With an American flag at its heart and a jaunty colored brick road on the floor, Abigail DeVille’s Gold Mountain should be upbeat. But the dark, cave-like installation at Marginal Utility is a sorrowful piece, a shrine almost. And the flag and crazy brick road are degraded symbols. Gold Mountain is a hell on earth.

Abigail DeVille, Gold Mountain, at Marginal Utility

DeVille’s installation immerses you in dark space where you can imagine scary things happening.  Dim lighting from black lights, red lights, and a small tv makes the space both eerie and fiery. Charred sticks poke out aggressively like cave ribs that might impale you.  On the floor the tv’s static fuzz is like white ashes of a dead fire.  There’s no central focus here. Instead the viewer, like a pilgrim, moves from one spot to another, stopping to contemplate and careful not to lose her footing.

Gold Mountain's tv fuzz, like ashes of a dead fire

The artist painted a tumbling mass of dead birds and bricks on the dark walls.  It looks like a whirlwind just passed through.  “I use pigeons and crows as stand-ins for people,” DeVille told me.

The artist — who built Gold Mountain on site from material scavenged  in Chinatown (including charred sticks from the nearby incinerated Trestle Inn) — spoke also of a Garcia Lorca poem “The Dawn“.  Lorca’s poem imagines a New York at dawn that is “Dawn of the Dead” dark — everything but the zombies.  The poet envisions columns of mud, a “hurricane of black doves,” “putrescent waters” and “light … buried under chains and noises” —  those words could describe the ambiance of DeVille’s piece.

The title refers to the nickname the Chinese gave to California during the 1848 Gold Rush, when many immigrated here seeking their fortunes. (The term also refers ironically to the Chinatowns that were then springing up in San Francisco and elsewhere.) DeVille, a black artist and Yale MFA student, is a fount of information about the Chinese experience in America.   At the opening she talked about the Chinese Exclusion Act, miscegenation laws and other harsh treatments doled out, peppering what she said with dates and references like she was as much history teacher as artist.

But Gold Mountain’s ire is aimed at all racial discrimination in America.  Discrimination based on race is a part of American history that’s not dealt with four-squarely in history books, although many artists have no fear of the subject.  Writers like James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison and artists like DeVille and, to mention just two others, Kara Walker and Hank Willis Thomas, expose the hidden history in ways that foster the discussion it needs.

Read this article at Philadelphia Weekly.

Abigail DeVille: Gold Mountain 
Through Sept. 25. 
Marginal Utility 319A N. 11th St., 2nd floor
917.355.4487

Gallerist Sande Webster talks about starting her gallery in the 1960s with a racially-mixed group of artists.  Today, 44 years later, Sande Webster Gallery continues to be a vibrant, successful and community-spirited enterprise on Walnut St.   Sande is a great story-teller.  Here’s a sample.
Sande Webster 30 second clip

Listen Monday, Aug. 30, to hear the full interview.

When people bark about the threat of a public art void at the Convention Center extension (see Stephan Salisbury’s article in today’s Inquirer here), they seem to be all over the place on just what they mean by public. For instance, art inside the building? That is not public. I don’t think too many Philadelphians ever get to see the so-called “public art” in Convention Center part 1.

Mei-ling Hom, China Wedge, 1994, inside the PA Convention Center; image borrowed from http://www.nyu.edu/apa/ford/works.htm#Mei-ling Hom

If you check out the Convention Center website, the art that’s inside is not mentioned, or if it is, I couldn’t find it. The sad truth is no one buys a week of conventioneering in Philadelphia because of the art inside the Convention Center. The purpose of the website is to sell convention space.

Google is barely more effective finding images of art at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.  A couple of pieces come up, but buried deep in the onslaught of images. Google Judith Shea and St. Louis public art comes up, but not Philadelphia public art. Mei-ling Hom’s China Wedge is super-successful as a piece of public art–it’s understandable to a broad audience, it’s elegant and it’s witty. It, too, took a bit of hunting on Google. So did the Judy Pfaff, which doesn’t nearly begin to dominate the huge hangar of Reading Terminal.

