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Vaudevillian Craziness

Took my kids to see Wizbang: Variety Circus Mayhem at Mahalls: Twenty Lanes in Lakewood on Saturday. It. Was. Awesome.

The organizers for Wizbang are the great duo of Pinch and Squeal, whom I’ve seen in any number of locations, with their enormously energetic creations of vaudeville, burlesque, humor, and magic. Here, the production was lifted by an entourage of similarly-minded artists who were amazing as much for their individual talents and the level of energy they maintained throughout their performance.

For the kids, Wizbang was just about as stimulating at you’d want a theatrical experience to be–especially in the conspicuously over-stimulated world in which they exist today. At Wizbang, things were happening everywhere. That is, everywhere you looked there was something to engage the eye and interest: costumes, lights, balloons, exceptional performance. On the stage there was a fantastic mix of sexual appeal, fear, glory of color and execution of feats, and the downright creepy. The show is a glorious vaudevillian circus with the promise of great joy and the threat of death that all children desire: magic, juggling, jump-roping, hoola-hooping, egg-cracking, dancing, romping, clowning.

And yes, later at night, there is an Adult version.

When it comes around again, Wizbang is a must see.

My good friend Peter Roth did something quite exceptional yesterday, well, he had probably been working on it and thinking about it for a bit longer, nevertheless, yesterday evening he convened the first meeting of the Manhattan Project.

By his own description:

Between 1942 and 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer gathered the most brilliant minds of the age at Los Alamos, New Mexico to create something magnificent and terrifying. The Manhattan Project – Cleveland Lab seeks to do the same for the Cleveland stage.

Based on the Theatre Lab model taught at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and inspired by The Brooklyn Generator in New York, The Manhattan Project wants to introduce Cleveland actors and playwrights to each other by organizing a monthly production of brand new 10-minute plays.

Participating artists will meet early in the month and will be broken into teams, each with one playwright. The playwright will then be given a writing prompt to write a new 10-minute play based on the prompt and including all the team’s actors. The rest of the evening the team members will get to know each other and get a feel for each other’s skills and voices.

The teams will reconvene later in the month to perform these plays for each other.

These 10-minute plays are not an end in themselves. Through these small collaborations we hope to build relationships between the two most vulnerable artists in theatre; the actors who put themselves on stage and the playwrights who pour themselves onto the page. Perhaps these 10-minute plays will grow into longer works or maybe these collaborations will become partnerships on larger projects.

I am pleased that Peter invited me and that I am one of six inaugural writers. Upwards of twenty people showed up last night and all were enthusiastic. This is an exciting project and will only grow with time.

If you want to participate, please RSVP at TrinityCrater@gmail.com.

The first performance will be Monday, May 6, at 8:00pm at Mahall’s on Madison Avenue, which is a kick-ass venue with a good beer selection.

Rock-on, Peter!