Philadelphia Weekly

Choosing which shows to attend for this year's Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe can be a daunting task, so we've compiled a list of some of the festival's most enticing productions.

This year Karen Getz again takes audiences on a trip down memory lane with her new dance-theater work Disco Descending (Aug. 29-Sept. 7). Featuring an all-star troupe of local comic actors and dancers, Descending transplants the myth of Orpheus to 1978, when the Bee Gees reigned over the pop charts and platform shoes reached dizzying heights.

Thaddeus Phillips has danced on tabletops and performed Shakespeare in a kiddy pool. Now the always-original Phillips and the company Lucidity Suitcase International return to Live Arts with The Melting Bridge (Sept. 10-13). The final installment in Lucidity Suitcase's "Americas Trilogy," Bridge focuses on the Mayan and Hopi prophecies forecasting a "cataclysmic world change." Moving between a Mexico City subway, the Amazonian jungle and a wrestling ring near the North Pole, Bridge is a globe-hopping, time-traveling investigation of the dangers that await the planet.

In a radically different vein, those delightful heroines from yesteryear Martha Manning (the wonderful Grace Gonglewski) and her galpal Dotty return to the festival via the Internet in Martha and Dotty: Microwave Mambo. A follow-up to last year's charming podcast play The Many Men of Martha Manning, Mambo catches us up with Martha and Dotty in 1958, when the pair are involved in an adventure that takes them from a Jersey truck stop to the casinos of Cuba. A parody of old radio soap operas, the six-episode series from Brat Productions is available for 99 cents an episode at bratproductions.org.

Just back from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Temple Theaters is remounting its acclaimed world premiere production of In Conflict (Sept. 3-13). Adapted for the stage by Douglas C. Wager (who also directs) from Yvonne Latty's book, Conflict is a series of monologues introducing us to 19 veterans of the Iraq war. Refusing to take sides, Conflict presents a variety of perspectives on the vets' experiences in Iraq and subsequent return to the U.S. Featuring a remarkable ensemble of Temple University students, Conflict was easily the best new play to debut in town last season.

Hotel Obligado explores the rise in HIV infections among gay men using crystal meth in the return of the company's alarming dance-theater work Beauty Is (Sept. 1-5). Featuring Robin Marcotte's sexually expressive choreography, Beauty is far from a simple antidrug play. Acknowledging meth's allure while also warning of its dangers, this edgy, visceral work vividly displays both the joy of unrestrained passion and the potentially fatal consequences of engaging in unprotected sex.

This year's Live Arts Festival features a number of collaborations between Philadelphia and international artists, including J�r�me Bel's amusing look at the nature of live performance in The show must go on (Sept. 11-13). Staged for the first time with a cast of American dancers (including performers from the Pennsylvania Ballet and Rennie Harris Puremovement), this discipline-defying, convention-busting work examines the unique relationship between audience and performer.