Get your tickets HERE

Cabaret CooCoo LineUp___________________________________________________

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Be sure to cast your vote for Cabaret CooCoo at capitalfringe.theatremania.com ______________________________________

FarFar Oasis

“Where the warm winds of the East become the hot air of the West”

farfar42

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:

TheatreDC.com

Abyssal Plain blog

DC Theatre Scene

VoixDeVille
Saturday March 28th
Doors at 7:30, Show starts at 8

in the INDIGO ROOM

ATLAS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
1333 H St NE, Washington DC

Come experience VoixDeVille, the city’s newest and snazziest Variety show, slurp on a Cosmo and enjoy an evening of performances by the some of the areas most talented musicians, magicians, cabaret acts, clowns, and characters.
Including the amazing Diz and Izzy Aster (Sabrina Mandell and Mark Jaster of Happenstance Theater) who bring their baggage to the stage in harmonies from Between-the-Wars and cheery songs of the Great Depression.
Tickets only $5
To purchase click HERE
or call the box office at 202-399-7993

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

Presented as part of the Capital Fringe Festival Training Factory.

Cost $85

Monday night sessions (Nov. 17 & 24) 6:30 – 9:30pm –

REGISTER FOR MONDAYS

OR

Tuesday sessions (Nov. 18 & 25) 6:30 – 9:30pm –

REGISTER FOR TUESDAYS

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!

A fool named O and La La 2008 - Photo by Pete Morton

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

Maryland Renaissance Festival

and don’t forget about MANIFESTO! at the NY Clown Theatre Festival

coming up September 9, 10, 11 – more info below…

Photo by Mark Silva

MANIFESTO!
Performed by Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, Maia DeSanti,
Scott Burgess, Matthew Pauli, Emma Jaster
Presented as part of the 2008 NY Clown Theatre Festival.

Three clowns, two visionaries, and a noise-maker walk into a bar. THIS IS NOT A JOKE! . . . Is it?
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
Beware of Forgeries! Text is from ACTUAL Manifestos.
MANIFESTO! is DADA! Clown! HAHA! haha.

@ 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

Tickets $15 Buy them HERE or by calling 1.866.811.4111
or they are also available at the venue door.
Please tell everyone you know in New York!
Thanks ever so much for all your support and donations.

CLICK HERE to read it and click here to buy your tickets to the show!

MANIFESTO!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!”