Number 29: September, 2002

by Carl F. Gauze

Florida has a long history of selling swampland to Yankees. Of

course, you can’t call it that, “swamp” makes people think mosquito, and

that’s a bad thing. The latest catch phrase is “Conservation Area.”

That’s the retention area in the subdivisions, the place no one will

ever build on because the muck won’t support a one-story ranch on pontoons,

and the water moccasin got an injunction. Remember, if there’s a cypress

tree in your yard, buy a canoe. You’ll need it eventually.<p>

Cherry Street Launch

Playwrights Round Table

Cherry Street Theater, Winter Park, Fla</b><P>

It’s another Short Play Fest-O-Rama-Con, as the PRT folks fine-tune and produce 5 ten-minute short plays over a 3-day weekend. I was able to catch the last evening’s festivities, which launched PRT’s residence in the new facility on Cherry Street, down on the mean streets of Winter Park’s gritty Industrial District. <P>

Opening the event is Alice Mannette’s “Mein Freund”, a sweet character study of Johannes Brahms (Frank Zeleznik), famous composer and libertine, and his upper-class friend and pianist Joseph Joachim (Jay Glick). Brahms and Joachim are now old men and almost estranged. Brahms has taken to playing piano in a whorehouse, and his friend is embarrassed to even visit. Reconciliation revolves around a new double concerto, and while Joachim lectures about morality and Brahms babbles about the Soul of The People, sexy little Sophia (Ashley Stutzman) sashays around flattering both old goats. Lust for material overcomes disgust for lust and a partial reconciliation soon erupts.

“First Date” by Leaven Darnell is the cutest and most self-referential play of the show. Bright and enthusiast Richard packs a pack of rubbers as he knocks on Karen’s (Andromeda Aery’s) front door for that all important first impression. Things are going well enough until the chicken at a suspect restaurant does him in. The fun is there is no dialog, only condensed stream of the writer’s consciousness guiding the action.

John Goring presents “Hildie,” the tale of an old woman (Frances Mansfield) aging as gracelessly as possible. She’s no longer able to care for herself, and even making oldest daughter Sherri Dewitt miserable has lost its charm. With the furniture gone and Old Folks home looming down the street, she continues to browbeat her daughter until it’s to late for her to do anything about the over dose she gave herself. Tragic and painful, it’s close enough to what we all have or will go though as our loved ones fail to outlast us.

Next up is the sly Sci-Fi story of a man (Paul Wegman) and his younger self (Bill Patterson) called “Bus Stop”. The young man is out for his big day – he’s going down town to meet his buddy, and then deliver a carload of drugs to a rendezvous with certain gunplay and permanent injury. With the young man listen to sage advice? Will the old man convince him to change his plans and change his fate, or will the Old Man have to slink off to live out his life in the same misery he brought on himself by not taking advice he tried to give himself? If the Grandfather Paradox, without the flashing lights.

Wrapping up the evening is M. Lark Underwood’s “One Thing After Another”. Billy Jay (Mark March) is the phlegmatic cashier at a gas station. Co-worker Corky (Dean Walkuski) is on a talking jag about bug parts in cokes and candy bars and bending everyone’s ear until pert little Rachel (Amy Brackel) tries to charge her gas on a library card. She throws one of those fits that southern women are famous for when they are obviously in the wrong and still plan to get their way. She talks her way into the cashier’s office; they viciously overcomes the staff and escape with the gas, the money, and her accomplice. What she sees in Corky is beyond me, but that’s how much story we get in ten minutes.

I don’t see a huge demands for ten-minute plays, but as writing and directing exercises, these all indicate that longer more complex works may grow from these seeds. It’s a fun process, and the workshop format allows the audience and other writers to raise that one important question – “Just WHAT were you thinking?” And get a good answer.

