Local theater company Hand2Mouth just provided me with two pairs of tickets to their new work-in-progress show Uncanny Valley, to be given away on Blogtown with the caveat that they’re hoping the tickets will reach non-typical theatergoers—people who are perfectly comfortable spending money on a movie or a concert, but don’t usually make it to see theater. Hand2Mouth are pretty critically beloved in this town, but, as was recently pointed out on Questionland, theater critics are approximately as relevant as an endocrinologist on the moon. (Thanks, jerks.) So here’s my idea: Email me if you’re interested in the tickets, explain why we should give them to you, and I’ll pick two winners. BUT if you win you have to write a 200-word review for us to run on Blogtown next week. Thus Hand2Mouth gets an outsider’s perspective on their show, Blogtown readers get the perspective of one of their trusted (?) own, and I get to further reinforce my own obsolescence. Deal? Put “Uncanny Valley” in the subject line so my spam filter doesn’t eat you. I’ll cut this off Tuesday at 3 pm, let’s say.
A little background: Hand2Mouth is one of a small handful of reliably experimental, challenging local performance troupes. Their show Repeat After Me was a really great exploration of America identity via pop music (that show made the cut for TBA:07, though I was less fond of the TBA version), and they’re fresh off a successful New York run of their last show, Everyone Who Looks Like you. Uncanny Valley is about memory, and it’s this Friday-Sunday at Reed College (details here), and that’s all that I know about it.
This can only end well. In the same way that in movies, when you car is stalled out on train tracks, you always manage to get out just in time.
No joke: my great-grandfather died because his truck stalled on the train tracks and he couldn’t get out in time.
So… that bodes well.