Cabaret CooCoo at the 2009 Capital Fringe
July 1, 2009
Get your tickets HERE
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Be sure to cast your vote for Cabaret CooCoo at capitalfringe.theatremania.com ______________________________________
FarFar Oasis NOW RUNNING! One more weekend April 23 – 26
April 20, 2009
FarFar Oasis
“Where the warm winds of the East become the hot air of the West”
In the early 20th Century, Europeans and Americans indulged romantic notions of the Middle Eastern Desert in popular culture: Rudolph Valentino’s The Sheik was an international sensation, spawning a host of imitators and the hit song, “The Sheik of Araby”; R.J. Reynolds used the long-standing allure of the desert and pyramids to sell Camel Cigarettes, while Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark actually went exploring and mapping the region, writing for a ravenously fascinated public. FarFar Oasis takes as its point of departure this rich cultural phenomenon, contrasting the era’s charmed perceptions with the reality they missed, in a pastiche of poetry, image and song. It is the companion piece to our original theatrical scrapbook, Low Tide Hotel and will feature Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, Scott Sedar and Tina Chancey.
It will run at the Round House Theatre in Silver Spring from April 16th – 26th, 2009. For Tickets click HERE
Reviews:
Plunkett and Tremolo at Wolftrap
March 26, 2009
Plunkett and Tremolo
Tuesday, July 14 - Saturday, July 18 at 10 am
Enjoy a picnic in the meadow between performances at Wolf Trap’s Children’s Theatre-in-the-Woods. Tickets may be purchased for a single performance for $8 or for both the 10 am and 11:15 am performances for only $2 more.
The incomparable Mark Jaster returns to Wolf Trap and this time he’s got fellow entertainer Sabrina Mandell with him creating all sorts of trouble. As star of the show, Tremolo is full of spectacular skill, knock-about comedy, and classic physical antics but Plunkett is determined to upstage him! Hilarity ensues as these two mute fools try to prove who is who.
For Tickets and Info Click HERE
WORKSHOP: Text? Assembly Required! Process by Happenstance
October 16, 2008
Presented as part of the Capital Fringe Festival Training Factory.
Cost $85
Monday night sessions (Nov. 17 & 24) 6:30 – 9:30pm –
OR
Tuesday sessions (Nov. 18 & 25) 6:30 – 9:30pm –
We have created three successful productions for the Capital Fringe Festival: Prufbox, Low Tide Hotel, and Manifesto!, all of which have enjoyed further lives at venues such as the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, NY Clown Festival, The Peabody Essex Museum, and Round House Theater. The team of Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell have developed these shows through a collaborative process that treats text fragments with visual imagery, character, clown, puppetry and physical expression.
In a pair of workshops we will take text fragments and explore a range of possible treatments. In the first meeting we will provide the source material, and stimulate its creative exploration and presentation in a small group format. In the second, material brought in by the participants will provide the points of departure, allowing guided collaborative inquiry and the experience of a variety of approaches. In both meetings, supportive, interactive, creative play will set the tone.
This Training Factory Event will run on two consecutive weeks, with a Monday class and Tuesday class for your scheduling convenience. That’s six great hours with Happenstance Theater for only $85!
Workshops will be at FORT FRINGE – 607 New York Ave. NW, Washington DC 20001
We’ll see you at the Fort!
Come see us at the Maryland Renaissance Festival
August 26, 2008
4 shows a day on the Lyric Stage
10:30am, 12:30pm, 2:30pm and 4:00pm
Every Saturday and Sunday and Labor Day Monday
August 23rd – October 19th
Family-friendly physical antics and classic knock-about comedy. A Fool Named “O” has endeared himself to Festival audiences for over 20 years. “O” and his partner, “LaLa” introduce new material again this year as they have since 2005. Impossible feats compete for laughs.
For tickets and more information visit the
and don’t forget about MANIFESTO! at the NY Clown Theatre Festival
coming up September 9, 10, 11 – more info below…
This is the most exciting news in ages! We are off to the Big Apple! Well, Brooklyn…
August 10, 2008
The DC City Paper says “These merry pranksters get it!…glorious nuggets of nonsense…a delightful romp through the surreal…an extra-sensory extravaganza…it is belly-laugh humor“.The Washington Post called it “…an ingeniously oddball deconstruction …brash…seductive…Futurism and dadaism pulsed with revolutionary zeal“
@ THE BRICK THEATER – 575 Metropolitan Avenue – Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
(Between Union Ave. and Lorimer St.)
