Opening Week of 2010 Philly Live Arts Fest Kicks off with 8 World & U.S. Premieres

By: Aug. 19, 2010
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The 14th annual Philadelphia Live Arts Festival is just two weeks away. The 16-day Festival, running September 3 - 18, 2010, kicks off opening week with 8 World and U.S. premieres and 3 Philadelphia premieres, at venues throughout the city. The Live Arts Festival, which runs in conjunction with the Philly Fringe, features ambitious productions exploring dance, theater, music, performance art and more.

Opening weekend welcomes South Philly-based theater artist Charlotte Ford in the World premiere of CHICKEN, an expressionistic clown play that magnifies our most intimate fears into coliseum-sized spectacles. The production runs Sept. 3 - 6 at the Live Arts Studio (919 N 5th St). Obie Award-winning New Paradise Laboratories (FATEBOOK, 2009) and the critically acclaimed New York-based company The Riot Group (Hearts of Man, 2009) join forces for the U.S. premiere of FREEDOM CLUB, a theatricAl Hallucination on national themes where past and future collide. Previews begin Sept. 1 - 2, opening night is Sept. 3 and the production runs through Sept. 11 at the Arts Bank at The University of the Arts (601 S Broad St).

Visiting artists include the Gare St Lazare Players of Ireland who will bring the Philadelphia debut of First Love by Samuel Beckett to the Festival, Sept. 3 - 5 at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, home of Philadelphia Theatre Co. (480 S Broad St). Irish-born actor Conor Lovett - who has earned an international reputation as the world's foremost Beckett interpreter - presents a devastatingly funny, tragic, and vicious one-man performance of this early novella from the Nobel Prize-winning playwright.

Rounding out Friday's opening night line-up, the Live Arts Festival presents two World premieres celebrating the very best of Philadelphia's dance talent. Renowned choreographer BrIan Sanders returns to the Festival with Sanctuary, a new work exploring ritual and mistaken assumptions, performed along a 120 foot long wall with wild illusion and intense movement, at Theater East at The Hub (626 N 5th Street) from Sept. 3 - 18.

Next door at Theater West at The Hub from Sept. 3 - 18, Nichole Canuso Dance Company offers TAKES, a genre-bending exploration of dance, video installation, and film exploring the full intensity of how remembered moments live within us, featuring Dito Van Reigersberg of Pig Iron Theatre Company. By day, audiences can also sign up for the TAKES Daytime Installation, a free 15 minute slot for two to visit the performance space and create their own short duet within the piece's innovative space.

On Saturday, September 4th, the Obie Award-winning Pig Iron Theatre Company (Welcome to Yuba City, 2009 and Isabella, 2007) presents the pioneering World premiere of Cankerblossom, the dark fairytale for kids aged 9 to 90 at Christ Church Neighborhood House (20 N American St; previews run Sept. 1 - 3, show closes Sept. 18).

Later in opening week, two adventurous Philadelphia premieres will take the Live Arts stage. Simultaneously a foreign film, theater play, epic history and telenovela, Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental (Flamingo Winnebago, 2007 and Microworlds Part #1, 2009) presents ¡EL CONQUISTADOR!, a visually stunning one-man tour de force starring Thaddeus Phillips, Sept. 8 - 11 at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre (480 S Broad Street). An inventive contribution to Philadelphia's recent theatrical obsession with Shakespeare, the Obie Award-winning, New York-based Nature Theater of Oklahoma offers the ingenious and hilarious exploration of skewed memory with Romeo and Juliet, Sept. 8 - 11 at Plays and Players Theater (1714 Delancey Place). Through the collected recollections of regular people, this imaginative retelling goes wildly off course in a production that Charles Isherwood of The New York Times calls a "flat-out hilarious riff on that revered classic."

The dance-sampler series 8 will kick off with Megan Mazarick's Neon Gothic and Meg Foley's Match vs. Match, Sept. 7 - 8 at the Live Arts Studio (919 N 5th St). The emerging artist showcase will present eight rising contemporary choreographers from the Philadelphia region who have been commissioned by Live Arts to create eight major new works, over the course of the Festival run.

From dusk to dawn Sept. 4 - 17, a live outdoor mural painting project will unfold over two weeks of the Festival in Cosmic Terrarium/ Motion Painting Project. Helmed by Sean Stoops and the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the mural will be located in Northern Liberties at 631 N 5th St (at Fairmount, across from the Festival Box Office). The project will culminate in a screening of a stop-action film created from footage of the project, Sept. 18 at International House Philly's Ibrahim Theater (3701 Chestnut St).

Each night of the Festival will end at The Festival Bar, newly located at the SW corner of Spring Garden and Columbus Boulevard (formerly Club Egypt). Run by publican Fergus Carey (of Fergie's Pub, Monk's and more), the Festival Bar serves as a versatile after-hours space for Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe goers to interact with artists, socialize with one another, grab a cocktail and enjoy music and more at the end of each Festival day. This year, the bar will transform from club mode on the weekends to a cabaret, movie theater and stage during the week. The Festival Bar offers free admission, is 21+ and cash only. Visit the Festival website for the latest schedule of artists, DJs and special events at www.livearts-fringe.org/festival-bar.cfm.

PROGRAM INFO/TICKETS

The Philadelphia Live Arts and Philly Fringe Festival runs from September 3 - 18, 2010. Tickets for most shows cost between $10 and $30. Some shows are free. Ticket buyers who purchase tickets to multiple shows can save 20% when they buy tickets to 2 or more shows. Students and Festival goers 25 and younger pay $15 for Live Arts Festival tickets and receive $5 off Philly Fringe tickets which are priced above $10.

Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe tickets are available for online purchase at www.livearts-fringe.org, or after August 23 for phone and walk-up sales at the Box Office at (215) 413-1318 located at the Hub, SW corner of 5th + Fairmount in Northern Liberties. The Festival Guide, which includes descriptions of each performance, in addition to dates, times, locations, and other Festival information, is widely available throughout the city.

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival features performances by renowned contemporary performing artists from the U.S. and around the world who are selected and invited to the Festival by Producing Director, Nick Stuccio. The Philly Fringe is an unfiltered Festival, where new and established artists of all kinds present their own work, free of a selection process. Together, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe establish Philadelphia as a city bursting with wild creativity, bringing audiences sixteen days of the most stimulating, provocative new art being created in Philadelphia, across the U.S., and around the world.

PNC Arts Alive is the 2010 Presenting Sponsor of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe.



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