Can't Someone Pull Some Strings To Save Puppetworks?

Well this is a total bummer. The Daily News is reporting that the school bus strike may close down Park Slope's legendary marionette theater, Puppetworks, which has been entertaining neighborhood kids for 30 plus years. 

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[FIPS WAS THERE...]: XANADU AT THE OLD STONE HOUSE

The Cast Of Piper Theatre's 'Xanadu' [VIA NINEDAVES]

We here at FIPS spend a hell of a lot of time out and about in Brooklyn, attending outdoor concerts, comedy shows and various other events. So [FIPS Was There...] is where we're gonna' talk about all this shit.

I am what you’d call a Fanadu: a "Fan of Xanadu." I saw the 1980 Olivia Newton-John/Gene Kelly disco-movie-musical no less than a billion times growing up. The roller-skating, the legwarmers, the perpetual wind blowing through Olivia Newton-John’s hair: it was all too perfect in my eyes.

Honestly, how my parents didn’t know I was gay back then still baffles me.  

Of course, as a kid, I wasn’t paying attention to the absolutely horrible plot. A group of Greek muses, lead by Newton-John’s Kira, come alive out of a mural to inspire an artist named Sonny Malone (the cute Michael Beck) to open a roller disco? Yeah – that’s not exactly Oscar-winning material there. But it doesn’t matter: the movie is so bad, it’s good. I mean, it’s Olivia Newton-John on roller skates, dancing and singing to the music of Electric Light Orchestra. Factor in Gene Kelly, playing some dude Kira inspired forty years earlier, and you have the absolute definition of the word “craptacular.”

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[Fips Was There...] Raisin in the Sun At The Gallery Players

Pictured (l to r): Kwaku Driskell and Ross Johnson in The Gallery Players’ production of A Raisin in the Sun. Photo by Bella Muccari.We here at FIPS spend a hell of a lot of time out and about in Brooklyn, attending outdoor concerts, comedy shows and various other events. So [FIPS Was There...] is where we're gonna' talk about all this shit.

Lately there's been some fierce debating going on Park Slope, and it’s not just the members of the Food Co-op who were just featured on The Daily Show. I’m talking about the Younger family of Chicago’s Southside, currently taking up residence at The Gallery Players in their production of A Raisin in the Sun.

This production of Lorraine Hansberry’s American classic, inspired by Hansberry’s own experiences growing up Black in Chicago, runs through this weekend. The details of the plot are surely familiar to most who have sat through a high school American literature course: Tempers flare as the Youngers each propose what should be done with the $10,000 life insurance check they’re about to collect. Walter Lee (Kwaku Driskell) wants to invest in a liquor store. Beneatha (a lovely Brittany Bellizare) wants to use the money to pay for her medical school. Lena (Hope Harley) wants to move the family out of the two-bedroom, basement apartment they share and into a house.

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[FIPS Was There…] 'A Man Of No Importance' at the Gallery Players

Pictured (l to r): Charlie Owens, Spencer Robinson, John Weigand, Lorinne Lampert and Julianne Katz in The Gallery Players’ A Man of No Importance. Photo by Bella Muccari.

We here at FIPS spend a hell of a lot of time out and about in Brooklyn, attending outdoor concerts, comedy shows and various other events. So [FIPS Was There...] is where we're gonna' talk about all this shit.

Alfie Byrne could really use an “It’s Get Better” campaign.

After all, it’s Dublin in 1965, and Alfie’s a middle-aged, single bus conductor who’s constantly getting in trouble with his boss. He lives with his sister, who criticizes his cooking at every turn and won’t marry until Alfie’s found a nice girl of his own. Oh, and the production of Oscar Wilde’s Salame that he’s directing at the local church has just been shut down. I mean, regardless of what his sexual orientation is, the man needs to know that things won’t always be this shitty.

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[FIPS WAS THERE...] 'LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS' AT THE GALLERY PLAYERS

From Left: Audrey II, Philip Jackson Smith (Seymour) and Emily McNamara (Audrey). | Photo by Bella Muccari

We here at FIPS spend a hell of a lot of time out and about in Brooklyn, attending outdoor concerts, comedy shows and various other events. So [FIPS Was There...] is where we're gonna' talk about all this shit.

When it comes to cult classic Halloween movie-musicals, The Rocky Horror Picture Show pretty much has the market cornered. But as much as I enjoy Tim Curry playing a sweet transvestite, I’ve always had a thing for the 1986 flop Little Shop of Horrors. The film, based on the 1982 off-Broadway musical by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman (which itself was a based on the 1960 dark comedy starring a young Jack Nicholson), has always hooked me. I don’t know if it’s Rick Moranis’s doughy performance, or Ellen Greene’s gloriously odd vocals or even Steve Martin’s creepy ridiculousness that brings me back time and time again. But for some reason, that kooky gang and their people-eating plant just makes me happy.

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