Tuesday 9/9 – 8:30pm
Wednesday 9/10 – 7pm
Thursday 9/11 – 9pm
CLICK HERE to read it and click here to buy your tickets to the show!
Our 2008 Capital Fringe Show Announcement … MANIFESTO!
June 26, 2008
ALL BEGINS WITH MANIFESTO!
Art movement. Political movement.
MANIFESTO! is DADA. Clown is HAHA!
Three clowns, two punk visionaries, and an impresario walk into a bar. This is not a joke!
This is a spectacular divertimento to launch the next great movement!
Inspired by the PAST, NOW is the FUTURE.
MANIFESTO! excites everything!
punks: Marcus Kyd and Lise Bruneau
clowns: Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, Maia DeSanti
impresario: Scott Burgess
at THE SOURCE THEATRE – 1835 14th Street NW
Wednesday 7/16/08 6:00pm
Wednesday 7/16/08 10pm
Saturday, 7/19/08, 8pm
Sunday, 7/20/08, 3:30pm
Wednesday 7/23/08 7:30pm
Saturday, 7/26/08, 9:00pm
all tickets $15
tickets 1.866.811.4111 or online by clicking HERE
presented as part of 2008 Capital Fringe Festival July 10-27
unjuried, risk-taking, independent performing arts
Charleston City Paper
Posted on MAY 25, 2008:
LOW TIDE HOTEL
Low Tide Hotel is an hour-long valentine to wonder that you’ll want to see more than once
By Jon Santiago
One fine day, author A. A. Milne tells us, Winnie the Pooh stumped up to the top of the Hundred Acre Wood and found Christopher Robin outside his door, putting on his Big Boots. The moment he saw the Big Boots, “Pooh knew that an Adventure was going to happen,” and “spruced himself up as well as he could, so as to look Ready for Anything.”
Being “Ready for Anything” is much the best frame of mind for checking in to the Low Tide Hotel. This delightful entertainment, staged in cozy quarters at the American Theater, requires only that you recognize Big Boots when you see them. Be prepared to recall a childhood afternoon when a fallen tree branch could become a pirate’s sabre, a wizard’s wand, or Robin Hood’s bow, and an old bed sheet might plump out as the sail of a Viking ship, a masked crusader’s cape, or the walls of your tent in a steaming jungle.
Low Tide Hotel bills itself as a whimsical voyage, but, in fact, it has only one port of call — the furrowed, gray engine of wonder between your ears that likely hasn’t enjoyed this much exercise in ages.
It’s telling that in yet another season of big-budget adventure films and extravagantly staged theatrical works, an entirely satisfying “expotition” can be embarked upon with so little excess baggage. Low Tide’s cast — Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, and Scott Sedar — create dream-like vignettes with nothing more fussy than dialogue, poetry, song, clever sound effects, and costume changes.
As effortlessly as a packet steamer outward bound on a calm ocean, Low Tide bobs through a kaleidoscope of moods. A song follows a monologue. A gleeful synchronized swimming pantomime follows an ensemble sketch. The nautical theme and the golden-age-of-travel feel extends even to the musical numbers: “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” is unforgettably quirky played on a musical saw.
What emerges from all this is an unfettered sense of delight. And a revelation, too.
As long ago as the 19th century, poet William Wordsworth called out our society’s infatuation with whiz-bang technology for creating a sordid world that is “too much with us.” He admonished that “we have given our hearts away” too easily, too willingly, and for too little in return.
But Low Tide is a powerful restorative: put on a different hat, become an entirely new being. It’s a good-natured prod at the explicit, tell-all world we live in. A gentle reminder that we might still conjure up space ships out of cardboard boxes, if we give our battered psyches a little breathing space.
For all its playfulness, Low Tide is a surreal cocktail, like absinthe for the parched imagination of its intended adult audience. But its off-kilter charm is deep and instinctual enough to serve a wider age range. Parents who secretly enjoyed the likes of Pee Wee’s Playhouse alongside their children will instantly recognize the appeal.
In the audience on opening night, a family sat together at the back of the room: Mom, Dad, and three kids under the age of 10. TV kids, game console kids, kids who in short order will be learning the abrupt, abbreviated dialect used for mobile phone texting. In due course, our world will have knocked the natural ease and invention out of them, inducted them into a reality that leaves almost nothing to the imagination. But on this night, for this little while and like everyone else in the theater, they got to tug on the Big Boots and all they could manage to say was, “Oh!”
