On Wednesday, Dartmouth's Displaced Theater Company will be presenting the critically acclaimed show from Montana-based fringe theater troupe The Missoula Oblongata, entitled "The Wonders of the World: Recite!" Preceding the show will be the performance of three short plays written by Latif Nasser '08 and directed by Sarah Hughes '07.
Members of The Missoula Oblongata will give pointers on playwriting, performing and clowning in a one-hour workshop before the show begins.
Nasser, an avid fan of The Missoula Oblongata, only recently discovered his affinity for fringe theater, in which performers use unique and wacky theatrics to entertain the audience.
"I did a research project which involved my traveling around a bunch of fringe festivals across Canada and the United States. I got to see a lot of experimental theater," Nasser said. "I saw between 40 and 50 shows of all thinkable genres in all kinds of spaces. I found [The Missoula Oblongata's show] to be like nothing I had ever seen."
Now Nasser incorporates trademark elements of The Missoula Oblongata's performances into his own plays, such as birthdays, cakes and an abundance of props.
In his travels Nasser first observed The Missoula Oblongata while attending the out-of-towners showcase at the Minneapolis Fringe with the Mixed Blood Theater. The performance of these particular fringe artists particularly stuck with him, even after he had unknowingly "brushed off" three of its members as inexperienced kids. In that festival The Missoula Oblongata produced a show Nasser remembers as a bit messy and disorganized. But ultimately, he was extremely entertained. Of the 40 to 50 fringe performances he saw that summer, Nasser was only interested and impressed enough to see two more than once. One of them was the show put on by The Missoula Oblongata.
"They totally reinvent space and play with the notion of theater without being brash or annoying or relying on shock value," Nasser said. He also praised the troupe's unique compactness.
"Their show is totally mobile," he said. "Everything fits in their family-sized minivan and the hamburger-style box on top of it -- including the lights and all of the sound they use." As The Missoula Oblongata is an entirely self-sufficient, famously do-it-yourself theater company, the same people who write the scripts also design lighting schemes and build set pieces.
At the Missoula Oblongata show Nasser saw last summer, critics scolded the troupe for dropping one of their main props, a cake, making a mess on stage that was seemingly not part of the act, and slipping and sliding on that mess as they tried to clean it up while performing. But now critics nationwide can only glow when speaking of the fringe group and their new show. According to the web site of the Bedlam Theater in Minneapolis, the show has been "named one of the 'Top Ten' productions at the 2006 Montreal Fringe and listed among 'Best of the Fringe' by See Magazine in Edmonton, Alberta." Also, "Wonders" has been recognized as one of "A Dozen Defining Art-World Moments in 2006" by the Missoula Independent.
"It's a fun, fun show," Nasser said. "I felt the same way watching their show as I did the first time I saw a Marx brothers movie."
