Art and the Zen of Bowling

Live Arts salon helps artists make new work

BY MOLLY EICHEL
Philadelphia Daily News

THE NAME “Scratch Night,” a monthly salon from the good folks who bring you the Live Arts Festival, is supposed to connote performing art at its beginning stages.

Left to right: myself, PDC Executive Director Wally Zialcita, and my fellow PDC@Plays & Players playwrights-in-residence Brian Grace-Duff and Jeremy Gable at North Bowl in Philadelphia; October, 2011.

But playwright and performer Jeffrey Stanley thinks of the evening in decidedly nonartistic terms. “It’s like playing a scratch game in bowling,” Stanley said.

Fun article in the Philadelphia Daily News about this Thursday’s Scratch Night –

Live Arts salon helps artists make new work

BY MOLLY EICHEL
Philadelphia Daily News

THE NAME “Scratch Night,” a monthly salon from the good folks who bring you the Live Arts Festival, is supposed to connote performing art at its beginning stages.

Left to right: myself, PDC Executive Director Wally Zialcita, and my fellow PDC@Plays & Players playwrights-in-residence Brian Grace-Duff and Jeremy Gable at North Bowl in Philadelphia; October, 2011.

But playwright and performer Jeffrey Stanley thinks of the evening in decidedly nonartistic terms. “It’s like playing a scratch game in bowling,” Stanley said. “It’s a game that doesn’t really count. There’s a safety net and it’s a little off the record.”

Scratch Night is an evolution of Live Arts’ 2nd Thursdays, a similarly minded evening of workshopping the arts during which performers shared selections of in-progress pieces. Scratch Nights will also take place on the second Thursday of the month through May, but the new iteration is meant to engage the audience on a deeper level. “A lot of people have trouble understanding and digesting experimental work. Getting people to talk can be a challenge,” said Craig Peterson, director of the Live Arts Brewery (LAB) and Philly Fringe. “People don’t want to sound stupid, but we want to engage them in ways that are less threatening and more fun.”

Peterson said it’s important for the audience to get a glimpse into the creative process. “These things don’t just come fully formed in [the festival],” he said.

At Thursday’s inaugural Scratch Night, Stanley and playwright/actor Justin Jain will perform their separate works, both of which are CONT’D>> at philly.com

 

Philly Daily News commands thee to Beautiful Zion

At the Fringe Festival, there are edgy venues that grip an audience

by Molly Eichel

“ONE OF THE most exciting aspects of the Fringe Festival — the unjuried, anything-goes companion to the Live Arts Festival — is when it draws audiences to places they’ve never been before and might never have a chance to go again, whether it’s a room in an unknown mansion or in the depths of a possibly haunted grotto.

The Blue Grotto

After the demise of a close relative who drank himself to death, Jeffrey Stanley became obsessed with communicating with the dead through Ouija boards.

Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead is a “real dark comedy” about the years he spent trying to talk to the other side. But how could all that eeriness (and humor) be conveyed in a traditional theater space? So the New York expat looked for a stage appropriate for the macabre elements of his decidedly funny show. He found the Blue Grotto in West Philly’s Community Education Center. It’s decked out in thousands of blue lights on light fixtures by artist Randy Dalton. Stanley equates it to a mad scientist’s laboratory. ‘It’s visually stunning, it’s creepy as hell, it’s in the cellar of an old building and it might be haunted,’ Stanley said, ticking off the reasons that the Blue Grotto is perfect for his piece.”

The Blue Grotto at the Community Education Center, 3500 Lancaster Ave., 8 p.m. Sept. 7-17, $20.”  Tickets and more info here.

Philly Daily News article cont’d HERE->>