Theater

Antics ever + anon

Casco Bay Cabaret rolls around for the eighth time

By MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 10, 2007

MASKED WONDER: A taste of the cabaret.

Casco Bay Cabaret rollYou may have tossed out your noisemakers and extra lampshades on New Year’s Morning, but the antics of the season certainly aren’t over yet. Masks, gags, accordions, and more will give Portland another go at being festively, fetchingly entertained, at the Eighth Casco Bay Cabaret. This home-grown carnival communion of local and touring artists (which is hosted by a Mystery MC!) goes up at the SPACE Gallery, offered as an evening performance on Friday, January 19, at 7:30 pm and as a family-friendly matinee on Saturday, January 20, at 1 pm.

Founded in 2004 by Kelly Nesbitt and Jonah Fertig, under the banner of the People’s Free Space, the CBC is a bi-annual variety show of dazzling DIY dimensions. Clown and performance artist Nesbitt says that she and Fertig, a puppeteer and activist, created the CBC for the sake of their theatrical ken. “Being performers, “ she says, “we both felt a strong need to create more opportunities for artists to come together in Portland.”

The artists they’ve gathered are puppeteers, circus folk, clowns, musicians, dancers, actors, and poets, and they come together to present you with agile hilarity that is loopy, thoughtful, and readily available on the cheap. Inspired by Philadelphia’s Puppet Uprising Cabarets, the CBC aims to bring its audience the sort of material that you don’t often see in mainstream puppet and circus theater — themes that are political, “mature,” or just plain strange. Over the last three years, the Cabaret has attracted such performers as Ben T. Matchstik of Bread and Puppet, Superior Concept Monsters (the official puppeteers of the New York City Halloween Parade), the Liberty Cabbage Theatre Revival, Tim Harbeson, Micah Blue Smaldone, and the Peaks Island Kids Puppet Show.

This season, the artists who will perform their weird and wonderful works are again from both here and away. On the local side of things, Kate Cox and Matt Rock, who recently took over the former Stillhouse Studio (now The Soundpost), will perform as “Die Leipziger Zwei,” a Deutsche musical theatrical duo. The description-defying performance artist Crank Sturgeon will woo the absurd with his conceptual acrobatics, which are said to involve cardboard, fishes, and acoustic sound, and Dry Rub Theatre will present a puppet show by George McGinty. Blainor McGough will perform tricks with her circus dog Lupito Bossanova, and verse will be had from spoken-word mavens William Burke and Juba. Kelly Nesbitt will perform as one of her alter egos, The Clown Avant Guard Juggler, Barbara Cox, and you can also expect to see things thrown around out on Congress by fire-wielders and jugglers Marita Kennedy-Castro and George Weatherbee. Musically, the Cabaret locals will bring you Adam Schutzman and his Klezmer band, the soft experiments of Big Bus, and the father-son jazz duo The Thunders.

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