If You Don't Like The Act, The Bar Is Open

I've got more pix from Act Your Pants Off but they are mostly of individual performers on stage. I'll edit them for the STL Fringe's use but they are probably of more interest to them than you. 

The venue was interesting, though, It's called Off-Broadway, on the city's far south side. Appropriate enough since it is just off that street that runs almost the entire length of the city proper from north to south. My office is on Broadway downtown. If any given act was not to your liking the bar was open, well-stocked and ready to serve you.

Need to scramble for material for the next couple of days. We leave on Thursday for a long weekend in central Michigan to see our son and his family. Once we get to Clare I can always post pictures of Cops & Doughnuts or my other granddaughter, Audrey.       

City Daily Photo August Theme Day: Young At Heart

I didn't have anything prepared for theme day so I had to hunt through the archives. Found this of my granddaughter, Madeleine, blowing through a kazoo as hard as she could. But backwards.  There are days I'd like to let down my adult guard and do something like this, let the child back out and make rude noises at the world. Most of us probably have those days.     

Zombies Stalk The Stage

More clowning around at AYPO. A show at the upcoming main festival Is called Please Remain Calm (featuring Joe Groebinghoff, above), one of two zombie shows at the festival. (The other is Democrats vs Zombies vs Republicans. How will we tell the difference between the second and third? I mean, just look at Mitch McConnell.)

Love Keaton Treece's shirt in the second picture and Lex Ronan's attitude in the third. And don't miss Alex Carnes' hunkiness at the end. 

The Indomitable Donna Weinstein

Another personality from Act Your Pants off. The judges declared Donna Weinstein the overall winner. Decades of experience have given her a powerful stage presence. She acts like she owns the place and I think she did. Age has its privileges and the only clothing she removed was a strand or two of those big beads.       

They Just Keep Doing it

Taking off articles of clothing, that is, and making people laugh at it. There are all kinds of ways to play that combination. It's the premise of Act Your Pants Off.

By the way, the 2017 Fringe main festival season is just around the corner! Be there or be square. Find info on some of the top shows here (the photo on the upper left for the Snow White show is mine) and complete schedule details with ticket ordering here.        

Why They Call It That

The Act Your Pants Off show has a couple of premises. There are a certain number of professional actors and comedians, seven this time around, and two rounds of performance. If I got it straight, in the first half each actor is given a (usually silly) monologue to perform. In the second round they choose their own, which can be serious material. However, co-MC Desere' Declyne calls out directions from the balcony, ostensibly to test a range of acting skills, telling the actors to do, say, a Home Shopping Network pitch as Mickey Mouse or Euripides as a revival preacher. 

The audience buys "Fringe Bucks" for a dollar each and "tips" their preferred performers. This is totaled. In the second round the audience is encouraged to throw real cash at the actors, which they get to keep. When mistakes are made in the second round, the performers are in theory required to remove articles of clothing, hence Act Your Pants Off. Some bogus scoring occurs and an overall winner is declared. I might not have all the details correct but that's the general idea.

Above, Fringe executive director Matt Kerns feigns surprise over all this. Some performers really do have something to show off, like Alex Carnes, and Lola van Ella shows the right way to take off a glove.   

Act Your Pants Off 2017

Tuesday night brought us the annual fund raiser and warm-up for the St. Louis Fringe's festival season, Act Your Pants Off. It has been featured in these pages before. The festival runs from August 17 to 26 and if you are in the STL area and you don't go you are Not A Friend Of This Blog.

The top photo features the Fringe's executive director, Matthew Kerns, and our mistresses of ceremonies, The Lou's favorite ecdysiast, Lola van Ella, and our premier drag queen, Desire' Declyne. Below, Lola belts out a very hot version of Love For Sale. (Reminds me a bit of Evita Peron singing Don't Cry For Me Argentina. The pose, not the song.) She wasn't wearing this much later in the evening. It was a great time. Plenty more to come.