It’s not that I think there shouldn’t be a public art component to compensate us Philadelphians for the way the state imposed on us this horrible building which totally deadens a major segment of the streetscape in Center City. Yes. We the Philadelphia public deserve at least some sort of bold public art component–on the street–paid for by the state and I’m not talking about a mural.

Furthermore, the amount of money has to be substantial. We have far too many public sculptures done on the cheap, with cheap results.

Unfortunately, the public art component (should we be lucky enough to get one) would have the Herculean task of enlivening the Convention Center dead zone, providing a sense of place and a sense of public ownership–a sense of public interaction with whatever is there. For a public sculpture to be meaningful to visitors, it first has to be meaningful to the people who live with it, i.e. all of us Philadelphians. So if I raise my voice for public art, I am raising it for the exterior, for the streetscape, for my fellow citizens on whom the monstrosity building has been perpetrated.

And I am raising my voice for enough money so the artist can build a dream project and still pocket some money.

As usual, when money runs short, art gets cut. Next time, just cut the building and build the art, pay the artist, and serve the public for a change.

Athletes make superb photography subjects. In motion, their bodies perform seemingly superhuman tasks that are a thrill to see. At rest, either before or after their feats, athletes’ faces are studies in concentration — or pain. Photos of teams remind us of our pack-ness; our ability to bond with others — or fight. RUGBY, Daniel D’Ottavio‘s book of black and white photos of the New York Athletic Club Rugby Team during their 2008 season is a beautiful tome.  Caveat: I’ve seen it in pdf form only  so can’t speak to the binding, paper, or feel of the book. All I can say is the photos sizzle with their extremes of ground and sky punctuated by bodies in motion. Oh, and the NYAC Rugby Team won the Rugby Super League Championship in 2008 — so this book is a perfect documentary/art storm.

Daniel D'Ottavio, RUGBY, left half of a scrum. This picture is half of a two-page spread in the book.

Captured in these photos, rugby looks positively ancient. The moves of the game, for example, the scrum, seem akin to the “flying wedges” the Romans used to break through enemy lines.

RUGBY, right side of the scrum in the two-page spread in the book.

D’Ottavio, 33, is a California-born, New York-based photographer who started out as a model himself. But he loves being on the other side of the camera, something he did seriously for the first time on the advice of a friend who told him he must select one thing he loved and do it well. He chose photography and moved to Milan for a year, where he learned fashion photography. Then he moved to New York, where he’s been working for the last four years as a photographer on magazine shoots and for clients like Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie.

A friend encouraged him to start photographing sports. He chose rugby and spent time getting to know the New York Athletic Club rugby team, which he photographed in black and white from a low angle so the players — silhouetted against a stark white background of the sky — have a monumentality to them that’s unusual is sports photography.

RUGBY, P. 17, standing on your teammates shoulders to try to get the ball. Like nothing else.

I talked with the photographer by phone on July 15.

This is your first book. How’s it being received?
The reception exceeded my expectations…we changed printers midway through and scrapped the first version because it wasn’t what we wanted. Now I couldn’t be happier. The launch party was during a snow storm and we had a huge turnout.

RUGBY, P. 48

Has the team seen the book?
Some have. None of the players make a lot of money. A $125 book is too much for them…Christian Mayos is team captain and part of Play Rugby USA. I’m working with them. We go into inner city schools. We’re trying to find a way to create awareness (of rugby) and we’re trying to come up with an event (to raise money)

How does this differ from your commercial work? It’s black and white, for starters.
I’ve always loved black and white….This is a personal body of work. I shoot models for Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie…but these are real people. It makes it real.

Do you have any connections to the sport? Did you go in knowing anything?
I have a mutual friend on a team. After a couple games I’m sitting, screaming on the sides and forgetting to take pictures.

RUGBY, P. 10

What is it about the New York rugby team that appeals to you?
Good team known for a lot of heart. They’re not the biggest team but it’s the spirit they brought to it.  It was camaraderie I experienced. I hope it comes through the photos.

