Rhinofest turns 29 this year and remains one of the only fringe festivals in the US that actively curates its acts instead of selecting them through a lottery. This year artistic directors Jenny Magnus and Beau O’Reilly have chosen 41 different plays, cabarets, dance performances, workshops, and other things that defy classification. Of course Reader critics have opinions what’s worth seeing. The festival runs through February 25 at the Prop Thtr (3502-04 N. Elston), Wednesday through Monday. Each show is performed once a week. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 or pay what you can at the door.
Direct My Woyzeck In Chris Zdenek’s joyous, preposterous hour-long event with The Official Theater Company of. Thyssenkrupp AG, the audience must select from its ranks a production team (director, designers), audition five actors (all at once), and then stage several scenes from Georg Büchner’s feverish 19th-century masterwork Woyzeck according to an inflexible schedule (three minutes for blocking, four minutes for “scene work,” etc.). When it’s over, the audience must forge a mission statement for the impromptu theater company, then listen to a freshly-written review of the performance. In robust Fluxus tradition, Zdenek celebrates amateurism while ridiculing the uptight conventions of “legit” theater. The scenes my audience staged were gleefully awful, one led by a director whose only instruction to his cast was, “Act!” —Justin HayfordWed 7 PM
The Rest
The Near FutureJulia Williams is a fine actor whose performances I’ve admired for some time in plays that are wildly beneath her talents. Now she’s written and directed a show for Rhinofest which is wildly beneath even those plays. In the future, I guess, people have mechanical doubles, more attractive versions of themselves. The scenes that ensue based on that concept are a ramshackle hour of forlorn yammering. They include long sidebars on fish, flesh, and typewriters. There’s one good tape recorder scene with Brook Celeste, invoking Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. Celeste sits at the machine and listens to Williams’ own droll voice giggle, “It’s all closing in isn’t it? Ha-ha!” Williams at least feels the spirit and the intention of the thing. Briefly, so do we. But either Williams wasn’t able to instill this in her cast, or there was nothing to instill. —Max MallerSat 7 PM
