WaterTower Theatre announces lineup for 2008 Out of the Loop Festival

by Shawn Parikh

Every year, WaterTower Theatre's popular festival gets bigger and better, and this year will mark the 7th Annual Out of the Loop Festival. The festival runs from March 6-16 and takes place in the three different spaces at the Addison Theatre Center: Festival Main Stage (seating approximately 180), the Studio Theatre (seating approximately 70), and the Stone Cottage (seating approximately 50).

This year, they are offering a special playwriting workshop with Debra Fordham for $50. Currently a writer for NBC Television’s Scrubs. While at Scrubs, Debra collaborated with the Tony-Award winning composers of Avenue Q to write the Scrubs musical episode. For her work on the hit NBC show, Debra has earned three Emmy nominations and a Peabody Award. Debra is also the playwright of Valdosta State University’s 2008 Out of the Loop Presentation, Holler Me Home. Her playwriting workshop is intended for anyone who has ever dreamed of writing for either the stage or television and will examine the differences in writing for the two very different mediums.

2008 Out of the Loop Festival passes are available for $50 each and include one admission to each performance (does not include workshop). Passes and tickets will go on sale February 19 and you can call the WTT Box Office at 972-450-6232 or purchase online.

Also, they have two headliners: New York-based artist Dixie Longate in Dixie’s Tupperware Party and WaterTower Theatre’s regional premiere of David Harrower’s Blackbird. Below is a list of the performances with a brief plot and you can click on a title for more info or the following link for a complete festival schedule:

