Jill's PLAF Diary for Thursday, September 10

Performances: Chlamydia dell'Arte: A Sex-Ed Burlesque (Gigi Naglak and Meghann Williams) (Future performances sold out); Urban Scuba (Brian Sanders/JUNK) (Future performances sold out)

I'm beginning to think my relationship with the Fringe Festival might be a little dysfunctional. I swear, up and down, that it's losing its charm. But then it romances me a little and I'm back in its arms.

Chlamydia dell'Arte: A Sex-Ed Burlesque
If you like burlesque, don't feel icky around conversations regarding sex, get down with nudity, and like shows that make you laugh as much as they make you think, Naglak and Williams' show is for you, kids. The prudish and dour beware: Chlamydia dell'Arte starts off with masturbation (funnily, intelligently, using Romeo and Juliet's famous balcony scene) and it only gets dirtier—and more blunt—from there. Highlights include a segment from "Cooking With Wine" that outlines the joys of chocolate frosting in the bedroom; a sexy, sultry fan dance performed by Naglak to Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do With It"; Williams' spoken-word poem about a bisexual Barbie; a talking vagina puppet (no, really); and a video reel featuring interviews with recognizable Philadelphia women sharing, often with surprising honesty, stories about their sexual histories. But cloaked in the nudity and simulated oral sex and dirty jokes is a very important lesson: if we don't learn about sex, don't talk about sex, sex can turn on us. The show's finale, a striptease performed on both sides of the stage while the screen in the center displays alarming facts and statistics about sexually transmitted diseases, was especially effective.

Unfortunately, Chlamydia dell'Arte closes tonight with a sold-out performance, but Naglak and Williams are both locals who will likely continue to work on and perform the piece. I can only hope so, because it's definitely worth seeing.
Festival rating: Righteous.

Urban Scuba
Once in a while—a long while—I find that I'm watching a performance so surprising that I've been holding my breath for what was probably too long. Urban Scuba was one of those performances.

Although the essential message of Urban Scuba—don't pollute or water—was both over-simplified and heavy-handed, I was able to forgive it because the show itself was just so fucking amazing. To try to describe the experience of Urban Scuba—and it truly is an experience—would be to do it a terrible injustice. It overwhelms all the senses but perhaps taste (and by the end of the show, the chlorine smell is pervasive enough that you almost do taste it) and it's over practically before it's begun and nearly 24 hours later I still struggle to process all that I saw. There were people hanging from what basically behaved like giant rubber bands. There was wall-climbing and somersaulting. There was an aerial see-saw-meets-unicycle act. There was a stage that—holy shit—disappeared and the dancers were suddenly in a pool, which explained the chlorine smell. (In fairness, the entire show was in a pool, but I wasn't expecting actual water. I thought the aerialism was going to stand-in for swimming. Oops.) The show was thrilling and beautiful and weird and wonderful and I just want it to play forever, there in the nearly-empty pool beneath the Gershman Y. Impossible, I know, but a girl can dream, can't she?

Oh, and one note: if you were lucky enough to score a ticket to Urban Scuba before it sold out, get there early and grab a seat in the front or in the very back row. You can thank me later.
Festival rating: ZOMG.