A man's guide to the 2013 Fringe Arts Festival

It's no secret that women buy more 70 percent of all theater tickets sold. This fact has led to a number of conundrums about why Broadway favors plays by (and about) men, why males dominate the boards and artistic directorships of most theater companies, and why men occupy the roster of directors, lighting designers and actors nationwide. (See here, for example.)

But perhaps the most important of these queries— from a man's point of view, at least— asks: "If she's going to buy tickets and drag me along, how can I make sure I enjoy it?"

As that rare man who purchases the bulk of the tickets in his relationships, I offer a "Man's Guide to the 2013 Fringe Arts Festival" to help my less enlightened brethren influence the choices of their female companions. My guidelines reflect diligent scholarly research into the sort of theatrical fare likely to appeal to my weightlifting teammates, my drinking and gambling and hunting buddies, or that dude I got into a bar fight with last summer.

So, obviously, no musicals. No plays about freely expressed or even unrepressed feelings. Nothing vague, and certainly not any intentional lack of clarity designed to "build empathy."

Instead, I chose shows geared toward the lonely, fringe remnant of modern masculinity— plays with solid plots that deal with topics like war, friendship, brotherhood, rivalry, dirty politics, untempered violence, substance abuse and the like. In other words, men behaving like boys acting like animals.

My top picks:

Ajax, the Madness. Men have waged war for millennia, but the ancient Greeks wove their warring ways into poetry. In Ajax, Sophocles portrayed the suicide of one of history's legendary warriors. Now the Greek director Theodoros Terzopoulos has devised a method to infuse a physicality into this play that returns us to our animal natures. Ajax fell on his own sword out of shame at lost honor. If that doesn't resonate with manliness, nothing in this festival does. For details, click here.

The Sea Plays. Here's a combination of two works by Eugene O'Neill, the master of fraternal fighting and alcohol muddled misanthropy. Its elements include drunken quarreling, murderous secrets and men dying during a seafaring adventure set on a real ship (the Gazela) in Philadelphia's Penn's Landing port. Need I say more? For details, click here.

On the Concept of the Face Regarding the Son of God. Christ died to clean up God's mess. Romeo Castellucci's "show about shit" (to paraphrase Guardian critic Michael Billington) brings home the universality of every son's struggle to bear the sins of his father. The religious iconography embedded in the story would make any man question his faith and duty. For details, click here.

Antihero. The creators of the 2011 Fringe hit Heavy Metal Dance Fag (set in South Philly) return with this tale of one man's war against that most dreaded of government beasts: Philadelphia's Parking Authority. Any Philadelphian who drives a car, regardless of gender, has dreamed when those peripatetic parasites get their comeuppance— and if we can only realize it vicariously in theater, then so be it. For details, click here.

Ballad of Joe Hill. The itinerant farmhand Joe Hill turned to radical union activism in the early 20th Century, penning inflammatory folk songs and penciling political cartoons until he was framed and executed for a murder that history says he didn't commit. Yes, you'll have to sit through Hill's songs. But if you're man enough to tolerate the blue-collar mobs at the Mummer's Parade, you can handle it. Added macho bonus: You'll have an excuse to set foot inside Eastern State Penitentiary, the prison that once housed Al Capone. For details, click here.

Honorable Mention

The Playdaters. Men supposedly hold the upper hand in dating, and in Matchbox Theatre Project's The Playdaters they abuse that power with alacrity. Two roommates use the anonymity of a dating website to play juvenile pranks on a series of unsuspecting women. Sounds like Broadway's reigning misogynist, Neil LaBute, but it's delivered with less malice and more humor. For details,click here.

LEO. No matter what else he thinks about dancers, any man would have to admit that Fred Astaire was a badass. In LEO, Y2D Productions draws inspiration from Astaire's "ceiling walks" in Royal Wedding to present a one-man gravity defying spectacle of dance and acrobatics. For details, click here.