Northwest New Works Festival Starts Tonight

Oh, the Northwest New Works Festival is back this weekend and it's promising to be another fantastic installment of our favorite annual creative mindfuck. This year’s festival offers 4 showcases, featuring 18 artists and performance groups and spanning two weekends at On the Boards.

On the Boards says:

Over the last 24 years the festival has become the Northwest's premiere laboratory for the creation of cutting edge, risk-taking performance. During the course of 2 weekends on 2 stages audiences can experience a spectrum of brand-new performances and works-in-progress by Pacific Northwest-based artists and ensembles. These artists are defining the region's future in dance, music and theater. Don't miss your chance to see tomorrow's innovators today.

We say, martial arts dancing, surrealist improv, "disturbing sound scores" and karaoke? Sold.

Two portions we are looking forward to in tonight's show:

- Greg Bowers aka Ginger Moloko: Moloko’s The End of the World Songbook cabaret includes "Candybar," a song based on the following exchange from an episode of COPS:

Cop: "Do you have any weapons?"
Lady of unsound mind: "I have my voice. Butterfingers! Whatchamacallits! Snickers!"

- Tikka Sears and the Memory War Project: Sears began work created under compulsion after reading the story of a Disney cartoonist who kept herself and her family alive in Auschwitz by painting for Josef Mengele (the “Let’s sew twins together for science” guy). The cartoonist, now in her 80s, is fighting to get her drawings back from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, who refuse to give them up, arguing that the "work was created under compulsion and no longer the property of the artist."

Though we don’t want to end on a Holocaust note and give the impression that NWWF is going to be heavy on the “heavy” and light on the “fun.” There will be fun! Loads of it.

Go to the site for a full schedule and ticket info.

Tonight's show starts at 8pm.