You mean they’re not the tallest, most muscular…?
Yes. And the team they beat is Samoans! huge, huge, huge.

How do you get inside a team when you don’t know them or the sport?
Not knowing anyone, and with sincere intentions of being part of their world, they help me out and let me get involved…I got to every home game. And they included me. It’s about building trust with people — all of us…suddenly you’re part of the team. From the first game to the third and fourth, I got more intimate shots.

RUGBY, P. 55

What camera do you use?
Pentax 6×7 medium format camera. It’s unorthodox for sports. It’s hard to focus and you only get 10 shots per roll. It has imperfect perfections.

How much does a roll cost?
$25 for a roll of 10 pix

Do you have a digital camera?
Yes, I shoot digital with models. If it’s important to me I shoot film. Knowing I have a finite number of frames per roll I become more conscious of what I see. What you shoot is what you get.

Talk a little about shooting while lying on the ground.
I use a fixed focal length lens. I’m lying on the ground trying to shoot at a low level. It’s consistent with my work. I shoot up a lot. This is what I love, landscape, horizontally and shooting up. I like to work with natural light. I like the picture clean. I get sky behind not other stuff.

The works are heroic and romantic. And they feel like they could be from 1940 and not 2010.
I want the photos to be timeless.

How did the book come about?
Kevin Mesinas, the publisher, wanted to do a book. A mutual friend is a lover of photography. He saw the contact sheets and he recognized the potential.

What’s in the future?
I want to keep going this way. I need to stay with models but I want to continue with sports. Ralph Lauren’s Rugby division wants to have an event with the book. If it’s a crossover then I can continue (to do the sports photography). I’ve been shooting polo on the sidelines. I will go to Boston in the fall for the Head of the Charles regatta.

Are you hoping to get a gallery representation?
I need a few more sports under my belt.

RUGBY by Daniel D’Ottavio
New York, Silas Finch
limited edition of 500 signed and hand-numbered copies
hardcover, 9.25” x 11.5” 64 pages with 34 tritone images printed in the United States using co-cure inks printed on 80# cover weight Mohawk Superfine uncoated paper drop-spine cover, wrapped in offset-printed cloth with screen-printed spine detail exposed smyth-sewn binding allows pages to lay flat rear panel of book block slides into a pocket inside the cover
ISBN: 978-1-936063-02-4 retail price: $125

by Cheryl Harper

Pablo Ruiz Picasso lived from 1881-1973, a long span in any terms, but he has never left this world judging from the manner in which his life and work are continuously celebrated. Take this season for instance; I’ve seen four Picasso museum shows in as many months: “Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art ended in May (artblog ran two posts so I won’t tell you more); “Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” at the Met, just closed August 15; “Picasso Themes and Variations” at MOMA through August 30; and “Picasso Looks at Degas” at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts through September 12.

Portrait of a Young Girl, after Cranach the Younger, II by Pablo Picasso, 1958. linoleum cut, composition: 25 11/16 h x 21 5/16" w. From the MoMA show

The difference between these shows is either a strong curatorial perspective, which includes loans to support a thesis; or exhibitions that bring together works from the museum’s own collection, thereby showing works in close proximity instead of as usually seen in the museum or works only occasionally on view.

At the Metropolitan, the museum draws on its own collection.  The show lacks depth in some areas as the museum started late in collecting Modern works. The Metropolitan’s best-known Picasso is the Portrait of Gertrude Stein, which is given a star location. There was a lack of curatorial perspective and no effort to fill in gaps.  As at the PMA, there was a large room of works hung salon style, but this time comprised of prints.  You would have to spend a good deal of time viewing this aspect of the of show.

The Frugal Repast by Pablo PIcasso, 1904, 18 3/16 h x 14 7/8" w From the MoMA show

However, about thirty blocks downtown at the Museum of Modern Art is the Picasso graphic show. In this location, many of the same prints as seen in the Met show are presented in a more approachable manner, with several states of prints, and organized throughout many rooms. This show is more for the print or in depth-Picasso aficionado because of its encyclopedic nature.

