Performance Variety Show VII

The Copycat Theatre has no store front, no marquee, and save for a table near the door, no ticket booth. It’s actually a large shared living space in a warehouse on the edge of the Station North Arts District in what was once a bottle cap factory.

When you enter the space there’s a traditional stage next to a larger staging area. There are professional lights, a back drop, a trapeze and an upright piano. The core of the space is surrounded by a hive of artist’s apartments. Before the show I wandered back to the kitchen and watched as a crew was making a film unrelated to the fundraiser I was there to cover. I took some pictures, the actors stayed focused. I went about my work as they did theirs. I found myself wishing film shoots and wandering photographers were a normal domestic occurrence at my house.

I’ve enjoyed various Copycat Theatre member’s productions outside the warehouse in which they reside – they’re intense and immersive experiences. Finding myself inside their living space while witnessing a rather elaborate production I realized that their art is their lifestyle. Their living room is, quite literally, a stage.

The Big Picture

The performances ranged from fun spoofs like the feline take on Rihanna’s Only Girl (In The World) — except Emily Myers, Sarah Miller and Marlo switched the lyric to The Only Cat. They were backed by a hilarious stop-motion video by Shay and a beautiful modern ballet piece performed by Alex D’agostino that included a haunting voice over that meditated on gender issues.

Photo and story by Philip Laubner.

This isn’t genetically modified for maximum yield, people. This is What Weekly.

Having grown up and endured an aloof New England art scene, my senses are trained to detect and then reject angry and empty posturing or artsiness. The Copycat is an art space, but it doesn’t feel angry or pretentious. The feeling I got when I arrived was excitement, bristling energy and purpose.

Photo and story by Philip Laubner.

I was there on Saturday night for Performance Variety Show VII. The event was held to raise funds for the theater’s 2nd Annual Rooms Play. The Rooms Play is conceptual and immersive theater and it’s also monumental in scope in that it takes twenty rooms and dozens of volunteers to produce. In addition to the variety show, they’ve also started a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the play that will coincide with this year’s Transmodern Festival. Your good deed for the day might be following this Kickstarter link, watching the video in amazement (or not if you’re short on time) and finally donating five dollars or more to the Copycat Theatre to help them produce this year’s play.

Photo and story by Philip Laubner.

Support the Copycat Theatre, Donate To Help Produce This Year’s Rooms Play.

Here you are, in a waiting room, writing down your name in a time slot, preparing yourself to expect the unexpected. Someone calls your name; this person is dressed as a businessman with the face of a pig. He leads you into a room where you have to crawl through a tunnel. As you enter the next room, you are met by wise creatures who tell you stories and give you gifts to aid you on the journey you are about to embark on. You eventually find yourself faced with strange challenges where you must answer riddles and appear on weirdo talk shows to discover that without you and your decisions, this world would not exist. In this journey, YOU become the hero, YOU are the main character.

“The Rooms Play is a collaborative, immersive theatrical experience that asks the viewer to become a participant in the performance. There are twenty- two rooms to walk through, and each one is directed by a different team of 2-5 local artists and musicians. Each space in The Rooms Play functions like a scene of a play, and the audience members are integral to the scene’s unfolding.”

–ROOMS PLAY KICKSTARTER PAGE

WHAT DO A YOUTH MEDIA FESTIVAL AND A FARM-TO-TABLE RESTAURANT HAVE IN COMMON?

Wide Angle Youth Media started the Who Are You? Youth Media Festival in 2005 to build local audiences for local youth voices in order to strengthen ties and foster understanding in our community. For this year’s festival benefit, Wide Angle is very excited to feature Spike and Amy Gjerde, co-owners of Woodberry Kitchen, Baltimore’s premiere farm-to-table restaurant grounded in the traditions and ingredients of the Chesapeake region. Woodberry’s commitment to partnering with local farmers is a model for how to build a business based on the values of community, sustainability and strong relationships. We hope you’ll join us!

INFO: info@wideanglemedia.org, 443-759-6700.

Choice Events

Friday 25 -Sunday 27

Annex Theater presents: Peter Glantz ‘Being Impossible’ at the Whole Gallery 7:30 pm

Saturday 26 -Sunday 27

2nd Annual Publications and Multiples Fair

Thursday 24

Hilary Hahn Benefit Concert For Japan at 2640 7 pm

Friday 25

Paper Fish at Metro Gallery 7 pm

Saturday26

The Hour Haus 25th Anniversary Party 7 pm

Puppet Slamwich 3 at Black Cherry Puppet Theater 7 pm

Arty Hill’s Honky Tonk Dance Party at Creative Alliance 8 pm

S.O.B. Anniversary Skate Rock Show at Ruintown 8 pm

Always Dope with Hellfire Machina 8 pm

More events

Promote your event:

Spring Fever

I got a new shirt a while back so I’m opening up the package yesterday and there’s all this cardboard and stiff plastic and tissue paper and stuff, like probably representing
forty percent of the cost of the shirt, just the packaging. But the disturbing part is all the straight pins they put in to hold the shirt perfectly together on its journey over from China in one of those container ships. A shirt tanker, maybe. You think you take out every straight pin, but can you really be sure you got them all? I put the shirt on and flexed, sunk a straight pin deep into my Triple Heater Meridian. It felt like lightning struck my liver, but it did cure my cold.

