Countries Shaped Like Stars
Do you love The Decemberists? And Roald Dahl? Good. I do, too. So we can go to Countries Shaped Like Stars together and revel in the wondrousness of creators/performers Emily Pearlman and Nicolas Di Gaetano’s work. Their theatrical colleague, the illustrious stage performer Amy Salloway, calls Stars “the show The Decemberists would create if they pursued theater on a break from touring as a band, and if they got Roald Dahl to direct them.” The play features characters named Gwendolyn Magnificent and Bartholomew Spectacular, musical numbers involving water glasses and a mandolin, and a tin-can telephone. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Well it must be, because the show completely sold out and won Outstanding Overall Production at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in Ontario. Revolutions is Star’s New Mexico debut. Don’t miss it!
Flamingo Winnebago
Not to judge a book by its cover, or by the images that cover brings to mind, but let’s face it: Anything named Flamingo Winnebago must be brilliant, off-beat and hilarious. Especially if it features the live music of Le Chat Lunatique, Albuquerque’s preferred gypsy swing-set—which it just so happens to. As the title suggests, American kitsch experienced via road trip is a central element of Winnebago; unexpectedly perhaps, so are American oil-dependence, insatiable greed and the destitution that will be their invariable consequence. Woven by the multimedia theatrical creation team that is Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, Winnebago is an epic story of past, present and future told on the road from Jersey to Vegas.
Inclement Weather
Nicolas Di Gaetano’s Inclement Weather— in which, Mi Casa describes, “a man waits between here and there for a train that never comes”—sounds akin to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Meets Charlie Chaplin. Meets Viola Spolin. Di Gaetano (performer, writer and co-founder of the award-winning Mi Casa Theatre) presents a traveler stuck in the rain, limited by a luggage trunk and the confines of a foreign language. As Di Gaetano and Mi Casa’s co-founder/creator Emily Pearlman envisioned, Inclement Weather’ s character and theme are continuous, but the content changes from performance to performance based on words provided by the audience members at each show. When you go, what word will you offer?
The Unpossessed
Double Edge is serious Theater (with a capital T). The company’s base is a 100-acre farm turned center for research, cultural exchange and performing arts in Massachusetts, and the works developed over its 27-year existence have received far-reaching acclaim. The UnPossessed is the company’s modern adaptation of Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote. Apparently in response to the tragedies of 9/11, Double Edge situated Don Quixote’s fantastically wayward dreams among our contemporary ideological and phenomenological conflicts. With original music, puppetry, stilts, and aerial and circus arts, among other magical elements, it’s no wonder that the New York Times calls The UnPossessed , “a fervid, otherworldly production.”
Super Special Event: Mi Casa Plays Live! From The Belly Of A Whale
Just try to resist this: “A whimsical blend of micro-spectacle, live music and things yet to be dreamed, LIVE! From the Belly of a Whale promises to be a gin-soaked evening of Cetacean proportions.” Just try! You probably can’t, but lucky for you, you don’t have to. So long as you get tickets before they sell out. But you’d better hurry, because alcohol-logged, mysticete, euphonic extravaganzas performed by radiant Canadian theater companies aren’t particularly easy to come by. Especially not in Albuquerque. And as we all—those of us who grew up outside of whales’ bellies, that is—know, tiny supply = huge demand.
