Trees Get the Feeling of Romance

In Search of My Clitoris

A Hard Way to Make an Easy Living

Feel the Power of the Dork Side

On Friday of the New Orleans Fringe Fest, NoDef reviewers considered the clitoris, trees full of toilet paper and, as ever, sideshows and nerds. Could it be true? More reviews:

In Search of My Clitoris

“It doesn’t have a name. If it doesn’t have a name, it’s not important. If it’s not important, it gets cut off.”

Performer Sia Amma uses humor, stand-up comedy, and dynamic storytelling to breach the very unfunny subject of female circumcision in her one-woman show, In Search of My Clitoris, now playing at The Aquarium (934 Montegut).

Amma is an enthusiastic and energetic performer. She moves and speaks with her hands. With her whole body. She comes into the room asking, “Have you seen it? Have you seen my clitoris? Maybe it’s in your bag? Or your sweater?” She shoots off jokes about women not knowing where or what the clitoris is. How we are afraid to say the word. She has great comedic timing. At this point, I am expecting this to play out like Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues. But then Amma drops a bombshell none of us were expecting:

“Myself, I don’t have a clitoris.”

The show shifts from a stand-up routine to a remembering. A remembering of Amma’s childhood. She grew up in Liberia and was circumcised at the age of nine. Her mother had it done. Her grandmother had it done. Her great-grandmother had it done. Without this ritual, Amma would not be considered a real woman. Amma sings in this remembering. She has a rich voice that fills the room. The storytelling is precise and moving. She certainly grabs your heart, and Amma manages to keep you thinking too.

She ends the show early and sits down in a chair and takes questions. The audience asks about the procedure. About pleasure. About stigma. About social justice. About daughters and mothers. I would suggest staying for this portion. It is just as engaging as the piece itself.

A courageous piece of theatre that is equal parts funny and thoughtful, In Search of My Clitoris runs Nov 19, 5 pm & 7 pm & 9 pm; and Nov 20, 5 pm & 7 pm & 9 pm. -Helen Jaksch

Feel the Power of the Dork Side

Dr. Pete Ludovice is an MIT Ph. D. that currently teaches at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. When the title says “dork side”, that’s exactly what it means.

Statistical mechanics is the study of properties of matter in equilibrium and applies probability theory or statistical inference to large populations. Someone turned this into a theatrical performance. Dr. Pete’s one-man show is part stand-up, part statistics, part song and all incredibly smart. He uses comedy to explain scientific Gaussian distribution, the Bell curve, random error, distribution deviation, Six Sigma, and other highly esoteric subjects you may have never heard of.  But his subject matter isn’t only science. He tells stories about being a husband and father and breaks out into a parody of Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun”, singing “Daddy’s Got a Gun”. He discusses nerds and relationships and breaks down the patented advanced algorithm used by eHarmony.com, about which a lot of single nerds have likely wondered. 

There are a few “costume changes”, but mostly his set consists of a slide deck with graphs, formulas and pictures. Having a limited sound and A/V setup, the show was without any technical issues. The roughly ten-person audience was tragically small for how good this show is. After the performance, all audience members stayed to talk to him and some even walked away with free pocket protectors.

This show only has one more performance left in the festival. Check out Dr. Pete tonight (Nov 19) at 9 p.m. at the Backyard Ballroom (3519 St. Claude Ave). -Champ Superstar

A Hard Way to Make an Easy Living

The carnival has come to town.

But if elephants and ferris wheels just are not your thing, might I suggest taking a peek at the side-show stylings of FreakShow Deluxe’s Hard Way to Make an Easy Living. The stunts are real. And so is the danger. Reverend Tommy Gunn starts off the show by lighting a cigarette off the sparks of a grinder against a steel plate. He performs the famous blockhead routine, hammering a six inch steel nail into one nostril and a screwdriver into the other. He swallowed a piece of string, then pulled it out of his belly. Miss Malice Aforethought eats fire. She ascends a ladder of swords. She swallows a long, thin balloon that is almost as tall as she is. Raven Lunatic is a human cutting board of sorts, chopping cucumbers on his arms. 

He also has an apple chopped on the back of his neck with a huge scimitar. Amy Amnesia puts her hand in a racoon trap. Her tongue in a mousetrap. She walks, stomps, and jumps on a pile of broken glass. The most dangerous and gut-wrenching stunt of the night was when Tommy Gunn laid down on a bed of nails. But that was not enough danger. He then had another bed of nails placed on his chest and belly. But that was also not enough danger. He had two of the tallest and largest men from the audience stand on top of him. And he escaped unharmed.

The audience cringed. They gasped. And they clapped. A whole lot.

Playing at Michalopoulos Studio, *Hard Way to Make an Easy Living* is one hour of classic side-show style stunts, amazing thrills, and some very charming and talented performers. The show runs one more time on Nov. 19 at 11 p.m. -Helen Jaksch

Trees Get the Feeling of Romance

A fourth-wall-busting slow dance with an audience member before the proper performance got underway was about the most amorous moment in Trees Get the Feeling of Romance. Throughout the play, solo Brooklyn-based dancer Billy Schutlz paces back and forth, squeezing a whoopee cushion that is placed conveniently in the area of his crotch. He grinds with trees, and skips around the stage in a manner that recalls the Knights Who Say Nee. He turns a pair of trees into a miniature Toomer’s Corner. And, for the finale, Schultz works himself into a frenzy, cramming an entire show’s worth of classical dance swoops and spins into a span of several minutes.

The summary informs that Schultz’s character, dressed much as a tree himself, is portraying a fool who is “indulging a mad visual poem of a romance between two trees.” Other than the grinding, that’s a little tough to tease out. But this reviewer is relieved to report that narrative structure doesn’t necessarily preclude appreciation of this work. Schultz’s simultaneous exuberance and precision of movement are engaging enough to make the puzzle of what is actually unfolding onstage sort of irrelevant. Besides, if you try to make too much of a guy shooting rolls of toilet paper at a pair of trees, you're probably thinking too hard.

Cueing on the Café Istanbul sound system was unfortunately shaky, but that’s not the least of the issues with the venue choice here. One of the highlights of Fringe is the fascinating venue locations, from an emptied former church to a Mardi Gras float warehouse. Such earthy spaces would fit a show that features two trees and a guy dressed as a more colorful third arbor much better than the spick-and-span new digs at the New Orleans Healing Center. Schultz is fortunate to possess both charisma and the trickster attitude that takes the audience’s mind off these issues. And it is he alone that makes the show worth checking out. Trees Get the Feeling of Romance runs again on Nov. 19 at 5 p.m. and Nov. 20 at 9 p.m.-Kermit N. Mudgely