Ringling International Arts Festival Blog in Sarasota, FL. Theater, Dance, Music and Visual Arts

Meow Meow crowd surfing at the Ringling International Arts Festival

I have seen several seasons worth of productions at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts. I have seen musicals, trilogies, Shakespeare, farce and all sorts of other performances. I never thought, however, that I would one day see a stage dive. Last night, at the late-night performance of Beyond Glamour: The Absinthe Tour by Meow Meow, was a night of the unexpected.

She was characterized as a post post-modern showgirl, a talented singer who drags cabaret “kicking and screaming into the 21st Century” (Time Out New York). There was nothing that could be said about Meow Meow which could prepare Sarasota audiences for the performance. Using audience volunteers(or forced recruits) as bizarre stagehands, co-performers and props, the show was dynamite. The highlight was the stage dive that required everyone in center of the orchestra section to carry the singer from the stage to the back of the house and then back again. I imagine that there were quite a few pacemakers working overtime last night.

As for her singing, here is what Susan Rife had to say: “Meow Meow has a spectacular, smoky voice that wraps its way sinuously around cabaret standards…”

How is it that after 38 plays, the Bard of Avon could possibly find the time to write 154 sonnets as well? Maybe he just wrote them for fun. Either way, his sonnets have not received nearly the same amount of attention that his plays have received, but they are still just as well crafted and just as lyrical.

In Love Is My Sin, a theatrical reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the internationally acclaimed director Peter Brook weaves together a collection of sonnets loosely tied to themes such as jealousy, separation and death. Even though there is no plot or character development, the sonnets work like short scenes. The actors, Michael Pennington and Natasha Parry, recite the poems like musicians playing their instruments. Pennington is especially adept at performing the work with his delicious baritone voice.

I went home and pulled out my Works of William Shakespeare to reread the poems just to marvel at how quickly Shakespeare could deliver emotion and character in poems only three stanzas and one couplet long.

Actors perform a scene from Ella Hickson's Eight

Wow. I don’t think that I was ready for Ella Hickson’s Eight. It is hard to conceive that a collection of mostly unrelated monologues which explore class, war, racism, sexuality and power could so effectively rip out my heart, toss me around like a toy and leave me for dead. I loved it. Audience members get to choose 4 of the monologues ahead of time, so I can’t even promise the same experience, but I can assure you that the experience will be explosive.

Here is what Jay Handelman of the Herald Tribune’s blog 24Seven had to say about it: “And Thursday’s performance of “Eight” made me wish there was time to see all eight monologues…”