Joe’s NYC Bar – The Halloween Parade

Directed by Christian Kelty

Temenos Ensemble Theater, Orlando, Fla</b><P>

“Costume Optional”, like “Clothing Optional”, always engenders two great fears. One is that you’ll be the only person participating, and the other is you’ll be the only one NOT. I was almost in that first personal level of Heck, but then a few other brave souls showed up and it was time for another evening in the hippest bar this side of Highway 50. Owner Gabe (Christian Kelty) is off on a Spirit Quest, which is what guys used to call trekking to Nepal in search of hash. I don’t think he was doing that exactly, but it’s never explained that clearly. Meanwhile, his assistant Ivan (John Connon) runs the joint and pulls off a passable Elvis impersonation, and the regulars filter in past bouncer Roger (Shawn Ull). A washed up prom queen (Cindy Pearlman) and her red neck brother Buster (Peter Hurtgen) hold down the sexually ambiguous end of the discussion, and Dante (Tony Lopez) and “She” (Beth Marshall) cover the Meta physical shade. Buster hates drag queens, like the snake headed Medusa, and his sister reveals they both made out with the same cousin. Kinky. Dante arrives with a spectral cabby, who keeps urging him to get back in the cab and cross the river, but he never says whether it’s the Hudson, the East River, or that one named after the Canadian metal band. “She” did a little instant channeling through him, and brings back some of the cast’s deceased loved ones to do some pop psych reconciliation. Personally, I think waking up dead old dad from the eternal sleep to reveal one is a cross dresser isn’t really necessary or even polite. He WAS resting in peace, after all. Later, Dante revels his unexpected relation ship to Roger and life in general, the result is moving, but perhaps not as creepy as intended. Frankly, it’s hard to generate real creepiness in today’s jaded TV-X generation, but the effort was well taken.<p>

There’s never dull conversation at Joe’s, and tonight we went around the audience and discussed some of the deep seated fears people have – snakes, death, damp toilet seats, all the usual stuff. Personally, I have two real fears – boredom, and camping. Strange, but true. Fortunately, neither received a work out tonight, and it all made dragging out that old flight suit and running it through the wash a great idea.<p>

For more information on Joes, please visit <a href=www.joesnycbar.com> www.joesnycbar.com </a><p>

Rick Stanley’s Cabaret

Mad Cow Theater, Orlando, Fla</b><p>

Over most of the 20th century, the songs of Richard Roger and Lorenz Hart, and then Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein set the standard for what we now regards a

“Broadway Show Tunes”. Humable music and direct lyrics, often speaking of the multiple facets of love, carry emotion and move the hearts of the listener. In this little unaffected show, Rick Stanley sets out a fine selection of this material accompanied by Pianist Jason Wetzel. The atmosphere is intimate, with the higher rolling patrons sitting at teeny tiny tables nearly on stage, and the lesser lights of listenership perched on Mad Cow’s softer-than-average theater seats. Stanley’s voice does more than justice to the material, working though old standards such as Getting To Know You and People Will Say We’re In Love, and some lesser know yet still enjoyable material like Johnny One Note and When And Where. When not tossing blue confetti at people’s drinks, Stanley slides around stage in an accompaniment of motions, almost miming what he sings. Near the middle of the show, he drags Mad Cow Alum Katrina Ploof out off the audience for a fun but slightly contrived pair of songs; Lady is a Tramp and My Funny Valentine. She’s no slouch at singing either, but it WAS sort of obvious they had rehearsed the staging a time or ten. Nothing wrong with that, it seemed perfectly in line with the tenor of Broadway, where people do tend to burst into song and dance at times when mere mortals would be content to just yell at each other. <p>

Orlando asymptotically approaches a genuine downtown cosmopolitan atmosphere as a bit more cabaret creeps onto the calendar. This show stars a bit late, and doesn’t run too long, allowing the audience a little après theater at one of the areas many ‘Open till Leno starts’ drinking establishments. It’s s fun hour or so, suitable for dating or reminiscing, and all the place really needs now is a flashing neon sign outside with a martini glass on it. Oh, and martinis at the bar, but that’s probably pushing the mayor’s tolerance on REAL fun for downtown. <p>

For more information on Mad Cow, please visit <a href=www.madcowtheatre.com> www.madcowtheatre.com </a>

