Fringe Festival: 100% Philadelphia

It’s one of many formats used to pose about two hours of rather sensitive questions to a group of 105 carefully selected people who represent Philadelphia as a whole, by demographics like sex, age, gender identity or expression, race, and marital status. (The extra five people represent uncharted demographics like illegal immigrants or people who are homeless.)

The 2014 “masthead”

At a summer press event, FringeArts president Nick Stuccio called 100% Philadelphia, from a Berlin-based theater-making trio known as Rimini Protokoll (Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, and Daniel Wetzel), the “masthead” of the 2014 Presented Fringe. The line out the door at the opening of the pay-what-you-wish two-night run at the Temple Performing Arts Center reflected that buzz (many people had to subside anxiously to a waiting list for seats) — or maybe all the people in the cast invited their friends and family.

The premise of 100% Philadelphia (a concept that has come to 24 other cities including Vienna, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Zurich, and Tokyo) is that we can reflect our city and ourselves by revealing the roots, experiences, and opinions of our fellow citizens, but in reality, its participants raise questions as quickly as they answer them.

Casting contradictions

Waiting for the show to start, I quickly got absorbed by a fat little booklet featuring photos and biographical info on all the cast members, from toddlers to retirees. It’s a charming catalog of personal ironies, from the aspiring lawyer who feels most relaxed by the water but doesn’t know how to swim to the self-professed introvert who is a teacher, activist, and drag and burlesque performer.

Sometimes the contradictions are troubling, like a middle-aged white man who says locals who don’t know about the city’s Civil War history are missing out, but also opines that “Afro-American organizations” made sense in the 1800s but don’t have a reason to exist today. Or the young divorcee who says she would join a protest against domestic violence because “it’s relevant to my life and I feel strongly about it,” but who also insists she’s “not a feminist.”

A lot of the youngsters’ opinions draw a smile, like the West Philly 14-year-old who loves the vibe on South Street but warns “I’m not into hipsters,” or the Northeast Philly 16-year-old who thinks he’d like to leave Philadelphia one day, but “the farthest I’d probably go would be Cheltenham or Abington.”

Adoption, homelessness, pot, hoagies

The cast included Philadelphians born all over the world, including natives of Vietnam, Iraq, Greece, Russia, the Dominican Republic, and more. They each brought one object onstage that represents them: One little boy had a folding chair because he “likes to sit down” (drawing an appreciative whoop from the audience), while others had bikes or family heirlooms or hoagies.

The show opened with all participants (or, in the case of very young children, their parents) introducing themselves in a few sentences and retiring to the growing multicolored crowd on risers at the back of the stage. A light glared off the glass of a framed image one woman carried, a boy’s basketball thumped away, a tinfoil hat winked, moms bounced fussy babies.

In a variety of formats, including color-coded cards, stepping into a lighted area, or surrounding signs that said “me” or “not me,” the cast gave real-time en masse answers to questions like “who fears that they will never be able to afford a house in Philadelphia?,” “Who has been homeless?,” who thinks same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children, and who thinks pot ought to be legal (the rush to the “me” sign here happened so fast that a mom of two-year-old twins looked desperate to be left holding the “not me” sign, until one of just a few marijuana opponents rescued her, and she dashed to the other side).

No script; lights out

Many cast members also got a chance to give an “unscripted” pronouncement into the mic. One man, who’s closing on his family’s new home in “Port Fishington,” said that he’s got all the privilege: He’s a middle-income, white, male, straight, Christian dude. Did it sting when a kid in his new neighborhood shouted “Go home, yuppie!” at him in the street? Will he join the group who thinks gentrification is a problem?

The audience also got to ask a few questions. I was surprised to learn, according to this sample at least, that Philly has more Republicans than vegetarians.

With the lights out, the cast used flashlights to create anonymous, disturbingly large constellations in the live feed from an overhead camera. They were answering questions nobody wants to address in public, like whether they’ve bullied anyone in the workplace, benefited from illegal labor, or driven while drunk.

Two other questions in the dark were two sides of the same coin, one apparently as stigmatizing as the other: Does anyone have a crush on another cast member? Does anyone dislike another cast member? Yes and yes, plenty.

Race, gender, life, and death

But I was most interested in the real-life contradictions on stage. One theme of the show is government progress in allowing a new “mixed-race” option on Census forms, and the question of how government forms should handle trans or gender-nonconforming people who may not want to simply check “male” or “female” on surveys and IDs.

On the other hand, a huge majority of participants indicated that they think the government knows too much about us. So which is it? Is the government too nosy, or is there more it needs to know about our fundamental selves?

In another arresting irony, a large majority of the cast said they’re against the death penalty — but almost all of them also said they would kill to defend their family.

The show, while it ran too long, was a marvel of fluid group choreography and provocative ideas. By the end, the audience acknowledged with a show of hands that almost all of us did, indeed, feel represented by at least one person on the stage.