WTF Philly Fringe

Don’t deny it. Oh, you like to think of yourself as an avid and informed arts patron of cultured yet eclectic tastes. But when you try to make sense of a schedule of well over 100 Philly Fringe shows happening in just 17 days from Camden to Manayunk, there are always going to be a healthy handful in the catalog that, for some reason, leave you shaking your head.

This year, let’s honor the flagrant, ballsy weirdness, the public navel-gazing, the show titles and descriptions that make you think, oh, you artists.

How about one dude performing a monologue about his own life in seven parts (yes, seven), to the musical backdrop of a single bass guitar? Dying to hear more? Ironically, it’s called The Story of You ($15): “I am full pitch, full blast drifting open.” You don’t say.

Monologist Brian Kelly explains that performing scenes from his past “changes them from narrative to experience, and for me, the experience is a connection with the audience and with myself.”

Kelly will commune with you for one night only at Kensington’s Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia on September 6.

Then there are those shows that might be the essence of a great Fringe experience or the pretentious bane of performance festivals everywhere. Will you take the leap from a title alone? MM2 Modern Dance Company presents BREATH ($15) at Ruba Club, 416 Green Street, Philadelphia on September 7.

Hey, another seven-part exploration. This time, it’s, well, breath: “the bridge which connects consciousness to nature and life itself.” (When there are so many other things you can do besides just breathe, do we really want to devote a whole hour to this?)

“Why do you do the Festival? What does the Festival mean to you?” FringeArts asks MM2 Modern Dance Company in the press Q&A.

“Honestly, so the dancers can list it on their resume. There was a time when it had other meaning but not now,” they answer.

Thank you for your candor.

Some titles demand that you at least read a little further, because…what? Like Katrina Atkin’s aqua.thermal vs. The Selfie ($15). Make of the description what you will. What does “post-apocalyptica” mean? Can we imagine a “post-selfie world”? Find out at HyLo Labs, 242 North 3rd Street, Philadelphia, on September 11 and 12.

Continue to get out of your own head and into someone else’s with Closure ($10), from Aleksandra Berczynski and MB Grupa Realizacji. It’s the artist’s “latest mono-drama based upon the modern-day conflicts found in her reality,” a search for “answers past all the existential questioning,” and it costs only 50 cents per minute. Hurry to PII Gallery, 242 Race Street, Philadelphia, September 4 through 10.

And then there are the shows that just make you jealous because you could never have dreamed up a title like that. Take Grace Mi-He Lee and Leslie Elkins’s What Narwhals Talk About When They Talk About Love ($5). What else do you need to know? It’s happening in a South Philly home at 731 Montrose Street on September 10 and 17, you’ll watch from the couch, and it’s a “karaoke cabaret/minimalist ballet/piercing talk show.”

Finally, let’s give an honorable mention to the people who, instead of thinking desperately about how to distinguish themselves in this total glut of theater offerings, just say “fuck it” and give the public and the press as little information as humanly possible.

So consider Other Case Notes Ensemble’s (re)visions ($12): “A presentation of new and revised work.” If you’re as overwhelmed by such raw descriptive power as we are, head to Mascher Space Co-Op at 155 Cecil B. Moore Avenue, Philadelphia on September 19 and 20.

Whether these options have informed your must-see list or the stuff you can cross off the roster now, we hope you enjoyed reading. For the full list of Philly Fringe shows, running September 5 through 21, click here.

If you need a little more in the way of recommendations, check out our roundups of this year’s most dangerously sexy, interactive, Shakespearean, and Presented shows.