Philly Fringe review 2016: Alaina Mabaso's festival wrap-up

For me, there were moments of exhilaration, like the choreography of Jérôme Bel’s Gala or Almanac Dance Circus Theatre’s Exile 2588; the electric cast of Cesar Alvarez’s Elementary Spacetime Show; and the fearless, full-throated dedication of a diverse all-ages adult ensemble from Bethlehem’s Basement Poetry, performing Her: The Female Experience from Birth to Death.

But the festival isn’t over until some shows have made me seriously uncomfortable in one way or another, and 2016 was no different.

1. Feeling like an asshole for eating in restaurants

A theater festival is good business for restaurants, especially when many shows take place inside them, but the trials of restaurant staff also inspired Right Behind, which played to packed houses in the Italian Market at Connie’s Ric Rac bar. Writer/actor Gianna Lozzi penned this series of restaurant scenes from the staff’s point of view, and her brother Freddie directed.

When I attended, the audience, perhaps filled with extended family and disgruntled food service veterans, loved the show. Mounted with the verve of folks who may be jaded by the restaurant biz, but can’t quite believe they just produced a play about it, the show illustrates major “don’ts” for diners, which, the program notes, were culled from dining habits noticed by waitstaff since the “BEGINNING of TIME.”

Anyone from outside the food service industry who attended Right Behind might be forgiven for the impression that eating in a restaurant is an eternal pitched battle between diners and long-suffering staff. Trust this: they spot your arrogant, uppity-with-the-hostess, split-the-check bullshit from down the block and have made a science of (almost) concealing their disdain.

2. Not taking a bite

This year’s story of my eye, from GOATPIG (real-life couple Jenni Messner and Zach Trebino), performed upstairs at Fishtown’s Kung Fu Necktie, took my all-time discomfort prize. Never before have I hoped — mid-show — that everyone in the house was up to date with vaccinations.

It’s hard to describe story of my eye, but it is in part the tale of a relationship woven through performance segments so shocking their grotesqueness almost seems regimented. In one scene, Messner dons a giant cucumber/penis and simulates sex with Trebino, but he holds a veggie grater so her body’s thrusts shred the cucumber into a salad bowl placed on the ground between them. That was one of the tamer bits, sexually and gastronomically speaking.

After the show, Messner explained that she manages a Starbucks in New York and Trebino is a recent MFA grad from the University of Maryland, where a version of this show was his thesis project. She hoped the audience came to feel that by experiencing things they thought would shock them most, they’d be surprised by how un-shocked they actually were.

But when Messner walked into the audience offering her body for ticket-buyers to bite, a request obliged by many, I declined.

3. Tuba spit valves

Upstairs at Franky Bradley’s, Tubular billed itself as “the greatest tuba cover band you’ve ever seen,” with two tubas, two euphoniums, and drums. I’ve never seen or heard of another tuba cover band, so it’s hard to judge. And I’m not convinced tubas (and tuba-players) have the range to play 90 minutes of cover tunes, including Michael Jackson, Lorde, Cake, Tchaikovsky, and Queen. But for the love of all that might possibly be holy, if you’re not accustomed to playing a horn or watching them live up close, turn away, if you can, when the players’ pent-up saliva splashes the stage. Turn away.

4. Ticket-buyers who aren’t arts patrons

I don’t pretend to understand all of Zornitsa Stoyanova’s solo Explicit Female, which “demystifies the truth of the flesh in this mostly nude show.” This involved storytelling, improvised vocalizations, sound and video projections, dancing, and a whole lot of wadded-up Mylar in a room at Vox Populi. Stoyanova is a sincere and courageous performer who uses her voice, face, and body to articulate the challenges of living in the female self.

She confirmed that out of 22 audience members the night I attended, five were women. During the performance, it became evident that several middle-aged male ticket buyers, whom I saw leaving together in a group at the end of the show, hadn’t come out to discover the artist’s message. Clearly, they had perused Fringe materials and chosen a show specifying female nudity.

In an e-mail later, Stoyanova told me she felt surprise and “maybe a little bit of sadness.”

In an intimate, enclosed space three floors up at Vox Populi, with audience members laughing, clapping, and licking their lips at a show that was not a comedy or a burlesque, I got anxious. There’s no security to speak of: Only that tacit pact between actor and audience to perform and witness. Stoyanova said she didn’t feel unsafe, except when she exited her performance through the audience; a man attempted to touch her and made an extremely inappropriate comment.

“Vulnerability in performance is something I strive for and it’s part of who I am as artist,” she said. But yes, “there could have been some creep who followed me around for who knows what reasons. That is a risk I took.”

I wasn’t uncomfortable experiencing Stoyanova’s show. But it was hard to see the show take place among the very same dangers and pressures her performance explores. How many other women performers in the Fringe accept a similar risk, with the box office open to all, their flesh exposed for the touching or biting?