Suppose I told you that Australia's Back to Back Theatre works with "intellectually disabled" actors? What would you expect from one of their shows? Drama therapy? Elementary theater games? A bunch of sweet simpletons making an endearing hash of, say, a scene from The Odd Couple? Or The Boys Next Door? I know I imagined all sorts of feel-good crap—until I saw a DVD of Back to Back's Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, as staged at Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne. Believe me, the thing is utterly, wittily, sometimes even brutally crap-free. Continue reading >> $28
The most succinct first-person account of living with Alzheimer's disease remains the one provided by the first person diagnosed with it. Auguste Deter was 51 years old and otherwise healthy when she was brought, in 1901, to Dr. Alois Alzheimer's clinic in Frankfurt, Germany, with a strange case of what looked like premature senility characterized by confusion, volatile behavior, and severe memory lapses. "I have lost myself," she said. That about sums it up. The plaques and tangles Alzheimer would find in Deter's brain after her death, five years later, were strangling more than her neurons. They were destroying her identity, too. The past makes us who we are; if we lose access to it, we lose access to ourselves. Continue reading >> $36-$70
Five to six comics compete for a $500 prize every week.
One-woman cabaret starring Krystal LaFianza-Pitzen. $5