SPECIAL EVENTS

Frenetic Theater is hosting the 2nd Annual Frenetic Fringe Festival, featuring Houston’s finest cutting-edge dance, theater, music, and film, August 7-23, 2009 at Frenetic Theater. Fridays and Saturdays 8pm & Sundays at 7pm, at Frenetic Theater, 5102 Navigation Blvd.

Frenetic Fringe Fest Program 1: August 7-8 @8pm
-New date added!- Sunday August 9 @ 7pm

Liz Gilbert Nearing Velocity
Playwright: Liz Gilbert
Director: Edith Pross
Performer names:
David Barron, Nicole Bruder, Mathew Carter, Blair Knowles, Joi L. Mardis
Sound and lighting designer: Mario Patrenella

Nearing Velocity is a tragic play about finding happiness. Mallory, a victim of a car accident, and Boyd, a passenger in the other vehicle, examine the effects of that one chaotic moment in their lives. Nearing Velocity was selected for the 30th anniversary celebration of the Susan Smith Blackburn prize at the Alley Theatre.

Edith Pross (Director) has worked with the Goodman Theatre of Chicago and the Oak Park Shakespeare Festival. In Houston she has directed for Main Street Theater, Express Theatre, Lab Theatre Houston, and Country Playhouse among others, and for last year’s Freneticore Fringe Festival directed the winner of the audience choice award of that week.

Elizabeth Gilbert (playwright) tried booze, sex and drugs but finds playwriting much more satisfying. She is a member of the Dramatists' Guild of America.

Jackie Nalett Beyond The Sphere
Choreographer: Jacqueline Nalett 

When we die, it is only the end of the physical body, not the end of our soul's existence. Those who have crossed over want us know that they still exist.

Jacqueline Nalett has been an adjunct dance faculty member at the University of Houston since 1994 where she teaches Modern Dance, Jazz, and Aesthetics of Movement. Her choreography has been presented at the American College Dance Festivals in New England and Texas, at Mount Holyoke College, the University of Houston, Rice University,and the Houston Jewish Community Center's Summer Series.

Nevel is the Devil
Writer/Director: Peter Craig (aka SpaceManX)
A supervisor at a consumer product testing lab interrogates two suspects of a devilish prank.

Awards: 'Audience Award' The Big Dam Film Festival, 'Juror's Awards' River's Edge Film Festival, 'Special Jury Prize for Comedy' Indianapolis International Film Festival, 'Christopher Wetzel Award for Independent Film Comedy' Gene Siskel Film Center.

BRUNA BUNNY AND BABY GIRL
Playwright: Loueva Smith
Director: Anne Mabry
Performers: Amy Bruce, Nelson Heggen, Kay McStay, Mackenzie Savage, Anthony Hernandez
Costumes and Set: Germaine Welch

BRUNA BUNNY AND BABY GIRL by Loueva Smith is a cross between Dr. Seuss and a Grimm Brother's Fairy Tale. Baby Girl is a tiny freak, her mother is a retired hatchet juggler--and one day at the doctor's office, research cat Sherbert tells them Bruna Bunny, a former magician's hat-rabbit, is in town.

Loueva Smith won the Audience Favorite prize for her play "Wounded Woman Fashion Show," at the Frenetic Fringe Festival in 2008. Her poetry has been published in DoubleTake, The Texas Review, The Louisiana Review, Nerve Cowboy, and Poetry Revolt. She was the Featured Poet at the Houston Poetry Fest in 2001 and 2002.

stability sucks
Choreographer: Teresa Chapman in collaboration with Marlow Fleming
Performers: Teresa Chapman and Marlow Fleming

Teresa Chapman-"In my lifetime, I've been a CAT, a showgirl, and even an alien. I've descended upon a stage of opera singers in Los Angeles, sprained my ankle on the cobblestone streets of Germany, and stood on the podium of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra with baton in hand...all for the love of dance. I am proud to say that I am currently performer with Travesty Dance Group, a professor at the University of Houston, and a dance maker."

Kutiman mixes YouTube--ThruYou
Music and Video Editing: Kutiman

Described as an epic YouTube video mash, ThruYou is a lively and beautiful online album mixed entirely from unrelated samples of YouTube videos.