New publications accompany both shows with the Metropolitan’s being a comprehensive catalog of the Picasso works in its collection. MOMA’s catalog is: A Picasso Portfolio: Prints from the Museum of Modern Art by Deborah Wye.

The Clark Institute, located a couple of hours from Manhattan in Williamstown, MA.,  is the site of “Picasso Looks at Degas.” This was my favorite of the four shows due its strong premise. The organizers took care in presenting multiple media of both Degas and Picasso and demonstrated how the elder artist informed Picasso’s work from the Blue Period through post-Surrealism.

On loan to the Clark Institute. Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Standing Nude, 1907, oil on canvas, Museo del Novecento, Milan.

The loans are stellar including a Picasso charcoal and pastel study for Demoiselles d’Avignon from the Kunstmuseum in Basel and an oil study of a Standing Nude from the Museo del Novecento in Milan, also closely related to the famous 1907 painting. Degas’ La Coiffure of 1896, on loan from The National Gallery in London, was particularly noteworthy to see as related to Picasso’s subject matter. The painting was in Matisse’s collection; it likely influenced his figure and ground blurring in works such as The Red Room. A catalog with excellent illustrations accompanies the exhibition.

If you miss the East Coast museums this summer, you’ll find Picasso on the West Coast at the Seattle Art Museum‘s show, Masterpieces from the Picasso Museum, opening in October. Bon Appetit!

Cheryl Harper is an artist and independent curator, based in the Philadelphia area.

Charles Fahlen, 70, died July 27 at his home in Guerneville, California from pancreatic cancer, according to a notice from Steven Wolf Fine Arts, his gallery in San Francisco.

Charles Fahlen's work in Fleisher-Ollman's Cave Paintings show in 2008. Photo by Roberta.

I am including the parts of the notice that seem especially pertinent:

Fahlen spent most of his professional career in Philadelphia, where he taught at Moore College of Art and Design, and foraged the city’s now vanished industrial supply district for the raw materials in his work.

…He was included in the 1973 Whitney Biennial, and in 1991 he had a solo project at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, where he used sculpture to explore the American Western landscape as exotic other, myth and entertainment. His work can be found in numerous private and museum collections across the United States.

After retiring from Moore College in 2000, Fahlen returned to Northern California where he was raised. Inspired by the newly visible night sky, he began to craft jewel-like depictions of the cosmos using brass rods, chain link, and cast pigment epoxy spheres. Always toying with meaning and representation, he gave them ominous titles like, Foretelling Floods, Signs in the Sky and Unexplained Mysteries.

The works were themselves unexplained mysteries. I remember at Locks Gallery (2003) a bunch of cosmic anti-orreries similar to the one above,  and at the ICA (1991), slabs of rocks attached to clothes-dryer-like armatures–comic Rockies.

Bryan Brown‘s First Fight 2 — the follow up to his debut comic about his experience in the world of mixed martial arts — shows our hero, a successful Philadelphia artist/illustrator (no superpowers here, but lots of heart),  continuing his fascination with the sport as he goes about his life.

The story spends a lot of time setting up the hero’s return to the arena. It’s been two years since his first fight (recap: he lost on points and felt bad about letting his family and himself down, but felt great about getting as far as he did). To say he has a love/hate relationship with the sport is to state the obvious. So what’s he been doing? Well, he’s married now and doing a lot of soul searching. He’s a little heavier and, as in the first book, a little bit melancholy.  My review of the first issue of First Fight ran on artblog Dec. 19, 2009 in case you want to chase it down.

In the Harvey Pekar school of comic book narratives, First Fight 2 includes musings from Brown’s life and a chronicle of daily events from the big (getting married; creating his first comic book, First Fight and selling it at Wizard World Convention) to the small (walking his parents’ dog Snowball or eating a cheeseburger).

