It’s not too late to get into the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival with the whole family! Don’t miss these family friendly shows that are suitable for all ages.

Philadelphia Live Arts Festival

Sequence 8: Fresh from their 2011 Live Arts Festival hit Traces, 7 Fingers returns with the U.S. premiere of Sequence 8. The Montreal-based circus company creates circus on a human scale—placing the extraordinary element of circus in ordinary contexts. In extreme close-up, Sequence 8 features aerial hoops, rings, Korean board, cigar box juggling, Chinese acrobatics, and incredible feats of balance and beauty—all by performers whose basic human desires and qualities audiences can relate to.

The show takes inspiration from C. G. Jung’s quote, “the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” Emotions are so heightened they spring into action; relationships evolve until they spur actual velocity. Set not in a specific time or place but rather on a vertical canvas, Sequence 8 plays with how relationships and encounters with the other transform and propel the performers into wildly dynamic acrobatic movement.

In short: circus up close, propulsive acrobatics, Chinese hoop-diving, cigar box juggling, collision theatrics, suspended in air.

Merriam Theater
250 South Broad Street (at Spruce)
Wheelchair accessible
$20–$55 (students + 18–25 tickets $15, 17- and-under tickets 1⁄2 price)* / 90 minutes
Sept. 18 at 7pm
Sept. 20 at 7pm
Sept. 21 at 8pm
Sept. 22 at 2pm + 8pm
Sept. 23 at 2pm

*Tickets for Sequence 8 are sold ONLY through the Kimmel Center box office at www.kimmelcenter.org, 215-893-1999, or in person at the Kimmel Center, 300 South Broad Street.

Open Air: Imagine walking along on a balmy evening in late September, and you’re looking up the Ben Franklin Parkway. You speak into your phone and twenty-four robotic searchlights—placed along a half-mile stretch of the Parkway—move to the sound of your voice, interpreting your inflections into motion and transforming the city’s skyline. You stop speaking (or singing or humming or rapping) and the lights continue to move, controlled now by other speakers collaborating with you from up and down the Parkway.

Famous for creating interactive installations on intimate and citywide scales, artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer underlines the connective, poetic uses of technologies originally developed for largely military and surveillance purposes. In the sky over the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, he enabled thousands of individuals to pre-design 200,000 watts worth of lights for twenty seconds at a time. In Open Air he brings his distinctly personal aesthetic to Philly and empowers you to animate your skyline. Using the custom-made mobile app, “Philly open Air”, your voice brings these enormous three-dimensional formations to life.

FREE/ Ongoing from September 20 to October 14 over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Eakins Oval Information Center: 24th street and the Ben Franklin Parkway, across from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Smartphones will be available for loan.
Sister Cities Park Information Outpost: 18th street and Logan square. Both locations will broadcast the voices of participants, and have seating areas for watching the lights. Information center hours: 7:30pm–11pm.

A schedule of programs and nightly events for Open Air is at associationforpublicart.org/open-air

This Town Is a Mystery: This Town Is a Mystery combines local performance and dinner in four Philadelphia homes. Created over the course of several months by Headlong and each home’s residents, the dance works are performed by the residents in their own living rooms—transformed into a fully teched stage—with no professional performers.

Five easy steps:
1. Buy a ticket at thistownisamystery.com
2. Make a dish.
3. Travel to a neighborhood. Sit in the living room with ten other audience members. The lights go down.
4. Show time. The household performs their piece, blending stories of their lives, the household, and the neighborhood.
5. Potluck dinner. Good thing you brought your dish.

South Philadelphia, West Mt Airy, Tacony, Wissinoming
$28-35 (student + 25-and-under tickets $18) / 110 minutes
On-going Sept 7-22.
Venue address will arrive by email one week after you purchase your ticket. Household letters (A, B, C, D) correspond to different houses. All venues are in Philadelphia.

Philly Fringe Shows

Seek and Hide: Help! Someone has lost her imagination, and she needs you to guide her on a quest to find it! In this theatrical adventure through Smith Playhouse, an intimate audience navigates the terrain alongside the actors. For children ages 5 and up and anyone who’s ever needed help finding their imagination. $10/ 45 minutes

Smith Memorial Playground and Playhouse
Reservoir Drive, East Fairmount Park
Remaining shows: Sept. 22 + 23 at 10am, 11:30am + 1pm

For more info please visit http://www.livearts-fringe.org