AERIAL ALLUSIONS
Lantern Church Gym

Based on the title alone, Aerial Allusions sounds promising. According to the promotional literature, the show is “a journey looking into the perspective of humanity through feminine / masculine viewpoints.”
 I hate to say it, but if that’s what Aerial Allusions is supposed to be about, it sure doesn’t deliver.

The show opens with an attempt at a deep, philosophical monologue that asks the question, “What is humanity?” but, frankly, it comes across as amateurish. The young face of the male actor delivering it further makes it hard to buy into the jaded viewpoint he offers.

To begin with, the “humanity” the show explores is merely a romantic relationship. The so-called “masculine viewpoint” is one of physical abuse, and the “feminine viewpoint” is one of seduction. Huh? I have no idea what generalized comment about society and the sexes the show’s creators were trying to make with that narrowly-focused abuse and seduction thing.

The one redeemable feature of Aerial Allusions is Azana Pilar Phillps’ work on the silks. Clearly, she has an arsenal of dance and circus skills in her background. However, watching her wrap – and unwrap – herself in the silk can only sustain the show for so long, and what it had to do with the show’s overall narrative, I’m not sure.

The background music was good.

This show needs some re-working to save them from further embarrassment or, perhaps, its creators should shoot for a less lofty goal than trying to analyze humanity in the course of 50 minutes.


POWER | PLAY (CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE)
DaDe Art & Design Lab

After missing Cameryn Moore’s two previous Fringe shows — slut (r) evolution and Phone Whore — I was determined to see her offering this time around, power ?| play.

I admire a woman who is brave enough — and comfortable enough with her own body — to talk so openly about sex and her experiences working as a phone-sex operator, as she did in Phone Whore.

Unfortunately, power | play left me disappointed.

Moore promises a “lyrical” and “motivational… storytelling journey into sex itself.”

The show begins by talking about what happens when “sparks” fly between two people, and the sexual choices that can follow once they catch those sparks.

Moore’s show is “lyrical,” as she often goes into rapturous description about the sparks, about kissing and about the sex act.

The biggest complaint I have about her show is, frankly, I found it rather boring, save for a “yuck” moment that involved a knitting needle and a “pee hole.”

I want to be careful to specify that it might just be me who found the show a yawn; I just don’t find ad nauseum talk about the joys of sex that interesting or ground-breaking, especially when there seems no point to it all, no narrative arc connecting everything.

When Moore weighs the pros and cons of sex in certain public places, like an alley, or explores why she cuddles her one-night stands, I couldn’t care less; Moore didn’t make me interested in her or her “story,” not that there really was one.

I went to the show hoping there would be a political statement of some sort or, perhaps, a vicarious peek into a world foreign to most people. But, nope, this show was just about sex, plain and simple.

Moore subtitles her play “choose your own adventure,” but other than serving as a general statement about what can happen after meeting someone, that phrase seems absent in the show. Sure, Moore asks audience members a few provocative questions like, “Should I take my clothes off, or leave them on?” and “Should we use toys, or just ourselves?” but she doesn’t follow through on audience members’ responses in any meaningful way.

The best moments in power ?  play are those when Moore cracks jokes. Clearly, she has the capability to be very humorous. I would have liked to see more of that in this show. Then, perhaps, I would have been convinced to join her on that “storytelling journey into sex itself” that is power ?  play.