Fourth Solo Performance Festival Starts Riveting Audiences Right Now

I'm not a sketch comedy person or--outside of Spalding Gray and Mike Daisey--much into monologues, but I have gone to the Solo Performance Festival for the past three years and have had each time a revelatory moment where I realize I will be coming back. There's a richness to the offerings--storytelling, music, dance, fiction, memoirs--that guarantees you'll find something intriguing, and the level of craft tends to be high.

SPF #4 is just kicking off and runs through April 3 (a full series pass is just $99). I see twenty different performers in the lineup, so what is that, $5 per show with the pass? Amazing. Then, look at the creator/performers: Tamara Ober, Paul Budraitis (interviewed here), Ki Gottberg, Peggy Platt, Suzanne Morrison, Waxie Moon, Erin Jorgensen, Norman "SUBPRIME" Bell (interviewed here)...

The right-sized production costs of solo performance are compelling, but tonight and a few times throughout the run, there's also "Best in Shorts," where you get an evening of solo performance small plates, as it were.

For a taste of the real stuff, that's Tamara Ober's Pipa, above, the story of "an accident-prone girl who is unable to take the direct route to anywhere." Ober, a member of Zenon Dance Company since 2002, has been called "charmingly rambunctious" by the Star-Tribune, which is an apt description for SPF itself.