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With about a week under its belt, the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival — in its 14th season — pushes forward with more shows filled with talent from across the world, including many locals.
This year, the festival’s Producing Director Nick Stuccio selected 15 shows for the Live Arts Festival. The Fringe Festival will produce 188 shows free of a selection process.
After performing sketches of “The Real Housewives of South Philly,” for the past year-and-a-half, The WaitStaff is devoting almost its entire 60-minute show to the spoof and the many varieties of “The Real Housewives” series at the Fringe Festival.
“I have to admit I got sucked in watching a marathon on Bravo of ‘The Real Housewives of New York,” Sara Carano, the creator, who also plays Marie, said of her inspiration.
While the resident of Ninth and Bainbridge streets originally thought about focusing on Kensington, she decided to go with something she was more familiar with as an Italian from North Jersey herself, she said.
“I find South Philly Italians are really close to North Jersey and New York Italians,” she said. “I thought let’s put this down on paper and see what kind of hilarity pursues.”
The result brought a following for the housewives and The WaitStaff’s eighth Fringe show, which will feature the original sketch and two others — including the introduction of the househusbands, which includes Eric Singel of 10th and Mifflin streets as The Duke — through Sept. 19 at L’Etage Cabaret, 624 S. Sixth St.
“The initial sketches were these three women sitting on their stoops just talking about everyone in their neighborhood and gossiping,” Singel, an Altoona native, who played a housewife’s mother prior to the househusbands’ introduction, said.
And while Carano creates the sketches, fellow WaitStaff member Joanne Cunningham, who grew up on the 2400 block of South Lambert Street, keeps her on track if anything she writes doesn’t hold true to South Philadelphians’ actual behavior or speech.
“She’s kind of our dialect coach. She by far does the best dialect than anyone in the show,” Carano said adding that Cunningham’s parents have even contributed ideas to past shows.
This way, with references to local hotspots, typical front window displays and dishing dirt on others, audience members will be able to relate to the characters.
“You feel like, ‘I know that person. That’s my neighbor or that’s my aunt or that’s my cousin kind of thing,’" she said.
And Fringe allows The WaitStaff to reach more people and perform more shows, Singel said.
“We just found out [Sept. 2] our second show this Sunday, is already sold-out and we’re waiting to hear about other shows,” he said.
Thaddeus Phillips has been working on his current Live Arts piece on and off for the last seven years. The current version of “¡El Conquistador!” opened in New York in 2006 and later toured Spain and will now return to Philadelphia where Phillips has lived with his wife — and the show’s co-creator/co-director and actor of Aminta —Tatiana Mallarino for the past three years.
“We’re finally doing the one that’s been all over here in Philadelphia,” he said of the performances taking place at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St., through Sept. 11 in the Live Arts Festival.
The couple traveled back and forth between South Philly and Colombia — Mallarino’s native country — to create the work.
“Her family [members] are famous soap stars in Colombia, so we wanted to work with them, but there was no way to put them in the show and tour them,” Phillips, of 12th and McKean streets said noting his wife’s uncle Victor Mallarino, a soap star from Bogata, who appears in the show.
To include them, the couple created the show in which Phillips plays Polonio, a doorman who is obsessed with telanovelas (Spanish for soap operas) in a Colombian apartment building where the soap stars are tenants. They interact through a security monitor video system. The telanovela stars portion was prerecorded in Bogata while Phillips is the only live actor.
“It’s like a comedy, but it feels like a foreign film,” he said of “!El Conquistador!” that is in Spanish with English subtitles.
Phillips established Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, which is based out of his home, in ’05, but the scope Live Arts offers and the opportunity to perform on a bigger stage is always welcomed, the Denver native said.
“It’s like practically they really help you produce the show in a very professional way,” he said. “We have very little resources because we’re really small. [Live Arts] triples our resources in what were able to do.” SPR
To see more local performers and shows, visit Other acts.
Contact Staff Writer Amanda Snyder at asnyder@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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