My ex-wife calls from L.A. In these budget-conscious times, she’s looking to take some cost-cutting measures. She realizes she’s been renting a storage space. She hasn’t set foot in it in fifteen years, and the rent on it would get you a nice three bedroom in Charles Village. She sends a kid down there to root around. The kid comes back with like an inventory: antique chalkboard, scuba fins, old tax returns, some chairs, couple posters. The only thing of mine in there is a 35 MM theatrical print of Kill Me Again, a movie I wrote and produced a long time ago. I guess I forgot it when I cleared out my shit. Anyway, she calls me, “You want this print?” Do I? I don’t know. I still have a straight pin in my Triple Heater. By the time it’s over it’s going to cost me a hundred bucks to have this thing shipped. What am I going to do with it? But there is an emotional attachment. A film print is a pretty cool thing. Maybe get some people together and get drunk and screen it. Or maybe cut it up in little pieces and repurpose it, make a jacket out if it or something. I feel like I need advice on this….keep going.

David Warfield

League of the Unsound Sound

You may not be aware of the small, intricately-knit collection of Peabody misfits which is ambitiously creeping into the Baltimore experimental improv underground, but you’ll be glad you turned up for any future performances by LotUS (League of the Unsound Sound). This is where modern experimental composition meets untethered improvisational music. The alchemy breeds a concoction both unique in its flavor and approach, and explosive in its potential to gestalt new Baltimore sound.

While several recent series have successfully explored combinations of traditionalists teamed up with experimental musicians, what sets this group apart is the diversity of pieces performed. Many of these arrangements are fresh and originally commissioned specifically for this series by vibrant young local composers with wide ears and wild imaginations.

Photo by David Lobato, story by Rev. Elgaroo Brenza.

iPod, But Who Else Can?

A Column and Short Films by Lee Boot

America’s economy is going to be saved by innovation and creativity, right? This is the first in a series of shorts exploring the cultural conflicts that stand between us and our innovation dream.

Moving forward, the plan for this column is that you will see a new short film each week. They’ll explore themes that will usually last a month. Between these month-long stories, the written articles will be dropped in because they help What Weekly visitors understand how an otherwise reasonable person might come to the eccentric perspective that you can explain the difference between what we know and what we do by looking hard at our culture.

Generally, the films will adhere to a structure we’ve devised. We’ll pick an artifact we might see around us everyday—it could be anything from a tiny consumer product to an entire system of institutions, and “unpack” it to see what it reveals about us—the culture that made it, and our ideas. Then, we’ll shine a light on the difference between those ideas, and what relevant research, or even common sense, might suggest instead. Think of how often you ask yourself why the hell people do THAT when if they were just informed or even thought about it, they’d do THIS instead. We’ll delve into the stories that make our culture(s) what it is, looking for the ones that block our ability to act in our own best interest. In the last film we’ll have to make some kind of art as a way to celebrate any insight that came out of all this…keep going.

Torso of Diana With Head of Aphrodite

by Baynard Woods

Sometimes it is the silence of centuries that bends the ear towards the eye. In the Walters Museum in Baltimore, at the top of the stairs, stands one of the saddest sculptures in history. True, the sadness is, like all of us, late and accidental, but it is also immortal. Or close.

I can see it from my window, in the evening, when the light is right, entrapped in glass, across the street, a marble back in gloaming shadow. The melancholy grows. I can hardly think, once I have glimpsed it, even accidentally, and must wander the streets to clear my mind.Instead I ponder. Then I return, and climb the stairs again, to look at this cursed thing.
The statue is a first century A.D. Roman copy of a third or second century B.C. Hellenistic original. Strictly, it is not a statue at all, but a collage of sorts. At some time, probably in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, some colonialists took two broken statues of roughly the same size and conjoined them, placing the head of one goddess upon the shoulders and body of another.
And here is the tragedy. The piece is titled “Torso of Diana with Head of Aphrodite” (allowing the Greek and Roman names to rub together), but it is inaccurate. It is not only the torso, but also the breasts and genitals of the chaste Diana that have been set in eternal conjunction with the militantly lusty Aphrodite… keep going.

-Baynard Woods

A What Weekly exclusive interview with Gaia.

Video by Justin Nethercut.

Watch the What Weekly video, an exclusive interview with CEDA and DUME, a Justin Nethercut Production.

Video by Justin Nethercut.

WHAT DO A YOUTH MEDIA FESTIVAL AND A FARM-TO-TABLE RESTAURANT HAVE IN COMMON?

Wide Angle Youth Media started the Who Are You? Youth Media Festival in 2005 to build local audiences for local youth voices in order to strengthen ties and foster understanding in our community. For this year’s festival benefit, Wide Angle is very excited to feature Spike and Amy Gjerde, co-owners of Woodberry Kitchen, Baltimore’s premiere farm-to-table restaurant grounded in the traditions and ingredients of the Chesapeake region. Woodberry’s commitment to partnering with local farmers is a model for how to build a business based on the values of community, sustainability and strong relationships. We hope you’ll join us!

INFO: info@wideanglemedia.org, 443-759-6700.