In fact there’s so much reminiscence, musing and inner conflict in Fight 2 that it’s not until P. 18 that Brown makes his decision to check out a class, still not committed to re-entering a world that’s physically and emotionally demanding.

There’s one fight scene in this book — it takes place in that first class where Brown grapples with another student. From P. 21-26, the two students grapple and come out shaking hands at the end.

Partial page from the book, showing Beth Heinly and Pumpkinhead (lower right)

As with Brown’s first book, the illustrations are well-done and serve the story. There’s plenty of odd-angled scenes and multi-panel pages so that the 32 page book speeds along. Enhancing the melancholy mood that pervades much of the book is the use of secondary colors (green, purple) along with lots of grey and black.

This is a sweet little book and, as with his first, Brown shows himself an accomplished autobiographical story teller.  In a coda at the end, Brown dedicates this issue to Snowball, who died while he was working on the book. Photos of Snowball appear on the acknowledgements page, further grounding the story in a real world of family and daily life.  While that’s not a happy ending, it’s sure a true one.  By the way, you may have seen Bryan at Philly Alternative Comic Con.  He had a table.  First Fight 2 is at the printers and I saw it in glorious .pdf.  Contact Bryan for a copy. bryanglennbrown@gmail.com

P.S.  Bryan wrote to say he’s participating in his second tournament in December.

Robert Scobey‘s ironic sculptures of the American Dream have a quirky idealism. This excellent work ends with a bang what was an annual opportunity for an outstanding graduate of the MFA program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Freeman‘s gave a monetary award to a second-year MFA at PAFA, followed by the opportunity to exhibit a year after graduation. This is the seventh Annual Samuel T. Freeman Memoial Scholarship Exhibition. Scobey said he was the last recipient of the annual scholarship/exhibition program, whose cancellation was announced at PAFA in 2009.  (Maybe it’s the economy — we hope it’ll be back because it’s a great opportunity for young artists and a wonderful scholarship – $10,000).

Robert Scobey, dishwasher/chandelier. Photo by Robert Scobey

Scobey (MFA, PAFA, 2009) has filled the downstairs space at Freeman’s auction house with his exhibit The Past Was Always Better.

Installation at Freeman's. Photo by Robert Scobey

The show is dominated by a number of large sculptures–improbable mergers of appliances, a toilet, and other house accoutrements modified to  a cheerful uselessness. A bicycle powers an inaccessible deck on wheels. An air conditioner in a free-standing window cools a cooler. An umbrella drains into gutters and a downspout. If the pieces weren’t so funny, ingenious and charming they’d be dreams of a desperate homeowner trying to keep one step ahead of household disintegration.

Robert Scobey, cooler cooled by air conditioner.

On what at first blush seems an entirely different note, Scobey has filled the display cases at Freeman’s with carved-into books. He calls them landscapes, but they are mindscapes. Scobey has cut through the layers of images in a book to reveal in an instant the depths that normally get reached through time via the action of reading.

Robert Scobey, carved book

The resulting juxtapositions and forms are at once beautiful and provocative–and not so unlike the large sculptures. The book has lost its original use. But its modified form offers other meanings and views. Both the books and other sculptures offer a touch of nostalgia, but also a wiggy optimism, a belief that there are other ways to see.

Robert Scobey, Miss August (Predator Drone) Inkjet Print 2010

The photo collages, also produced with a layering method similar to the one Scobey uses in the books, are not quite as impressive.  They lack the beauty (the lovely Miss June et. al. notwithstanding), and the juxtapositions seem to start with the idea, not with the images.

More pictures at Libby’s flickr and Roberta’s flickr.

The new exhibitions coordinator of Fleisher Art Memorial goes by Dave, but as a performance artist he’s been calling himself Jong Kyu Kim. He talks to us about celebrities, identity and living up to his family’s expectations. Below is the 30-second sample clip. And below that is the full 11-minute interview.

Jong Kyu Kim at the Green Line Cafe

30-second clip

full Jong Kyu Kim podcast
right click to download

Edited by Peter Crimmins. Music by Eric Biondo. Recorded at the The Green Line Cafe. Thanks to the Knight Foundation for their support of this project.