Kutiman is an Israeli musician whose labor of love ThruYou has made him an overnight sensation around the world. 

Frenetic Fringe Festival Program 2: August 14-15 @ 8pm
-New date added!- August 16th @ 7pm

There's a Tsunami at Your Door
Playwright: Mary Ellen Whitworth
Director: Erin Kidwell

Mrs. Peterson is going to end her life when she is interrupted by a cable sales man. When he won't leave she invites him into her home and asks him to kill her.

Mary Ellen Whitworth has won six short playwriting contests. She has been accepted into Edward Albee's playwriting class at the University of Houston on two occasions and one time into Mr. Albee's production class. Her play, "Sink Hole" was selected to be a part of the Susan Smith Blackburn Thirty Year Anniversary Celebration.

Dancing Diana
Choreography: Lydia Hance
Playwright: Diana Weeks
Performers: Lydia Hance, Diana Weeks, others TBA

Dancing Diana is a combination of daring, sharply witty short stories performed by audaciously gutsy dancers.

Diana Weeks has a media background. She has written for magazines, newspapers, radio, television, films, plays, musicals and now dance.

Lydia Hance is from San Francisco, graduated from SMU and moved to Houston in 2007. She has danced with Ad Deum Dance Company, Dancepatheatre and currently dances with Suchu Dance. Her choreography has been performed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and throughout the US, including in Times Square, San Francisco and Virginia, where Lydia is a guest choreographer for Lexington's Halestone Dance and Roanoke Ballet Theater.

Spelling Bee Sluts
Playwright: Paul Locklear
A young man with a gift for spelling words leaves his rural home and moves to the city in hopes of finding success in the world of spelling bees, and possibly meeting women.

Paul Locklear has been writing for several years now, and has been an actor in the Houston area for longer than that. A year or so ago he got a grant from the Houston Arts Alliance and staged a play that he had written called "Fine Arts Fascists." Paul doesn't really like to plan more than 30 minutes ahead, but sometimes life dictates otherwise.

G. I. Joe PSAs
Company: FenslerFilms
Filmmaker: Eric Fensler
Eric Fensler is an independent American filmmaker from based in Los Angeles, known for his series of 25 parodical remixes of G.I. Joe Public Service Announcements PSAs. Fensler replaced the dialogue and edited the video to create a series of bizarre and sometimes humorous shorts that have generated a cult following on the Internet.

Thurmond, W. Va.
Filmmaker: Laura Harrison

A portrait of a "ghost town in the making," this film probes deeper issues about the importance of community and the identity of a place.

Awards:
Director's Choice Award, Black Maria Film Festival 1996
Cinema du Reel, Paris, France 1996
Best Student Short Film Award, Cleveland Int. Film Festival 1996
Jury Award, NY Expo of Short Film and Video 1995
Regional Finalist, Student Academy Awards, 1996

Laura Harrison's award winning documentary Secret People (2000) - a chronicle of the past and present of leprosy in America - was broadcast nationally on PBS' Independent Lens series and won a silver medal for Best Feature Documentary at the SXSW Film Festival. Thurmond, W. Va (1995) - a portrait of a "ghost town in the making"- received a Jury Award at the NY Expo of Short Film and Video, among many others. Most recently, Laura co-executive-produced Voting in America, a compilation of nine short films about why Americans don't vote that was broadcast on PBS.

I am Mother, Silent Victim, I Take My Dress Off
Choreographer: Toni Leago Valle
Dancers: Catalina Molnari, Toni Leago Valle, JoDee Engle

Originally performed by Ms. Valle two weeks before she delivered her son, I Am Mother is a study of historical religious goddesses of motherhood, inspired by the Japanese avant-garde form of Butoh dance. Silent Victim dives into the recesses of one woman's mind and the many selves that live there. About I Take My Dress Off, Toni states: "I want to share how I found my own voice - not a declaration to the world that I am breaking free - but a quiet whisper from within to embrace my Body, my Past and a Sense of Living."

Toni Valle received a B.A. in Theatre, specializing in dance, from UH in 2000. Toni has received two Individual Artist Grants from Houston Arts Alliance to produce It's All Relative in August 2002 and in 2007 for her third evening-length concert, Tetris, that premiered in January 2009. In December 2006, Ms. Valle premiered CRACKED as a recipient of the DiverseWorks Artist Residency.

