Out of the Box
Nov. 29th, 2011 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast night I ushered for ARTiculation's program Out of the Box, five acts trying to win.
The rules: five judges from the audience rated each act from 1 to 10 (decimals encouraged :-) based on two criteria, entertainment value and how well it evoked the theme "no place like home." The audience was encouraged to boo or yay depending on what they thought of the judges' choices.
Before the competition, ARTiculation did a great spoken-word piece on living in Boston, touching on race issues, among others.
The competitors (in performance order):
The winner was Case Closed. I thought it was reasonable, and I definitely want to go to another evening like this, pitting different kinds of performances against each other in competition about a theme.
The rules: five judges from the audience rated each act from 1 to 10 (decimals encouraged :-) based on two criteria, entertainment value and how well it evoked the theme "no place like home." The audience was encouraged to boo or yay depending on what they thought of the judges' choices.
Before the competition, ARTiculation did a great spoken-word piece on living in Boston, touching on race issues, among others.
The competitors (in performance order):
- E.O.T. was a rap duo. I liked the music, and was impressed with how quickly one of the guys was able to et words out of his mouth, but I couldn't always distinguish what the words were. The baby in the front row loved it, though, rocking back and forth to the beat.
- Daniel Forland was a not-quite-mime act, in that he used sounds to call his cat, though not words, and his props were, for the most part, real ones. Maybe I should call it more of a non-talking clown act. There was some impressive physical comedy involving too many cardboard blocks, and some other sillinesses before a very flat (stuffed) cat was fetched out of a box. So much laughter....
- Almost was a short play about two sisters through the years as their relationship evolved and changed, and not becoming closer. I liked how it wasn't chronological, and the actors managed quick costume variations to indicate their relative ages.
- Case Closed was.... well, it felt a bit hard to classify. It was definitely dance, but involved spoken word as well, some of it pre-recorded. Most of the dances were poppers, though some also had some classical ballet moves. The music and spoken words they were dancing to were all teens' stories from challenging/broken homes. It was intense, and the dance impressive.
- Friends of Gertrude did a short play about a pugnacious drunk guy in a bar to watch the Superbowl with his girlfriend; there was also a musician who had to keep on being told to wait for halftime, despite having a fan in the bar who wanted to hear "the Facebook song" again ("Be my friend on the Facebook, follow me on Twitter, connect with me on LinkedIn, who the hell uses MySpace?" of something to that effect). The drunk guy got tossed out, but kept coming back, to pay the bill, to get the forgotten shirt, to call a cab, to use the bathroom or the ATM.... and it was hysterical how he and the owner yelled at each other, except when being courteous about each request.
The winner was Case Closed. I thought it was reasonable, and I definitely want to go to another evening like this, pitting different kinds of performances against each other in competition about a theme.