By Debra Miller

The 2010 Festival line-up is staggering, with nearly 1,200 performances of approximately 200 shows, ranging from theater and comedy to dance, music, and the visual arts.

Lucinda Childs’ Dance, (with music by Philip Glass and film by Sol LeWitt). Photo by Sally Cohn.

In a league of its own, and superseding any list of top picks, is Lucinda Childs’ Dance, with music by Philip Glass and film by the late Sol LeWitt.  It’s uplifting that these universally respected avant-garde giants of the 20th century, whose Minimalist/Conceptual work was misunderstood and criticized in its early years, would acknowledge their experimental roots and bring a reprise of their interdisciplinary collaboration to the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival.  The two surviving members of this dream team will be on hand for a pre-show discussion on Sept. 10; this is your chance to converse with living legends.

Along with Dance, my top 10 Best Bets for 2010 are:
•    EgoPo, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (Fringe)
•    Theatre Exile, Iron (Fringe)
•    Luna Theater, Thom Pain (based on nothing) (Fringe)
•    Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, ¡El Conquistador! (Live Arts)
•    Jérôme Bel, Cédric Andrieux (Live Arts)
•    Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Romeo and Juliet (Live Arts)
•    Nevermore Theater Project, The Tell-Tale Heart (Fringe)
•    Hyphen-Nation Arts, The Jane Goodall:  Experience (Fringe)
•    Plays and Players, Hear Again Radio Project (Fringe)
•    Madhouse Theater Company, Dysfictional Circumstances (Fringe)

Ensemble in EgoPo’s Marat/Sade. Photo by Joshua Wallace.

The top three productions are by a trio of the most consistently excellent, compelling theater companies in Philadelphia.

Following its stirring adaptation of Beckett’s Company last year, EgoPo will kick off its “Theater of Cruelty” season at the Fringe with Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade.  Brenna Geffers directs a roster of all-stars, including Ross Beschler, Steven Wright, David Blatt, and Theatre Exile’s Joe Canuso, in the controversial and unrelentingly sadistic play-within-a-play, staged in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Catharine Slusar in Theatre Exile’s Iron. Photo by Robert Hakalski.

Theatre Exile, too, returns to the Festival after a five-year hiatus, with Philly Fringe co-founder Deborah Block (co-artistic director at Exile) directing award-winning actresses Catharine Slusar and Kim Carson in Iron.  Set in a woman’s prison, Iron tells the story of a mother and daughter struggling to come to terms with each other, and with themselves, 15 years after a brutal murder.

Poster for Luna’s Thom Pain (based on nothing). Photo by Scott Fowler.

And Gregory Scott Campbell directs another of Luna Theater’s characteristically quirky shows, Thom Pain–a haunting anecdotal monologue by New York playwright Will Eno, which won the Fringe First Award in Edinburgh.  With their accomplished casts, directors, and design teams, these disturbing dramas promise to be the most professional of the Festival, while still exhibiting the cutting-edge intensity for which the companies, and the Fringe, are known.

Thaddeus Phillips in Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental’s ¡EL CONQUISTADOR! Photo by Evan Kafka.

My next three picks are part of the Live Arts Festival, distinguished from the Philly Fringe by selection process.  The Philly Fringe is unfiltered; both new and established artists can present their work without an invitation or preliminary judging.  Live Arts features renowned contemporary performing artists from the U.S. and around the world, who have been invited to the Festival by producing director Nick Stuccio.

Thaddeus Phillips’ Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental was selected to present its innovative fusion of live theater and film, ¡El Conquistador!  Combining the daydreams of an impoverished underdog with the popular phenomenon of telenovelas (Latin American soap operas), the performance (presented in Spanish, with English supertitles) makes reference to such classic sources as Hamlet and The Count of Monte Cristo.

Cédric Andrieux in Jérôme Bel’s Cédric Andrieux. Photo by Jaime Roque de la Cruz.

