felt vindicated in my advocacy for a crayon in every corner: “My family always made sure we had something we could draw or write with,” he wrote. “Mostly because it was cheaper and they didn’t have any money.”

Tiding, who nowadays works with a D.C.-based group called “Speakeasy,” includes plenty of family anecdotes during his “Twisted” piece. So those of you not whizzing off to Chicago for a show next weekend needn’t worry that you’re missing cutting-edge performance art.

Trust me when I tell you that his family is anything but typical. And that the only thing Chicago has on Phoenix when the Phoenix Fringe Festival comes around each year is the perfect pie.

— Lynn

Note: Twisted Tidings is “a greeting card company for people who want to throw up when they read greeting cards.” You can enjoy Tiding’s twisted theatrical performance April 8-10 at Modified Arts (as part of the 2011 Phoenix Fringe Festival).

Coming up: Another cool artist who crafts poetic e-mails

Definition of a dream

Call those babysitters! The 2011 Phoenix Fringe Festival starts tonight!

Many of us wake up every day in warm, secure houses with pantries full of food and closets brimming with clothes. We dream of smarter phones, faster computers, bigger television screens.

But the dreams of homeless teens are very different. You can get a rare glimpse into the lives of homeless youth in Phoenix by attending a play titled “Definition of a Dream.”

It’s being presented April 1-3 by homeless youth who developed the original work in conjunction with Sarah Sullivan and the Tumbleweed Center for Youth Development. The Center describes the work as follows:

“Through the artistic experience, young people take their stories to the stage, looking to change the conversation about homelessness in Phoenix, one show at a time. This year’s play takes a look at dreams — the dreams we have for ourselves, for the people in our lives and our community as a whole.”

“Definition of a Dream” asks a powerful question: “What are the things we have to fight for and against to make these dreams a reality?”

The play is one of many thought-provoking works being presented as part of the Phoenix Fringe Festival, which runs April 1-10 at various downtown Phoenix venues.

Tickets for tonight’s performance of “Definition of a Dream” were not available online when I checked Friday afternoon, but tickets for the Sat, April 2 (5:30pm) and Sun, April 3 (8pm) performances may still be out there — but don’t delay in checking the Phoenix Fringe Festival website if you’d like to attend this or other works.

“Definition of a Dream” is being performed at “Modified Arts” at 407 E. Roosevelt in Phoenix. Additional venues for 2011 Phoenix Fringe Festival performances (most appropriate only for mature audiences) include Phoenix Theatre: Little Theatre, Third Street Theatre, Soul Invictus, Bragg’s Pie Factory and Space 55.

You can check out the full “Fringe” schedule (which also includes after-parties and such) at www.phxfringe.org. After reviewing the schedule the other day, I noticed that there are works dealing with religion, sexuality, border issues and a whole lot more. Even Greek myth and Shakespeare manage to get in the game.

Several “Fringe” works, including “Twisted: Greeting Card Moments Gone Bad” by “Tom T. and Twisted Tidings,” are presented by a single artist. Some are presented by local artists, others by artists from other regions (including Australia). A few include students from Arizona State University.

You can get a good feel for the festival by considering the titles of some of the pieces being performed. Schreibstuck. Oppressed. Borders and Bridges. Hamlet Machine. The Panic Opera Sacraments. Too Close to the Sun. Your Teacher Never Told You….

There’s even “Confessions of a Mormon Boy,” which may hold special appeal for those of you who, like myself, have yet to snag tickets to the new Broadway musical titled “The Book of Mormon” (billed by some as an atheist love song to believers).

The Phoenix Fringe Festival is an edgy, off-the-beaten-path experience that’s fun for date nights, outings with friends or solo adventures. Think of it as a way to up the job numbers for all those babysitters out there.

Consider an afternoon, evening or weekend out with the “Fringe.” You might be offended. You might be educated. You might be inspired. But I doubt you’ll be bored. It’s a great way to explore our smaller community theater venues, enjoy affordable performance art and meet folks who probably wouldn’t recognize a remote control if they saw one.

— Lynn

Note: Attend the Phoenix Fringe Festival and you can save $10 off your ticket to “Liz Lerman Dance Exchange: The Matter of Origins” Monday, April 11, at ASU Gammage (use the code FRINGE when ordering tix from the ASU Gammage box office or 480-965-3434).

Coming up: Jellly bean dreams, Chicago envy?