Philadelphia Weekly

Master of puppets: Sebastienne Mundheim's new work is ethereal and heavy.

�Rare Bird

Sea of Birds

Ivars the Butterfly Catcher, Gregor the Tormented Meadow Dweller and several other eerily created puppets move in shadows and dimmed lights, while Philly's Sebastienne Mundheim speaks in her somber voice about war and departure and an American child's active imagination. Mundheim describes her work as, "Fragile paper sculpture animated by dancers, a lyrical voice, a sonic landscape, live musicians, light and shadow play." It's Pan's Labyrinth on steroids and in person. Her sculptures move with an eerie starkness, as performers shift through their routines weaving in layer after layer into the pieces, while Mundheim and her five performers explore "how we inherit the stories of our parents." It's also one of the few pieces, according to Mundheim, that successfully merges dance, puppetry and storytelling. If you're looking for a Fringe event that will enchant and challenge your eyes and ears with dizzying layers and performance styles, this is the one for you. (St. John Barned-Smith)

�looking Glass

Wandering Alice

Has it ever stuck you as absurd that an audience experiences dance immobile and nailed to a seat? Philadelphia's Nichole Canuso Dance Co. melts the wall between punter and hoofer with its work-in-progress Wandering Alice--inspired both by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Haruki Murakami's surrealist novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (which, like Alice, discovers the demented lurking just behind the mundane). Creator and choreographer Nichole Canuso plays Alice and leads an 11-strong cast through an entirely original production. The audience members, meanwhile, are liberated from their sheeplike subservience and roam the dreamscaped Christian Neighbourhood House, discovering the production or (much more exciting) having the production find them. It's high art on drugs, basically--a wonderful concept and one that'd make a fantastic Avengers episode (leading British scientists suffer increasingly surreal and grotesque deaths at the hands of the Red Queen, the Walrus and the Rabbit). It all sounds exactly like the sort of mentalist event the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe was designed to foist upon us. (Steven Wells)

Wawapalooza 2: Get Shorti

You may have Google-read that the last issue of Adbusters dug the hipster up and sucked the marrow from his groovy bones. They say the only people who really hate hipsters are hipsters. But you know who really, really hate hipsters? The poor bastards at Wawa. Can you imagine the horror of working in an average-to-shit convenience store endlessly patronized by a procession of smug oafs who think there's some kind of ironic kudos to be gained by the pretense that mediocrity is thrillingly authentic (see the ironic smugster demonstrations that accompany attempts to shut one of these ho-hum shitholes down)? The creators of Wawapalooza get it. That's why their show was one of the runaway artistic successes of last year's Fringe. This year's update features demented attack-sketches savaging Guitar Hero, sweatpants, online dating, the Jersey shore and of course Wawa--the store where coffee goes to die. There, I said it. (S.W.)

Sweet By-and-By

Through Sept. 13. Various dates and show times. $25. Arts Bank at the University of the Arts, 601 S. Broad St. 215.413.1318. www.livearts-fringe.org

Forget about DiMaggio. It's Joe Hill we need most in these dark days of war and the radical right. Hill is the legendary labor activist, rabble-rouser and artist who fought the good fight early last century. As Phil Ochs sang of Hill, "It's the life of a rebel that he chose to live/ It's the death of a rebel that he died." It's fitting that one of Philly's most rebellious artistic groups should take on Hill's life for this year's Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. Dubbed "one of the few groups successfully taking theater in a new direction" by The New York Times, Pig Iron Theatre Co. collaborates with Daniel Rudholm of Sweden's Teater Slava for this one-man multimedia show. Rudholm plays Hill's hilarious and inspiring songs on banjo and concertina, taking us on a journey from his native Sweden all the way to his eventual execution in Utah on trumped-up charges. It's an amazing work that will have you wondering where our Joe Hill is. (Jack Schonewolf)