Even if you missed the first week of Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe, there is still an abundance of LGBT performers and performances worth checking out. Here are just a few of the remaining shows and productions that shouldn’t be missed.
Live Arts keeps on truckin’ as Pig Iron Theatre Company tests the boundaries of dance, drama, clown, puppetry and music with the premiere of “Welcome to Yuba City,” through Sept. 18 at Festival Theater at The Hub, 626 N. Fifth St.
Tucked away in the desert, Yuba City is home of the Prune Festival and the bee-beard contest. You can tell whacked-out hilarity is just a spit of tobacco juice away. A massive set recreates a mythical truck stop where a wild cascade of characters, played by James Sugg, out actor Dito van Reigersberg, Alex Torra and Geoff Sobelle, among others, explore the limits of human lunacy. For more information, visit www.pigiron.org.
On the Fringe side of things, DysFUNctional Theater presents “Fefu and Her Friends” Sept. 14-17 at Plays and Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey Place.
This dramatic yet sometimes humorous play explores lesbian themes as it follows the lives of eight women, room to room, through house and garden in 1930s New England, revealing the unpleasant decay beneath life’s gentle façades.
Gladys Productions presents “Getting Your Life,” a workshop production about Crayola YumYum, a pre-operation male-to-female transsexual who becomes the mother figure to two runaway teens, Sept. 11-13 at the William Way LGBT Community Center, 1315 Spruce St. This play also explores the choices made while surviving the pains of life and crystal methamphetamine. For more information, visit www.waygay.org or call (215) 732-2220.
The Waitstaff Sketch Comedy Troupe, returning for its seventh year at Fringe, presents “The Waitstaff Sells Out,” its newest show and sure to deliver sidesplitting laughs, Sept. 13, 16 and 17 at L’Etage Cabaret, 625 Bainbridge St. For more information, visit thewaitstaff.com.
Artist, poet and breast-cancer survivor Susan DiPronio continues to honor the stories and lives of women with Pink Hanger Productions’ “Poe-sers,” a twisted tale that asks: What if time weren’t a straight line but an intricately woven fabric, and the threads that held it together were the poems of Edgar Allan Poe? The answers unfold Sept. 11-12 at Historic St. George’s Church, 235 N. Fourth St. For more information, visit www.pinkhangerpresents.com.
Writing Man Productions, which performed the hilarious “Starlight Supply” in 2007 and the touching “Strawberries & Jellybeans” in 2008, presents “’Ships,” a romantic comedy about two brothers, Noah and Chip, their housemate Dillon and Chip’s girlfriend Joanna, who go on a wild exploration of love, family, friendship and outer space, through Sept. 19 at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, 2111 Sansom St. For more information, visit www.writingmanproductions.com.
How could anyone resist a production based on Dadaism?
Anthology Project presents “daDAda,” an original work that is everything and nothing at the same time. Confusion and madness reign at 9 p.m. Sept. 12 and 19 at Northern Liberties Community Center, 700 N. Third St.
The Jersey Devil, the Giant Squid, cyborg vigilantes and more spill out of a hole in the time-space continuum. So the chances of human survival are very slim in Time Mender Productions’ “The Annihilation Point,” featuring out actor Justin Jain, through Sept. 19 at Art Underground at the Wolf Building, 340 N. 12th St.
Out actor John Jarboe, who also starred in the Fringe production “Inside Julia Child,” appears on Applied Mechanics’ production of “It’s Hard Times at the Camera Blanca,” through Sept. 16 at Murph’s Bar, 202 E. Girard Ave.
It’s a play without a stage, a show that can’t go on as six unemployed circus workers seek refuge in the Bar Camera Blanca when economic collapse lays waste to their country. Their interlocking stories unfold simultaneously and the audience is free to choose which characters to follow.
For tickets or more information on Live Arts/Philly Fringe shows, call (215) 413-1318 or visit www.pafringe.com.
Larry Nichols can be reached at [email protected].