mini-review-bits

there was a theatre festival.

months and months back, colleague Jen was practically giving away tickets to it. I took two of them off her hands.

there were three shows, three venues, scheduled across the evenings of Thursday Friday Saturday, the week before last.

I went Thursday night to "The Cardinals" by a theatre troupe called Stan's Cafe. Here is a semi-trippy trailer for the show. here is a review in The New York Times.

for 89% of this performance, I did not know what to think about it. but then the ending had all these resonant, echoey, pointed strings running through it and connecting to everywhere, so I decided I liked it despite it's very slow, very strange approach.

on Saturday, I walked through a light, slushy snow to Carnahan Hall for the other third of these two-out-of-three shows I'd picked to see. this one was called "No Place to Go." Ethan Lipton and his Orchestra were the performers. they have a quirky little website. there is also a review over here in The New York Times. they write some good reviews, don't they? did you notice, the 2012 Times looks different from the 2014 Times? I wonder why that is.

"No Place to Go" was much more fun. we have the introspective journey of an "information refiner" who suddenly has to move far away or give up his job. we have jazzy music and witty monologue.

this is one of the songs from the show. you can find the whole performance in video online if you look, but the versions I came across did not match the smooth and snappy live experience I enjoyed last week. on stage, under colored lights, it felt much more polished and comfortable and clean, to me, than the videos of performances from two or three years back.

or maybe the venue had something to do with it?

the work of the semester crowds and nags, but I will keep blogging. I want to blog more art. and about what I'm reading. and about the weather. and about this poem. don't let me forget.