Monday, September 08, 2008

Miss Peters's Fringe Picks and Pans: Mating Rituals of the Urban Cougar

Andrea Thompson is a professional performance poet, and during her hour-long show, explained, among other things, how choosing this ludicrous career means you can do pretty much anything else and your family will forgive you since it can't be worse that professional performance poetry.

As I've mentioned, I'm not a huge fan of one-person shows. I like plays to take me away with them, not necessarily to be spoken to. This one came at a bad time, too, filled as it was with meditations on getting older, choosing a career, and breaking bad love habits, things I have been thinking about a little bit too much lately as another birthday is on the horizon for me, which always sends me off the deep end of an existential crisis.

That being said, she was funny, and her poems were great. One, called the Gospel of Thomas, has a guy at a New Year's party catching her pretending to talk on her cellphone as the clock strikes twelve to avoid the humiliation of not being kissed at midnight. He then goes on to peg her as a poet, the type that probably falls in love with a volleyball. You know the drill: "Oh perfect orb of light, signifying action and team cooperation! What a beautiful sphere!" Poets are the worst at falling in love, because they so hate to see the world in its mundane ordinariness, and this makes for a frabjus first two weeks into a relationship, and a devastating middle and end. I have been known to be guilty of this in my misspent youth (so quickly fading) and have certainly fallen for a few of said poets, who found me to be the most wonderful volleyball at first and then kicked me over the fence when they found out I was merely human.

Blogs are great because you can do things like write theatre reviews and actually vent about your own feelings.

Anyway--Andrea's show is recommended if you like one-woman shows, performance poetry, and life meditation. If you prefer one-man shows with sports and mascots (shudder), check out Mr. Fox. (See below!)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Oh darling volleyball,
I beseech you,
Do not derail your flight of beauty to thine sky
By net or block or out of bounds
You wound us with this hard to get
For stretch though we might,
We are left alone, befuddled and without your spike