Circus, suicide, tubas, and more: My Fringe picks for 2016

Any arts writer is going to be run ragged catching and covering as many shows as she can, but at the heart of everything there’s always a batch of shows that catch my personal interest. These are the shows I’d be getting tickets to regardless of my job.

So what I am seeing this year? Let’s break it down into a few categories everyone can probably relate to.

That obligatory show your friend is doing

There’s always some weird thing someone you know got a wild hair to mount, probably in a small living room somewhere in a neighborhood that’s hard to get to and/or has very little parking available.

But you’re not going to miss it.

I’m lucky, because my friend and former co-worker Nick Gillette, a co-founder of Almanac Dance Circus Theatre, is in a new creation called Exile 2588. (We met when we were tour guides at Eastern State Penitentiary.)

Almanac’s aesthetically and emotionally engrossing symbiotic physical explorations are unique group-devised performances that will have you reminding yourself to breathe. Featuring live original music from Chickabiddy, this Fringe offering is “an acrobatic folk-music space epic adventure of the story of Io set 572 years in the future.”

Exile 2588 ($20) will run at the Painted Bride, 230 Vine Street, September 9-23.

That show that digs up something from your past

In Take Comfort in Falling Forever, Andrew Heller, writing and directing for the first time, “presents an examination of humanity’s subjectivity to salvation in the form of one man.”

Why do I care?

Maybe it has something to do with attending chapel five days per week, plus religion classes, plus church on Sundays, every week until I graduated high school. I’d like to think that that much straight-faced Our Father who art in heaven would leave anyone wondering about the premise Heller hints at.

Take Comfort in Falling Forever ($10) is coming to the Playground at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, on September 15 at 8pm.

I have to see this for myself

Granted, the festival is full of shows that meet this requirement, but my personal choice this year is The Greatest Tuba Cover Band You’ve Ever Seen. Granted, it’s not like I’ve seen a whole lot of tuba cover band shows to compare this to, but I want to check it out.

Tubular, “the world’s preeminent tuba cover band,” is a group of five musicians hailing from around the Mid-Atlantic region. The show promises covers of Daft Punk, Stevie Wonder, Britney Spears, and more “on incredibly cumbersome instruments,” and encourages booty-shaking.

Tubular presents The Greatest Tuba Cover Band You’ve Ever Seen ($10) at Franky Bradley’s, 1320 Chancellor Street, on September 23 at 8pm.

Can’t wait to see it again

While the Fringe is always bursting with premieres, it’s fun to find new iterations of work you’ve enjoyed before.

Last year, I spoke with artist Candy Chang about a massive University City installation of her signature interactive art piece, whose template she has shared across the globe: chalkboard walls in public locations prompting passersby to fill in the blank: “Before I die I want to….” The latest version of “Before I Die...” in Philly is Tongue & Groove Spontaneous Theater’s Before I Die…

Audiences will write anonymous responses to inspire the improv performers. And there’s a “Before I Die…” chalkboard in Fishtown September 5-25 at Front Street Café and Beer Garden.

Tongue & Groove Spontaneous Theater’s Before I Die… ($18) is coming to the Playground at the Adrienne September 9-24.

Then there’s Spherus, from Cirque du Soleil alum and “Innovative Juggler” Greg Kennedy. I never miss a new incarnation of this former engineer’s breathtaking juggling acts, which are worlds unto themselves. This year’s show includes aerial dancers and video-projection effects.

Greg Kennedy’s Spherus ($20) is coming to Germantown’s Philadelphia School of Circus Arts, 5904 Greene Street, from September 9-25.

And the production I’m probably looking forward to most this year is César Alvarez’s The Elementary Spacetime Show, getting its official world premiere in partnership with UArts as part of the Curated Fringe, after its 2015 workshop debut in the inaugural UArts Polyphone Festival. In short, a teenager attempts suicide and learns that she must earn her death by winning an otherworldly game show that becomes “the search of why to exist when you no longer want to.” The show has guts, brains, heart, and a very non-traditional roster of great original songs.

César Alvarez’s The Elementary Spacetime Show ($15-$29) is coming to the Arts Bank at Broad and South from September 10-24.

What are you seeing this year?