Frenetic Fringe Festival Program 3: August 21-22 @ 8pm

Alice and the Underground
Company: Mildred's Umbrella
Playwright: Janet Thielke
Director: Mark Carrier
Performers: Bobby Haworth, Ashley Allison, Caleb George

March 6th, 1970: Three characters from the classic children's story find themselves at a defining moment in the Weather Underground movement.

Janet Thielke: (Playwright) A graduate of Houston's own High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Janet Thielke is currently studying creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Southern California. Her short stories and dramatic scripts have been recognized with two national silver awards from the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards, the USC Undergraduate Writer's Award, and as a 2009 Edward W. Moses winner. Mark Carrier (Director) is a company member of Mildred's Umbrella Theatre Company and has performed in 365Days/365 Plays, One Flea Spare and had the leading role in The Third Side. He has also worked locally with The Fan Factory, dos chicas, Kid Ornery Theatre and Country Playhouse.

Tetsujin
Company: FrenetiCore
Filmmaker: Robert Thoth
Choreographer: Rebecca French
Performers: TBA

Filmed entirely outdoors with a backdrop of Houston's industrial/refinery landscape, Tetsujin is based on the juxtaposition of the power and frailties of machines and people.

Rebecca French and Robert Thoth founded FrenetiCore in 2003, a brave little dance company that gives Houston audiences the kind of dance they've been wanting for so long--dance that tell stories of gun-toting preachers, art criminals, and happy demons.

PAIN, PLEASURE, and a bunny rabbit
Company: Slump
Playwright/Director: Keith Reynolds
Performers: TBA

Slump is social pathology, dressed up as art.

Keith Reynolds is an underground H-town legend--performing as a beer-swilling lounge singer, selling $5 paintings dressed in a bear suit, and creating and starring in Slump's Christmas show each year as a depraved, deviant Santa.

Forever Hold Your Peace (for now)
Company: Kinetic Architecture (New York)
Choreography: Rob Davidson
Performers: TBA

Founded in 1994, Kinetic Architecture brings to the stage their unique brand of sculptural, sensual partnering and Buster Keaton-meets-Butoh style and strives to present work that is socially relevant, athletic, visually stunning, and artistically progressive. Rob Davidson (Director, Choreographer) is a former member of the Seán Curran Company (NY). His work has been presented most notably at Dance Forum, Peridance, WAX, the Imagine Festival of the Arts, the D.U.M.B.O. Dance Festival, COOL Dance Festival, the Connecticut Meets NY Dance Festival, Rebound Dance Festival, at Diverseworks/Houston, the JCC of Houston, as well as nEWFestival Philly & The Philly Fringe.

What the Storm Brought Home
Playwright/performer: Jere Pfister
Director: Sara Draper

Katrina serves as the image of what happens when the back of denial is shattered. Two days after the storm a woman drives back through the familiar landscape of I10 only to discover it has become an empty highway filled with displaced people and empty stores and gasoline stations. The old people are left behind and dementia has set in as Jere Pfister tells the story of her Aunt Billie and the discovery of a binding love that finally releases the truth behind a family's silence.

Jere Pfister has performed as an actor and storyteller and currently teaches others to tell stories at the University of Houston Downtown. Several of her plays have had local productions including, A Work in Granite, and essays and literary nonfiction have been published in various literary journals and her poem, Burn Unit, in the anthology "The Weight of Addition: an anthology of Texas Poetry." She has an MFA in Theatre from the University of Houston, and is currently putting the finishing touches on her memoir, What the Storm Brought Home.

Easy Credit Theater
Choreography: Richard Hubscher
Performers: TBA

Former Houston Ballet dancer Richard Hubscher has been called rebellious, alienating, existential, nihilistic, and perversely comic. He creates and performs in post-modern nuclear ballets on the circus circuit.