The Tempest

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Michael Carlton

Starring William Metzo, Sarah Hankins, Grace Hsu, Eric Hissom

Orlando UCF Shakespeare Festival

Orlando, Fla.</b><p>

Life’s tough for vital Prospero (Metzo), deposed duke of Naples. He’s stuck on a sandbox of an island in the middle of nowhere with his nubile daughter Miranda (Hankins) and a few magic trick he picked up on the cruise out. It’s a rough magic for this brave new world, but he’s grabbed control of at least two of the 4 elements – invisible Ariel (Hsu) and earthy Caliban (Hissom). Ariel does his mystical bidding via a wooden stick puppet, bound to him by the same sort of guilt that mom used on you when you wouldn’t eat your broccoli. Caliban does the dirty work, popping out of the ground to haul wood and fetch water and generally skulk about like Gollum with a hangover. Prospero makes progress with the other elements, raising a watery tempest to bring a ship with the people who deposed him to the island. When they arrive, his prototype Fire Dragon scares the jujubes out of the visitors. That would include the bushy bearded Alonzo (Ron Schneider), Elfin Gonzalo (Michael Walls), evil competing Duke Antonio (Davis Size) and Prospero’s nasty brother Sebastian (Tad Ingram). Well, Gonzalo didn’t really depose him, but he’s stuck with that contingent for the duration. Why are they here? Well, Prospero has plans for his daughter. It’s time she get married, and allow him to reclaim his dukedom. Handsome Ferdinand (Basso) will do nicely, so he and Miranda spend the rest of the show mooning away at each other. Gotta have a Romance, so sayeth the Bard.

Where is that Caliban, anyway? He’s hooked up with Stephano (Mark Rector) and Trinculo (Richard Toth). They made to the islands with a 55-gallon drum of cheap wine, and plan to drink it till it drowns them. While in their cups, Caliban convinces them to kill Prospero and run the island. That seem to really push their collective management skills, but no matter, there’s a lot of falling down and back flips and general drunken revelry that really is the highlight of the evening. Hissom’s Caliban looks like he smells bad, and generally treats the visitor like an evil Lhasa Apso cruising for a date. Toth and Rector are the perfect physical foils, always on the edge of injuring someone or even worse, spilling their drink.

All this happened on one of the most stylistically complete sets around – the mood is deeply Indonesian, complete with shadow puppets and flower adorned drinking cups. Dragons cross the stage, sometimes run by the 4 spirits who aid Ariel, and sometimes projected as a huge shadow puppet. Oriental music infuses the air, ranging from Gamelan to Chinese Court music to Mongolian Throat singing. The storm’s scary, the comedy physical, and the only things missing are the smell of plumaria and curry in the night air. And you, of course. You MUST see this. Prospero says so, Caliban still works for him, and he’s STILL lonely.<p>

for more information on UCF-Shakespeare, visit > http://www.shakespearefest.org/ <p>

Private Eyes

By Steven Dietz

Directed by Fran Hilgenburg and Douglas Huston

Starring Roger Greco, Laura Rohner, Derek Ormond</b><p>

It’s confusing world, with characters lost within the conflicting spheres of plays within plays, plays within fantasies, and the lost world of what is and what might be. Matthew (Greco) and Lisa (Rohner) are married but not that happily, and fit into the contrived theatrical world of director Adrian (Ormond). He’s in the colonies, on leave from the London stage scene and a prying wife Cory (Peni Lotoza). Since he’s English, he can get away with any affectation – tasteless shirts, bad accents, and a Tin-Tin style haircut – and still claim the moral high ground of stagecraft. He or may not be having an affair of convenience with Lisa, and Matthew may or may not want to know what’s really going on, and the lot sort of does and doesn’t want the relations to continue beyond the short run of this Black Box experimental show. Cory eventually shows up and makes a halfhearted attempt to seduce Matt, with the idea in mid of confronting the wandering Adrienne. Still with me? Not a problem, because Matthew spends a good bit of time explaining it to his shrink Dr. Frank (Caroline Ross), a doctor from the “How long have you hated your mother?” school of analysis.

While the plot is convolved, the story is entertaining and well cast. There’s a clever juxtaposition of various power relations as Matt goes from a director auditioning Lisa to a customer of Lisa in a tough restaurant to an actor working for lecherous Adrienne. It takes a few wig changes and appearances for the doltish among the audience to conclude Cory is Adrienne’s wife, and the normally invisible stagehands get a few self-referential moments in while moving furniture on stage. It’s a play about ignoring reality in the most realistic way possible, about the ephemera nature of truth and humor. Some one once asked, “What is truth?” Beats me, I’m just the audience. Maybe it really is just air. <p>

For more information, please visit <a href = www.theatredowntown.net > www.theatredowntown.net <p>

