Promo: MY HAIR PIECE

Dana Block sent this in. Please post your comments below if you see the show.



“MY HAIR PIECE”
BY DANA BLOCK

A woman who has just given birth to the perfect little baby discovers she now looks like a sex bomb, thanks to breast feeding, and on a hot night out with hubby, escapes in a cheesy Mexican Restaurant and has a torrid romp with sex-starved Richard Gere who happens to be sitting across the bar from them. Chaos ensues.
My Hair Piece was first performed in Chicago in 1999 at the Rhinocerous Festival at Lunar Cabaret. Justin Hayford, reviewing it for the prominent arts newspaper Chicago Reader, said:
"You’ve got to have something to offer if you’re going to wade into the crowded pool of … solo performance in Chicago. Dana Block… shows she’s got the writers’ chops… [she] writes with efficiency and flair… she has a knack for creating images at once arresting and irreverent… Block will be a monologuist to contend with."

Venue: Nietzsche’s, 248 Allen St, Buffalo
Running Time: Thirty minutes
Admission: Pay what you can
Performances: Thursday, July 28, 7:00-7:30,
Saturday, July 30, 7:00-7:30,
Sunday, July 31, 2:00-2:30,
Wednesday, Aug 3, 9:30-10:00,
Thursday, Aug 4, 7:00-7:30

Your picks?

Here's an easy place to add your own comments (if you don't want to join the blog): which infringement shows do YOU most want to see, and why? Which ones you've seen would you recommend to other people? NOT recommend?

Just click on the word "comments" at the bottom of this post (or any other post, for that matter) and let 'er rip.

PETITE CHOSES

Wow.

I got to Petite Choses a few minutes late (the show I was at just before it started and ended a little behind schedule--occupational hazard of the festival) and was stunned and delighted (as a festival insider) and also somewhat sad (as an audience member) to discover that there was a standing-room-only crowd at Rust Belt Books to see Michele Costa's show. At least one audience member confided later that it was the promise of "small puppet nudity" that had brought her out, but I'm sure she was as blown away as everybody else by this minutely detailed performance set to Satie piano pieces.

I haven't seen Michele's work in years, and this was stunning. Reminded me at points of The Triplets of Belleville--not in any overtly derivative way, just a vaguely similar tone of melancholy and gentle wit, delivered with very few words. (And, hey, it's the French thing.)

My crappy cell phone camera (to say nothing of my ineptitude with it) hasn't done justice to any of the shows I've shot with it thus far, least of all this one, but here's an image anyway, just so you get a tiny little taste:

SHUT UP AND BE HAPPY!

Shut Up and Be Happy has got to be the feel-bad sensation of the festival. I don't want to give too much away, but I think it's safe to say that it's closer to a psychology experiment than a conventional theatrical production. (That's not a dis by any means.) Judged in that way, I can certainly say I learned things about myself, or thought about how I might react in certain situations--

--damn, it's very hard to talk about this thing without being more specific, and I really don't want to do that. Suffice to say I've experienced similar events over the years (I suspect lots of us have the urge to make work like this at one time or another in our lives) and SU&BH is one of the more effective variations on the theme. I just kinda wish it went farther in certain ways (even if, as an audience member, I'm glad it didn't).

ANGEL IN BLACK

I don't know how Matt LaChiusa does it: he's written and directed two shows in the festival, and is directing a third. So far I've only seen Angel in Black, which certainly makes me want to check out the other two. The three-person cast does a nice job balancing menace and humor with manic energy. Interesting use of video, too.

(BTW, if anyone else has comments on this or the other shows I've mentioned here, please add them.)

MC Vendetta

I first saw MC Vendetta during the Kick-Off Party at Nietzsche's on Wednesday night, only I got there late and was mostly in the front part of the bar, so I didn't really hear her spoken-word poetry until the very end of her set. I did hear the great response she was getting from the small but enthusiastic crowd that night. She's fierce and funny and down-to-earth.

Then I checked her out at her first outdoor show on Thursday night, in the "Allen-College Promenade" (aka the parking lot between Holley Farms and the Allen Hardware Cafe). When I arrived there were maybe three people in the vicinity, at least one of whom was under 10. They were hanging out at a distance, not really paying attention at first, but they'd applaud each time she finished a poem. Gradually more and more people started showing up, and it was really exciting.



From the outset of planning the festival, Vendetta had really wanted to perform outside, and when I saw her in action, I totally understood why. It's one thing to do her kind of hiphop rant in the safety of a club (and even there it's not always so safe), but something completely different when it's out on the street, when anyone can walk by and anything can happen. She's a master at going with the flow--interacting with passersby, incorporating them into her spiel, or allowing them to work her into theirs. I felt incredibly inspired watching her, and it seemed like a perfect way to start the festivities. This is what "infringement" is all about.



Friday night there was a little last-minute surprise: thanks to a communication snafu, the Promenade got relocated. (TAKE NOTE: everything originally listed for that parking lot is now taking place in front of the Hardware Cafe, just down the street.) She did a great job of dealing with that situation, and once again a tiny audience built into a larger one.

You still have a few more chances to check her out during the festival; bring some cash and walk home with one of her CDs and/or her stickers. She also does indoor shows from time to time, but the street action is too cool to miss.

Welcome to the blog! Welcome to the inFRINGEment festival!

The Buffalo InFRINGEment Festival is a low-budget, DIY, quick-and-dirty extravaganza. It's about having an idea, and then doing it--maybe not perfectly, maybe not permanently, but getting it out there into the cosmos. Ideas belong to no one and everyone. We owe the festival's very existence to Kurt Schneiderman (who has spent most of the last 6 months or more seeking out people to help organize and carry out this thing), but he got the idea from folks in Montreal, and they were playing off the existing "Fringe Festival" idea, and that started in response to another festival, and so on, and so on.

The idea for this blog came to me when I was watching one of the 6 Infringement shows I've seen in the last 3 days and trying to think of ways to help spread the word about some of the great stuff I was watching. (I later found out that other foks had the same idea for a blog--no surprise!) All of us who have been involved in organizing the festival realize how overwhelming this thing is: there are over 125 individual performances in 11 days, so how the hell is anyone supposed to decide which ones they're going to see? And where can you tell other people what you think about what you see?

So this is a place where you can share words (and images) of shows you've seen, ask questions about the ones you haven't, or maybe plug one you're involved in. I'll start the ball rolling, but hopefully other voices (and photographers) will join in soon. Probably the whole thing will disappear shortly after the festival ends.

There's one pain-in-the-ass aspect of using Blogger, which is that (as far as I can tell) you have to be invited to become a member of the blog in order to post on it. (You can add comments to any existing post without being a member of anything just by clicking on the word "comments" at the bottom of the post, but you can't start a new post unless you get the invite.) So all you have to do is send an e-mail to ronehmke@hotmail.com, and I'll send you the invite. Then post away!