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[rndyounghowze]

Second Helpings: A rewatch of Peter Michael Marino’s “Desperately Seeking the Exit”

We stepped into Peter’s living room yet again to hear his story about how he helped write a train wreck of a West End Show for the Queerly Festival. What did we see a second time?

By Ricky and Dana Young-Howze

Frigid NYC

Desperately Seeking The Exit is Peter’s attempt to redefine a trauma. And even after he’s toured the show across the globe you can tell every time that he weaves this Anglo yarn that there is a sense of catharsis to it. Well in the same way he’s trying to reframe how we see live performance right now. From his home to tiny houses of six to ten at a time he is redefining what the campfire we gather around as an audience is. He probably never intended to pioneer a new art form when he started this journey but he now finds himself on the forefront of a new frontier. This show will probably be one of the many that people use to write the textbooks about online theatre in ten years.

He uses the screens to engage his audience and in a weird way he becomes the performer and the usher, telling us a story about how one spectator started to change their baby live online in view of everyone in the room. What do you do when this happens? The lights aren’t dimmed and if you choose we can see everyone’s face clearly. So you’re not playing for the cheap seats. Everyone has a front row seat and everyone is so close that they can see the pores on the performers face.

And he has also obviously edited this show for the frame of the camera. Where you could probably imagine this as a show on a stage and he can move around and own the space he is tied to the little box of the frame that we see. The screen becomes the proscenium arch. In Dana’s words he’s “owning a stage-less stage”. It’s not a half film it’s still live theatre just not how no one would have thought it.

Peter has a knack for making you still feel like he’s right there next to you but still maintains a separation between audience and performer. He still finds a way to maintain a front of house and a sense of pre show. All of a sudden Peter’s house has become a new Cafe Cino, a continuation of the Provincetown Theatre Legacy. The small theatre movement is alive and well and it took a worldwide pandemic to turn a movement into a singularity: A Gutenberg Effect. No matter what happens in the next year this artform is here to stay and Peter’s story is a part of it’s new canon.

This show ultimately gives you a sense of why stories are still important during all of this. More important it shows how vital queer stories are right now. No matter what happens this vital story in the Village will be something that sticks with Dana and me forever. Check out Peter’s website and see when he’s doing this show again.

[rndyounghowze]

Tree She By Marina Calendar Is A World In A Thimble

This snippet of a larger world contains multitudes. @fridgidnewyork

By Ricky and Dana Young-Howze

Estrogenius Festival

Review 131

There have been a few types of dance pieces that I don’t always understand. It’s a personal failing of mine that some pieces that lack clarity or a clear message don’t always resonate with me. However sometimes a lack of clarity and message is actually the desired effect of the artistic work someone is making. Tree She by Marina Calendar with music and sound design by Frederick Söderberg is one such piece.

This is just one part of five movement suites so I don’t know how this evolves from there but there is a dense world rich texture packed in this ten minute performance. You get these feelings coming at you. You feel uneasy and on edge. It’s a jarring effect of Calendar’s movements contrasting with video and the sound design of Frederick Söderberg.

Something I noticed that maybe a few in the audience wouldn’t was the use of harmonics in the music and lists of white noise. Harmonics are just the left over vibrations when you play a note (that’s the oversimplified version, don’t come after me audiophiles). I think that the heavy harmonic work in the sound design and the the video combined with the dance to create waves of emotion and meaning that just hit us like they were waves of leftover energy coming off or each choice that they made. This is one that’s going to stick with me for a while.

To learn more about this show go here.

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Infemous Talking Secrets and JNCO at the Queerly and Fringe Montreal Festivals.

A storytelling event with secrets, inkblots, and touching stories

By Ricky and Dana Young-Howze

Frigid New York and Montreal Fringe

InFemous is a show about a bunch of queer fem leaning people bringing the Chardonnay and Tea and sharing their own stories. This week's performance was made up of host Kate Hammer and performers Dee-Dee Edouard-Williams, Jess Salomon, Eman El Husseini, and Sara Meleika. Each one was from a different walk of life but had so many things that they could reveal about themselves. And they were so generous in their telling of it.

This is a show about creating your tribe. This is a tribe of queer individuals coming together as a family and telling their stories around the campfire they create.

And what's more the audience can put their money where their mouth is and change the show. For every $25 donated to Black Lives Matter a performer would have to reveal a secret. Dana secretly wished that the secrets were the entire show even though she adored the stories. I love the story of Jess faking her own kidnapping but there were several that were amazing!

They crafted a community that made this gender queer reviewer freelance like a sister at arms. I could latch on to just about every story. There was meat on the bone for all of us. Dee’s daycare kiss is a story reminiscent of the stories friends have told me before. And while they were baring their souls they were inviting us to come along for the ride.

These were people just like you and me. So hearing all their stories instantly made me feel like they were talking to me too. At one point they were literally talking to me as we bonded over JNCO jeans and being teenage goths. We may have had thoughts, hopes, and fears just like them and them sharing this to us gave a catharsis that could be felt across the globe.

In these crazy times we need a deep catharsis to purge these crazy unwanted thoughts. I know that after watching this my shoulders were less hunched and realized that I was laughing and smiling. I hadn't laughed and smiled like that in quite some time. It wasn't just an escape but also a connection.

Now's your time to see it for yourself. It's not too late to catch this show themselves! Go to Fringe Montreal’s YouTube page and let us know what you think on our social media right after.