Dracula
Written and Directed by Bobbie Bell

Starring Stephen Pugh, Rick Paulin, Leia Corbett, Ansley Goodrich

Seminole Community College Fine Art Theater</b><p>

Can the Undead fine true love and perhaps some happiness with proper medical care and counseling? Are they still potential contributors to proletariat societies, or just new lackeys of the capitalist power structure? Dr. John Steward (Pugh) thinks so. He’s revived old Nosferatu (Shirvan Basdeo) and does experiments on that gollum-like object hoping to cure madness and autoimmune diseases. Since he runs a clinic for the insane, blood is easy to get, and things are progressing until one day old Nos escapes. This doesn’t seem to faze him as much as it ought to – he’s unfamiliar with the grudges Vampires carry, and then there’s the upcoming engagement of his sister Mina (Corbett) and American lawyer Quincey Harker (Ryan Cimino). There’s other lust afoot as Mina’s loosest friend Lucy (Rachel Stump) chases after every other unattached man on the stage. There’s the Clint Eastwood spouting goat roper Morris Swales (Daniel Oser), Harker himself, and the sinister but sexy Arthur Holmwood (Paulin). Heck, she might even take a shot at bug eating Renfield (Ryan Haskins). But all eyes are on Holmwood. He just sort of appeared mysteriously about the time Nosferatu took French leave, and claims to be the son of an elderly neighbor. After a quickie with Lucy, she starts buying black leather and fading away. Eventually all the minor female characters have joined her at FishNet depot, and suspicions are aroused. When Lucy dies, Dr. Kaatje Van Helsing (Goodrich) shows up with her little black bag of garlic, and the hunt is on for Holmwood and his posse. Down in the crypt at midnight, the living foolishly tackles the undead only to pull of an upset victory. Holmwood is back to eternity, and Seward reclaims the head of Nosferatu, keeping his head alive as his experiments continue. Some guys just never learn.<p>

Here’s an adaptation set firmly in the 21st century. People meet on chat lines, research the undead at websites, and listen to a pretty decent Goth- metal sound track. There are some technical problems with the vampire life style. Some are obscure aspects of blood exchange, others a bit more obvious, like the cross on Dracula’s coffin. None of these really interfere with the fun. There’s copious use of smoke machines, Holmwood looks like James Dean in a horror film, Van Helsing is superb and casting the role as a female works wonderfully, and I loves Swale as the English fisherman trying to be a cowboy. There are some seriously creepy moments, particularly from the grotty Nosferatu in his muddy diapers and chains. <p>

Some folks out there can cite Vampire lore like it’s the Gospel of Saint Luke, but Bell has gone beyond that. By introducing a small tirade about Marxism and adding some new vampire facts, this show avoids the trite flying bats and bad Hungarian accents that plague the ledged. Some of the references, such as to the scary Anna Nichole, may not hold up beyond this run of the show, but that gives future director’s a bit of wiggle room to add their own touch. It’s silly, sexy and a refreshing redo of a classic tale. Now, if only these addled scientist would learn to stop messing with the realm of the supernatural…<p>

Little Egypt

By Lynn Sieffert

Directed by John A. Valines III

Starring Joe Swanberg, Megan Whyte, Don Fowler, Nikki Darden

The Box at Temenos Theater, Orlando Fla</b><p>

Well, we all went down to watch them move furniture around at Temenos, and were pleasantly surprised to find a little play hiding behind the couch. Down in southern Illinois, the white trash comes out to work and play and screw and generally live their lives. Victor Mulkey (Swanberg) is a security guard who survived Vietnam with his body intact but his mind a bit ruffed up. His buddy Watson (Fowler) lost his job by throwing the mill foreman out the window again. Watson needs a crash pad, which Victor gladly provides since he can only sleep in the chair or he gets flashbacks. Well, they hook up with slutty Bernadette and nutty Celeste Waltz (Darden and Whyte). Bernadette looks like the sort of girl who gets pregnant easily, and does, and when Watson hears that news he’s back to Swanberg’s abandoned garage like a shot. This displaces Celeste, who seems to have finally found a person to cling to in Swanberg. And, since Momma Faye (Pam Bauman) won’t take her in, she’s forced to jump in the river with a blue Sampsonite tied around her waist. It’s Port Charles with more profanity.

There are a ton of scenes in this show, and each is accompanied by a complete and noisy re-arrangement of the entire set. Given there are only a half dozen objects, this seems a bit intrusive. If you can overlook this problem, there are some very well done characters populating the moving van – Fowler is superb as the manipulating loser abusing everyone around him, Swanberg as a man who just barely qualifies as security guard material, and Larry Burns as Hugh Door, Sleazy Mayor Pro Tem of this seedy little town. The best lines go to Whyte, who philosophize on war with “I don’t see why you should kill people if you’re not going to eat them!” <p>

Are we better for watching this tribe of humans heading down the Erratic Path? Everyone is distinct in his or her person and personality, eveyone wants sex in the worst way possible, and that’s how they get it. Momma gets dumped by the mayor when his wife inexplicably wants him back, Bernadette gets an abortion, Watson is thrown out in the street his underwear, and Victor isn’t even allowed any privacy by his “Best Friend.” Celeste finds love but is then torn away from it by the mindless activities of others, and suicide does seem like a sane course for everybody involved. They are all stuck in this small town with no Greyhound out, subject to the ravages of stupidity and overly mobile furniture. Its proof there is no valid external world, not in Cairo Illinois, anyway.