Also noteworthy in Live Arts is Cédric Andrieux, a behind-the-scenes autobiography of the eponymous French dancer, in collaboration with choreographer Jérôme Bel.  I can’t help but think of Avedon’s famous photos of Nureyev’s feet, evincing the torturous training that results in a work of beauty on stage.

Robert M. Johanson and Anne Gridley in Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Romeo & Juliet. Photo by Peter Nirgini.

And the New York based Nature Theater of Oklahoma presents an amusing retelling of Romeo and Juliet, synthesized from telephone interviews with everyday people who were asked to give an account of the story in their own words.  Their embellishments, inaccuracies, and reinventions include scenes and characters that were never part of Shakespeare’s original.

John Zak in Nevermore Theater Project's The Tell-Tale Heart. Photo by Domenick Scudera.

Nevermore Theater Project offers another time-honored classic in the Fringe, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.  This one is a faithful word-for-word staging of the dark short story, starring Barrymore recipient John Zak as Poe’s man on the brink of insanity, and performed at the appropriately creepy Mütter Museum (admission to the museum’s collections is not included).

Marcel Williams Foster in Hyphen-Nation Arts’ The Jane Goodall: Experience. Photo by Libby Cady.

Three more Fringe events round out my Top 10 list, all promising to be both unique and entertaining.

Hyphen-Nation Arts’ The Jane Goodall:  Experience features Marcel Williams Foster as the renowned anthropologist, in a performance/lecture/tribute to the 50th anniversary of her pioneering research in Tanzania.  Now working in the world of dance and theater, Foster trained at Goodall’s Institute, and incorporates years of research, a profound love of apes, and a virtuoso shift between humans and primates in his self-described “peculiar drag parody.”

Ryan Walter, Lauren Basler, and David Stanger in Plays and Players' Hear Again Radio Project. Photo by Alistair E. May.

More traditional is Plays and Players’ Hear Again Radio Project, comprising vintage radio dramas from the 1940s, performed live with authentic costumes, sound effects, music, and commercials.

Colleen Corcoran in Madhouse Theater Company’s Dysfictional Circumstances. Photo by John Stanton.

Last but not least is Madhouse Theater Company’s Dysfictional Circumstances, a twisted dark comedy about Nazi propagandist filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, which just won the Audience Choice Award for New Work in the Theater Alliance of Greater Philadelphia’s Spark Showcase.

Beth Nixon and Alex Torra in Cankerblossom by Pig Iron Theatre Company. Photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg.

If you love inane Jerry Lewis movies circa 1960, and find over-sized glasses, crossed eyes, protruding teeth, and grating voices hilarious, you probably number among the masses that can’t seem to get enough of Pig Iron Theatre Company.  In light of the success of last year’s Welcome to Yuba City (both in the Live Arts Festival and with the Barrymore Awards), I would be remiss if I didn’t remind fans to get their tickets early, because this year’s offerings by Pig Iron (Cankerblossom) and Charlotte Ford (Chicken) are sure to sell out fast.

Charlotte Ford in Chicken. Photo by Jay Dunn.

Also among the annual favorites is Brian Sanders’ JUNK, this year performing Sanctuary (which comes with a warning that the production may contain nudity).  Described as “a dance of intense movement, ritual, and mistaken assumptions about the past,” and using a 14 x 120’ wall as the stage, the perfectly toned gravity-defying dancers will undoubtedly wow Live Arts audiences again in 2010.

Sanctuary by Brian Sanders' JUNK. Photo by Steve Belkowitz.

The 14th annual Philly Festival runs September 3-18.  If you’re truly living on the fringe, it’s not likely you’ll be able to see much of it, so choose your shows wisely (tickets & info here).  At a pricey $325/person ($650/couple), the “all-access pass” gives access to all shows, not access for all people.

I’m sorry Philly.com but this is unacceptable–an ad that will not go away and that covers up content.  This page always hurts the eye but this new move is an insult.  Talk about putting up fences for your content!