What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever seen a live performance?

OK, if anyone answers, “My bedroom, dude!”, I may actually throw up.

Wild Space Dance Company is performing a show on and around the marsupial bridge this weekend, so I thought it was time to think about Weird Performance Spaces. (Actually I wouldn’t call performing on a bridge weird—that is just really cool.)

I’m a guy who has seen a lot of performance in my life, so of course, I’ve ended up in some weird places. Here’s my Top Five Weird Performance Places:

1. The dark little room called a theatre at The Minneapolis Fringe Festival: I was in Minneapolis for a wedding with a friend of mine who is a hardware salesman. When we finished with our wedding festivities and found ourselves with an extra day in Minneapolis, he told me he would take me for a steak dinner on his expense account. I told him I’d return the favor and take him to a play. When we took our place in the “theatre” after stuffing ourselves with steak and booze, I began to get a little nervous with the realization that we had climbed a rickety set of stairs in an old office building and walked across the so-called set to find our seats. I was then horrified as my SOUND OF MUSIC loving friend was forced to endure a play that featured such delightful images as an overweight bald man climbing moaning from a hole on the stage, an on-stage simulated birth, and the eventual eating of the freshly hatched play baby. When the stage manager who was situated a row or two behind us began to wail in his dual role as the eaten baby, I knew this was the weirdest of the weird places I had been.

2. An abandoned courtyard on the Upper West Side of New York City: I recall receiving odd directions from a friend of mine who was doing duties as a theatre reviewer for several small New York City publications to meet him on a corner in the midst of a Manhattan neighborhood for the show we were to see. We met and began walking toward our destination: a rundown building that seemed to be home to crack heads, rats and a random cockroach or five thousand. Shimmying our way through a tight alley between this pile of rubble and the building next to it, we came upon a courtyard that had been outfitted with folding chairs and a dangerous looking collection of lights. We took our seats, and the spectacle unfolded before us. I don’t really remember what I saw since I was pretty concerned about mice running up my pants legs, but I do vaguely remember that the starring midget had a really beautiful voice.

3. An old bank in Philadelphia: A friend of mine was working at a theatre in the city of brotherly love that was doing a production of OEDIPUS REX in an old bank. That’s the one where the Greek guy gouges his eyes out when he finds out he’s been sleeping with his mother. Who can blame the guy? The show wasn’t really weird, but it was a little odd watching it standing up in a bank. I couldn’t help thinking that folks who had once opened Christmas Clubs and gotten free toasters with new accounts had never imagined that the grand stairway in this regal old financial institution would someday be covered in a river of sticky fake blood because someone had fallen a little too hard for mommy.

4. The Astor Theater at the Brady Street Pharmacy: A playwright friend of mine asked me to a reading of his newest play at the Brady Street Pharmacy. I thought, “Is he serious?” I mean I couldn’t imagine seeing a play somewhere where I could buy toothpaste and laxatives at intermission. But I went to support my friend. I’ll even admit that the Brady Street Pharmacy has a space that doesn’t look too weird that they call their theatre. I still can’t get over watching a performance and smelling a couple of sunny side up eggs with a side of bacon sizzling away only a few feet away at the attached Brady Street Pharmacy lunch counter.

5. My bedroom dude!: OK, I’m throwing up all over myself right now.

Here in Milwaukee we have plenty of swell performance spaces (The Marcus Center, The Broadway Theatre Center, The Pabst Theater, and The Milwaukee Rep complex to name a few). We also have some that could be called a little weird and quirky. The aforementioned Astor Theater, the basement theatre of the Brumder Mansion Bed and Breakfast, and any “gymnatorium” in the metro area converted for performance usage are spots that come to mind. But I’m eager to know more.

Here’s your mission: send me your experiences at Weird Performance Places. I will post The Weirdest of The Weird sometime in the coming weeks. E-mail your weird thoughts to artsyschmartsy@yahoo.com. The weirder the better, I say. I’m even willing to hear about your weird bedroom performances. But please, hold on to the home movies, OK?