For more information on Temenos, please visit <a href=www.joesnycbar.com> www.joesnycbar.com </a><p>

The Fantasticks

Book and Lyric by Tom Jones

Music by Harvey Schmidt

Directed by Alan Bruun

Mad Cow Theater</b><p>

In a world of lust without hormones, two young people grow up separated by their parent’s garden wall. At 16, she (Natalie Cordon) fancies herself a princess and hopes to saved by a hero during an abduction. He (Daniel Lee Robbins) thinks at 20 he has this adult business down pat, even though his moustache is a bit laggard. They’re madly in love and convinced that their parents are at war, although not in a Shakespearian bodies-piling-up-in-the-corner way. The folks just play pretending, on the theory that if they forbid the children to see each other, they’ll end up hitched quicker. Adding and abetting the processes is the dashing El Gallo (Stephan Jones), who arranges a very nice but expensive abduction, carefully explaining the correct term is “Rape,” as in the old Latin “rapia”, or to take. Pedantic, perhaps, but it leads to one of the best song in the show, “Rape Ballet”. This plan is wildly effective, and just as soon as the couple gets together they hate each other and go there separate ways – she to pine away like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, he to learn to gamble and carouse and get beat up by bandits. Ah, isn’t that true romance? Of course it is, and when they get back together, they realize there’s more to love than moonlight and flowers. Love involves car payments and wallpaper and in-laws. You can’t solve those problems with lust. Not for long, anyway.

And from this simple story, the Mad Cows spin a wonderful evening’s entertainment. We have all the basics of a great musical – minimal plot, stunning comic support, and a great song you can hum on your way home. Jones’ wonderful tenor carries the theme song “Try to Remember” and the two parents (Mike Collins and Sam Hazell) hoof it across stage like they’re trying to revive vaudeville single handedly. The wall, along with several other special effects is presented with great panache by the cute Mute (Trenell Mooring). But the real stars of the show were the Old Actor (Rick Stanley) and The Man Who Dies (Jay Becker). While they don’t have all that many lines, they steal an otherwise hard to steal show by sheer brunt of timing and motion. As the Old Actor points out, if you must misquote someone, best to misquote Shakespeare. It sounds better, and he doesn’t have any lawyers left to point out your mistake. I suspect there’s a moral somewhere, but it spends most of the show backstage, and never stands in the way of an all singing all talking all dancing production that is just a bit beyond fantastic.

For more information on Mad Cow, please visit <a href=www.madcowtheatre.com> www.madcowtheatre.com </a>

Herbert Hoover High 20th Reunion

United Brotherhood of Yaks Lodge & Reception Hall

SoulFire Dinner Theater

Kissimmee, Fla</b><p>

Been to your High School reunion yet? Nah, neither have I. It’s hard to imagine wanting to see those losers and make small talk after 20 years of different lives. Plus, the entire faculty would be dead or on walkers, and there’s no point in visualizing that future. Rather than risk an actual reunion, you now have an alternative – a professionally staged reunion, complete with well-crafted characters that will relive your past life the way you remember it – fun, sexy, and with no obligation to get together past the ride home. <p>

Yak Hall is tucked away in an outlet strip center that caters to tourist’s wives whose husbands got a foursome tougher. Tonight it’s the 20th for the Fighting Flounders of Herbert Hover High. As you wait in line, you meet some of people who populated your past life. There’ southern belle and viper Carla Keenan, infomercial maven Kenny Boner and his long suffering wife Tory, and even Azalea Hallenbeck, ex fat chick. As we settle in for the evening, the range of HS stereotypes appear to fill out the cast. Remember Gene Klink, and his wife Sandy, organizers of this fete? He’s with the fraternal Yaks, and got us this hall cheap, so long as here wears his silly hat and recruits the kids. We begin with a remembrance of the 20 or students who never graduated back in 82. Fuzzy photos with embarrassing hair cut review deaths by alligator, lightning, chem lab accidents, and worst of all – the wrath of God opening a sink hole under a keg party that swallowed… well .. LOTS of my friends. As always, the threat of Karaoke hangs over the evening. We have a DJ and valedictorian Phook Lan Ngyuen, who encourages the audience to make fools of themselves. Protecting the innocent is a bunch of well-trained singers lurking in the cast, and we make the audience sing along to protect the guilty. Oh, who’s that? Why, it’s Horace Gillenberry III, ex geek and now a tatty drag queen in seedy sequins. Since these are </> tourists, we have to explain his exact sexual situation, which dampens the room a bit until we all get up and sing that crossover favorite, YMCA. <p>