• Dixie Longate stars in Dixie's Tupperware Party - Dixie Longate, the fast-talking Tupperware Lady, has packed up her catalogues and left her children in an Alabama trailer park to journey to Big D for Dixie’s Tupperware Party. Join Dixie as she throws a good ol’ fashioned Tupperware Party filled with outrageous tales, free giveaways, and the most fabulous assortment of Tupperware ever sold in Texas. See for yourself how Ms. Longate became the number one Tupperware seller in the world as she educates her guests on the many alternative uses she has discovered for her plastic products!
• Alan Pollard presents "Not To Be Out-Done..." - Powerhouse vocalist Alan Pollard and his ridiculously talented band, Vegetable Medley, deftly liberate Jazz, Pop, Rock & Folk music from the bondage of traditional cover-band slavery.
• American Actors Company presents The Unseen - Prisoners Wallace and Valdez don’t know where they are or why they’re there. But using elaborate guesswork, wit, and faith they fashion the unseen world around them with extravagant, absurd realities. The Unseen is a genuinely funny but dark tale from Craig Wright, author of The Pavilion and Recent Tragic Events, and television hits such as the HBO series Six Feet Under and ABC’s Lost, Brothers & Sisters, and Dirty Sexy Money. The Unseen contains strong language and violent images.
• Bill Bowers presents It Goes Without Saying - Bill Bowers has traveled a funny, poignant path from his Montana childhood to a career as an actor and mime. His autobiographical one-man show, It Goes Without Saying, takes a scenic tour of Bill’s life thus far: from his childhood in the wilds of Montana, to his outrageous jobs as a performer across the country, to the whirlwind of Broadway and studying with the legend Marcel Marceau.
• Inevitable Theatre Company presents Surface TENsion: Ten Minute Plays (and then some...) - This dynamic collection of seven ten-minute plays (and then some...) by established and emerging playwrights features comedy, drama, intricate wordplay, political satire, and physical slapstick. It’s a theatrical smorgasbord! See seven plays for the price of one. And if you don't like the one you're watching, just stick around, another is on its way... Surface TENsion contains adult language and situations, including profanity, smoking, and brief male nudity.
• Jackson Ross Best, Jr. presents I Wish You Would Just Get the Hell Out of My Life, You Sorry Motherf*cker: Reflections on Love and Romance - Comprised of songs from musical theater, jazz, rock, and hip-hop, this cabaret act explores the urban single life and romantic dysfunction. Starring Jackson Ross Best, Jr. and Mark Mullino. Warning: This production contains profanity, adult themes, extreme laughter, audience participation, jewels, booze, gifts, glitter, emotional catharsis, gays, and a toy piano. Those with pacemakers should be advised. You must be at least 6'1" to ride any of the attractions in the show.
• Jordan Fuchs Company presents Thicket & Retroactive Ambiquity - Jordan Fuchs will present two works of dance. Created with composer Andy Russ, Thicket explores an environment that grows denser with the entanglements of human interactions as four dancers ply the border between intimacy and abstraction. The audience, thrust into the dancer's world through the wearing of headphones, inhabits a dynamic, hyper-real and surreal environment in which the visual and aural dislocate. Retroactive Ambiguity, created with Sarah Gamblin, explores a gentle aesthetics of awkwardness for a couple who thrive on misunderstanding and whose unmet desires twist and spill out onto the stage as dancing.
• Lacy & Shade with Gablin, Keller & Scott present Moving Portraits: Four Women, About Women - These artists have been recognized in 2004 and 2006 as one of the top Ten Dance Events by the Dallas Morning News along such renowned companies as Lyon Opera Ballet, Garth Fagan Dance and Ralph Lemon. At the 2007 Out of the Loop Festival dance critic Margaret Putnam described their performances: “…it’s better to let your senses drink in the marvelous dancing. The very range of motion – its dynamic tension, its fluidity in ever-changing shapes, its quickness and pauses – piled on the richness. These are mature artists, and nothing went to waste…Every work was elliptical, tantalizing, fresh.”
• Lee Trull presents Rum and Vodka - Master storyteller Conor McPherson’s hilarious and heartbreaking account of a young alcoholic’s sordid three day bender through the streets of Dublin. Having been fired from his job, a young father sets out on a strange odyssey that takes him through countless bars, an ABBA tribute band concert, the lavish home of a bohemian girl, a strange college party, and finally to the darker places of his own diseased soul. Starring Lee Trull; directed by Joel Ferrell. Rum and Vodka contains strong language and sexual situations.
• Martice Enterprises presents Heaven Forbid(s)! - Multi-cultural award-winning comedy about life after death. A group of outcast souls that include pimps, prostitutes, transgendered, and homeless, convene in a little place called “Purgatory” to share their stories and try to convince the “man upstairs” to let them in. Contains strong language and is for mature audiences only.
• Michael Guinn & the Ft. Worth National Poetry Slam Team present Finding Our Voice - For years Mike Guinn and the Fort Worth Slam Team have built a national reputation uniting the poetry and spokenword community. From Dallas to Toronto, Mike, Janean, Anthony, A.J., Chuck, Rose Ann and other faithful FWPS members and up-and-coming poets have dedicated their heart and soul to becoming some of the best performance poets in the world!
• Muscle Memory Dance Theatre presents Sea Movement: Making Waves with Dance - A modern dance performance staging the unique styles of M2DT’s choreographers ranging from the comedic to the political. Choreographers include Lesley Snelson-Figueroa, Amy L. Ross, Elisa de La Rosa, Philip Elson, Kiera Amison, and Perpetual Motion/Modern Dance of Oklahoma City. Sea Movement presents a collaboration with musicians from the Fort Worth Symphony, aerial dance, and movement interpreting the classic music of iconic artists Mozart and Maria Callas. Come plunge to new depths. Wade in the water. Sea Dance.
• Out on a Limb Dance Company presents She Drew a Picture of a Whale & If It Were Not So Sweet - Out On a Limb Dance Company is performing a multi-media duet with one body on screen and one body in space entitled She Drew a Picture of a Whale. The images of fear and suppression evoke an emotional response that sends the dancers into twisted realities. Out On a Limb is also performing a piece by guest choreographer Sarah Gamblin. If It Were Not So Sweet incorporates unusual, lyrical movement and daring partnering illustrating the complexity of love through overlapping, simultaneous layers of action. The dance weaves a tapestry made of the glorious, sad and irrepressible threads of romantic love.
• SceneShop presents SceneShop: Stories We Can Tell - Storytelling is as old as man – from cave drawings to comic books to clips on YouTube. For its fourth Out of the Loop engagement, SceneShop brings three tales to share. In these new short plays – “Watch Your Head,” “Hugh and Betty,” & “In BUtterfield 8...” – the surprising stories unfurl like flags, detailing the characters' urgent and determined encounters with life's inevitable tumult. Contains adult language and themes.
• Spike Gillespie presents The Dick Monologues - Birthed and conceived by Spike Gillespie, The Dick Monologues is a collection of songs and spoken word pieces that examine all things Dick from actual penises to getting dicked over. What does a dick have in common with Dollywood? You’ll find out. Can scuba lessons keep you safe from bad dick? You’d be surprised. And does having a dick keep you from getting dicked over? Not necessarily. Contains strong language (to put it mildly) and graphic details.
• Spirit Expressing presents Miss Witherspoon - Tells the offbeat story of Veronica, a woman determined to die and stay dead resistant to all the forces trying to guide her into reincarnating so she can become a positive spiritual force on the planet. The setting moves between earth and the great beyond as Jesus, Gandalf and a Hindu guide all try to persuade Miss Witherspoon to surrender to her destiny. Meanwhile, she wreaks havoc in the lives of variously dysfunctional people and families. Skylab is also involved, and possibly the end of the world as we know it.
• The Victims present Your Mom... - Four guys called The Victims doing highly theatrical improv comedy. Unscripted mayhem from some of the Metroplex's most adventurous improvisers. May contain adult language, mature content, and impersonations of live animals.
• Valdosta State University presents Holler Me Home - Written by Debra Fordham, who will be leading this year’s Playwriting Workshop. The play centers on a family living in the Okefenokee Swamp in 1930. The family’s closed world is burst open with the arrival of a stranger. The lyrical sounds and mysterious mists of the swamp frame a glimpse into a world different from contemporary society and as vast as the trembling earth of the Okefenokee. The sounds of the hollers, crickets and birds set the mood for significant change in the Trowell family. In the clash of traditional and modern lifestyles, the characters struggle to find a place in their own worlds.
• WaterTower Theatre presents Blackbird - One of the most talked-about plays in recent years, David Harrower’s Blackbird comes to life in WaterTower’s thrilling production. Fifteen years ago, Una and Ray had an affair. Now she arrives unexpectedly at Ray’s workplace, forcing Ray to come to grips with their relationship in a powerful and volatile exchange that will change both their lives forever. Will be directed by former Plano Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Mark Fleischer.