Saturday, June 04, 2005

I'm up late, because after our final tech last night we ran over to Open Circle to catch Flaming Box of Stuff's sketch show, It's In The Water.

Beer4

It's an extremely sharp conceit--integrated sketches that weave together, surrounding the story of employees at a 1970's brewing plant that is shutting down. The sketches flow beautifully, integrating physical gags, fast language, wordplay, puppet work, blacklight--it's very impressive, heartfelt and exemplifies much of what sketch does best--make absurd environments real with economy and grace.

This performance was in preparation for their tour to New York for the New York SketchFest. (I never imagined when I founded SketchFest that one day it would actually be adopted by other cities. Funny world.) Flaming Box of Stuff performs on Friday, June 10th at 9pm--I highly recommend their show, and you can get tickets through the link, and you should do so immediately--I think it's going to be a fantastic show.

Also performing at the festival and worth your time is Hypnogogia (whom I've mentioned here before) on Thursday, and following FBoS on Friday at 11pm is Portland wunderkids The Third Floor, whose work continues to impress and delight.

Catch these shows if you're in NYC, because it'll be worth the trip down to the UCB space. I haven't had such a good time in a theater in a long while as I did last night with It's In The Water, and the short work-in-progress Champagne was also immensely delightful. They made me miss doing sketch, which takes some doing--sketch can be a cruel mistress, but when it all goes right with genius and precision it's absolutely fabulous.