So is nostalgia worth the trip to Kissimmee? Well, there’s a lot of talent on the floor that doesn’t seem well used, and the audience gets up to dance about every 5 minutes, but the beer flows with no problem and the Karaoke isn’t to bad. There are some little rivalries that seem to surface now and again, but there’s no strong dramatic tension driving the evening. That’s OK, as the audience isn’t the usual Orlando theater crowd, and they seem to enjoy themselves to the point of spending some extra cash on the photo and key chain packs. As mass feeding frenzies go, the foods not to bad, and the lively acoustics of the space keep the din up. Yeah, High School – it seemed really important at the time, but then college arrived and real sex, drug, and rock and roll appeared in your life. Relive the innocence, and don’t be afraid to misspell YMCA.<p>

For more information of Soul Fire Dinner Theater, visit www.soulfire.net.

Walls – The Empty Gallery

Directed by Chad Lewis

Temenos Ensemble Theater

Orlando, Fla </b><p>

Is ANYTHING art, if a guy in weird clothes says it is and gets some greater fool to part with cold cash to own it? Of course not, that’s just marketing hype. Oscar Wilde invented it, Andy Warhol perfected it, and it’s the received wisdom from MOMA to the Tate and all point in between. Even our own Temenos troupe has grasped the brass ring and made good clean fun of the process. Tonight we gather at notorious Gallery Vescaiouxz, run by the Senior Monsieur Herr Facilitator Vescaiouxz (Holland Hays). In case your Schwabian is weak, pronounce it “vrCHnx”. Trendy dresser as always, he will lead you to contribute to his latest work in progress, “The Island” (Andy Coppola). Add a little paint to this clay-clad corpse, and grab a beer. Perfomance artist Santiago (Christian Kelty) is here, along with mentor and enemy Roma (Michael Wanzie). They had a falling out over some misplaced lighter fluid and a high end sedan, but they might kiss and make up or knife each other, or both. Pointy headed critic Evelyn (Michelle Kepner) correctly points out that this gallery is not empty, but full of paintings and hangers on. Ah HA! That’s the art part! The empty gallery is next door, and the audience is lead around the block in the rain to witness three actual Performance Art Pieces, and then back to discuss them over Triscuits and cheese cubes.<p>

Yeah, they have real perfomance art, or at least a clever satire of the genre. That line between clever and silly is so very, very fine. Santiago muses on his quest to achieve economy of words, all while talking pretty much non-stop. The trio of Screaming Bleeding Feminists (Beth Marshal, Amy Steinberg, and Arwen Lowbridge) froth and fume and emit mysterious sounds like The Three Weird Sisters spouting useless warnings to Hamlet, but they have a Hoberman Sphere and a black light, and they get artist Erikka (Sarah Matthews) to help by hanging her painting from chains. Play within a play, anyone? Ah, then comes master artiste Roma. He’s been on hiatus for ten years planning his greatest work, “Kaleidoscope”. Well, there are flashing colored lights, colored finger painting, colored balloons, and everyone dances with the audience. More a gay junior prom than a moving art experience, it was still fun to watch plus everybody got a turn on the dance floor.<p>

So do we now know what art is? Well, theater is art and television is furniture and by stealing that line I too claim artistry. While each element of the evening was a stage prop seen from the back, the ensemble was moving, and did poke not-to-gentle fun at the acrylic and clay set. Unlike other productions in this space, you were forced to move around and interact with fellow audience members. Every time I started talking to someone I knew, Vescaiouxz accosted us and made us find new people to chat up. While there were a few slow passages, you never felt bored, and you could make any asinine comment about any object in the room and get a knowing nod and a wink from someone. It’s like Umpteenth Thursday, but with better parking. <p>

For more information on Joes, please visit www.joesnycbar.com <p>

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