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[Want to share your own Rogue story? Email Jaguar Bennett
at jagbennett@sbcglobal.net]
SUNDAY MARCH 6 -- At last, I finally get to see some Rogue shows! Actually,
what I'm doing is near-criminal self-indulgence. Very few of the Rogue Core
staff get to see much of the Festival. Everyone is way too busy managing
venues, manning box offices, working crowd control, making sure other Rogue
staffers have the resources they need, handling glitches ... but on the
excuse that I am reporting on the Festival, I spend the day checking out as
many Rogue shows as I can.
1:00 PM: I see Baba Brinkman's show, "The Rap Canterbury Tales" at
Dianna's Mainstage. The buzz on this show is that it’s the Best of the Fest
... and the buzz is well deserved.
The initial premise of Baba’s show is a retelling of three tales from Chaucer
in rap format ... but like another Canadian, Baba Brinkman is really telling
us how the medium influences the message.
Baba’s underlying theme is that today’s hip-hop culture is a revival of the
ancient oral tradition, more naturally human, communicative and spontaneous
than the print culture of the Gutenberg era.
Everyone will have a favorite of the four tales Baba presents, which cover a
range of emotion: “The Pardoner’s Tale” (morality and religious dread), “The
Miller’s Tale” (bawdy, nasty sex) and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” (bawdy,
romantic sex). But my favorite is “The Fan’s Tale,” a five-minute
encapsulation of the history of the oral tradition, from the beginnings of
humanity to the present.
As I told Baba afterward: “I can see how this gets hip-hop people interested
in Chaucer, but it also lets a nerd like me start to appreciate rap.”
Coverage of “The Rap Canterbury Tales” has focused on the concept, I have to
emphasize that Baba is a great performer -- energetic, humorous, and able to
morph into different characters in a moment.
Other audience reactions:
“It’s heavy stuff ... I’m still absorbing it. It’s more modern than I am and
more ancient than I’ll ever be.” Unidentified male audience member.
“It’s about the rap renaissance. It’s about the oral tradition of tradition,
and how we’ve lost it, the role of poetry in public performance. I think it’s
really cool that Baba is bringing it back. As an academic, I heartily endorse
it.” Laurel Hendrix, CSUF English professor.
[Baba’s a bit nonplussed by his sudden celebrity in Fresno, where strange
English professors hug him on the street.]
4:00 PM: Emspace, at Dianna’s Dance Mainstage. Let me be honest. I don’t
understand modern dance. (Actually, I don’t understand any non-verbal art
forms.) So a lot of Emspace’s performance just went way over my head. I
didn’t get all of Emspace, but I enjoyed it immensely, because the dancers
put so much feeling into their movements.
My lovely girlfriend Devon was entranced by the motion of the dancers forms.
I, the dance lowbrow, liked the sequence of three very different women
trapped in an elevator the best -- it told a whole story, just through silent
movement. Another fine moment was the catty encounter of two opera divas --
one of whom was bald and male.
Audience reaction:
“It was really great. As someone over 60, it reminds me a lot of Greenwich
Village in the 50s.” Carl Bosco.
“The dancers told really beautiful stories with their dance, their facial expressions
really showed their emotions.” Betty Burns.
5:30 PM: Steven Kaworski’s “Adventures of a Substitute Teacher.” Again,
lovely girlfriend Devon got a lot out of this show. She teaches 8th grade
algebra, and for her the whole show was one long “It’s funny because it’s
true!”
But anyone with a pulse, a brain, a concern for children and memories of
schooldays will love “Adventures of a Substitute Teacher.”
Kaworski cuts a razor’s edge line between his desire to be a great teacher
and his irritation with the little sh-- ... darlings he has to tame and
control.
Kaworski’s one-man show is full of characters, from self-absorbed
administrators to smart-aleck students to delightfully un-PC depictions of
special ed kids.
8:30 PM: The Big Weird Pop Show!
The 2005 Rogue Performance Festival has more outside-of-Fresno acts than any
previous Rogue, which is really, really cool. But after a solid day of
Auslanders, it’s fun to see an all-Fresno pop hoe-down.
Weirdness is what Fresnans do best, and the Big Weird Pop Ensemble does it in
spades. Any show that includes liberal drinks from a hip flask (all on stage,
alas -- no one wants to share) is all right with me. Plus I’m a big theremin
fan.
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