Untitled
Director/Performer: Jim Pirtle
The Art Guys write: "Jim Pirtle's alter ego, Stu Mulligan, is a masochist who consumes mayonnaise and hot sauce until he vomits and jumps from the tops of buildings. Pirtle presents audiences with an odd and unique view of the world...but NotsuoH, Jim's functional, experimental, social/sculptural urban environment, is his supreme art/life work--a creative community vortex nexus fueled by alcohol, cigarettes, idealism and a paradoxical, all-embracing, pro/anti-everythingism."

Anything Goes' Night and Closing Night Party: August 23 @ 7pm

"Sara Jo Punctures the Tires of Those Who Don't Laugh, Blue-Hairs"
Sara Jo Dunstan

Sara Jo Dunstan has three names, and it will do you good to learn how to spell ALL of them, because someday she will rule the world. Well, probably not. But she DOES hope that you enjoy her acting!

The Colon Show
Playwright: Margo Stutts Toombs
Performers: Margo Stutts Toombs, Mary "Cutie" Scheps

The Colon prepares for her 'on camera' appearance. For the first time on the stage, the audience sees the true diva nature of the Colon as she prepares for her big show: The Colonoscopy.

Margo Stutts Toombs is an internal humorist. She has performed in a number of venues including the Houston Art Crawl, KPFT Radio, the Archway, Bailey & James and Baquero Art Galleries and the Barnevelder Arts and Movement Complex. Her poem Reunion has been accepted for publication in the anthology Love Over 60.

Whatever Happened to Peckerwood Kingsnake?
Playwright/Director: Paul Locklear
Performers: The Brazosport Laser Panthers

A legendary southern rock band disappears in a plane crash, but the bodies and the crash site are never found. Could it be because they got caught up in a time warp? Will dinosaurs take kindly to the concept of hospitality?

Brazosport Laser Panthers is the Houston area's premier all-original theatre troupe that is for-profit and usually performs late at night.

Ignorance Is Bliss
Choreographer: Anjaly Thakkar
Performers: Jessica Herzogenrath, Linda Gomez, Anjaly Thakkar

Three young women struggle in a world where basic needs are luxuries. American-led invasions in the name of democracy and the concomitant - and often unacknowledged affects - of civilian people and culture influence this work.

Anjaly Thakkar has been the Artistic Director of the Indo-contemporary dance company the Urban Indian Beat since its inception in August of 2000. In addition, she has danced with several companies including the Houston Metropolitan Dance Company, Uptown Street Dance Company, and Dance Worx in Ann Arbor, MI. She is the mother of three girls, Laxmi, Vaishali, and Sahasra.

Keith Reynolds
Keith Reynolds is an underground H-town legend--performing as a beer-swilling lounge singer, selling $5 paintings dressed in a bear suit, and creating and starring in Slump's Christmas show each year as a depraved, deviant Santa.

Excerpts from MEN ON THE VERGE OF A HIS-PANIC BREAKDOWN
Playwright: Guillermo Reyes
Director: Roy Hamlin
Performers: Chris Rivera, Ilich Guardiola

A sample of the macho/maricon conflict in the Hispanic culture---searing but also hysterical.

Touted in 2000 this by American Theatre Magazine as one of the "world's finest stage writers," Guillermo Reyes has written over 20 scripts, most dealing with themes of sexuality, gender and Latino identity.

Reyes' theater illuminates that which defies categorization, leaving most of his characters on the border. If you are going to see a Guillermo Reyes play, prepare to have your stereotypes shattered -- and not just one at a time.

Cold Ground
Choreography: Rebecca French
Performer: Rebecca French
A sad and sweet dance solo from the air.

Rebecca French is a dancer, choreographer, and co-director of FrenetiCore and Frenetic Theater.

Massive Improv
Director: Michael Garcia
Performers: Amy Birkhead, Micah Stinson, Antoine Culbreath, Michael Garcia

Massive Improv is Houston's first and only improvisational theater ensemble. Since 2004 the group has produced over 200 shows and has trained improvisors that now perform at some of the most prestigious improvisational stages across the country. Massive is committed to improvisational theater as an artform, not just a vehicle for comedy. 
 

Join the performers for the Fringe Festival's Closing Night Party at 9pm. There'll be food, drinks, a performance by Eric Fensler and Jay Rajeck's band TRS-80 (from Los Angeles), and we'll present the 2009 'Audience Favorite' awards!