WWeek.com – By Stephen Marc Beaudoin
Why was it that the clown makeup bedecked drag queen moved me beyond description, but the well-pedigreed contemporary dance company from NYC left me cold?
This is what’s been knocking around in my too-stuffed head this morning after seven consecutive hours of TBA: 07. Rushing from venue to venue in haste to catch the next big thing, it’s all too easy to suffer from cultural over-saturation at TBA. Perhaps that’s the point. But after one really excellent meal, why would you want to rush on to another?
I was ambling down Northwest Everett Street in the Pearl when I had my first “accidental” TBA experience: a chance encounter at NW 13th and Everett with a participant in the Fest’s “Reading Out Loud ” performance. As the late 30-something bearded white guy in t-shirt and jeans rattled off lines from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22–“But he won’t be there, will he?” “No – Major Major won’t be back until after lunch…”–a trio of middle-aged suburbanites stopped and listened for maybe 30 seconds, bursting into spontaneous applause (catching the reader off guard mid-sentence) then rambled on down Everett. They were heading to the Northwest Neighborhood Cultural Center to catch Taylor Mac . So was I.