2023 Audience Reviews

Company: Paper Soul
Show: NPC! (Non-Player Character)
Venue: Rarig Center Xperimental

I choose "level up"

This is an awesome choose-your-own adventure that thankfully gets chosen for us. Motz generates the hilarious concept of a “non-player character” … one condemned to eternally replay the briefest snippets of non-action-action and applies that metaphor to his own life in stories that are emotional, inspiring and ring with the truth of experience. Through his eyes we all see our own choices to “level up” or not.

Company: Michael Shaeffer
Show: Everything Bagel
Venue: Strike Theater

The glow of impish fun

I’ve been following Michael Schaeffer for several years, from Kansas City to Minnesota and even to Alaska, and he’s always been a bright light of joy on the Fringe Circuit. This year he brings is best show yet: a collection of slam poetry that explores the elaborate web of pop culture connections that have been winding through the hidey-holes in his head (and ours) for several decades. This year, he has broken the barrier of the written page and his conquest of memorization means that we get to bask in the glow of the impish fun that he shares, with no barriers keeping us from seeing the ideas pop as he plays with his words, ideas and twists of meanings. It’s a very fun hour of a very quirky vision.