by Kirby Lindsay, posted 17 March 2014
On Thursday, March 20th, the doors open at Hale’s Palladium – a keg warehouse located on the western fringes of Fremont – for four weeks of vaudeville performances. Across Seattle, at the Broadway Performance Hall, two weeks of bawdy burlesque shows, starting March 28th, will arouse audiences, as they do each year!
What Is Moisture Festival?
This is Moisture Festival. It’s an early gift of spring for those willing to look for something more than staid, franchised and predictable entertainment. It’s a collaboration of highly-skilled performers, mixing many bizarre talents – often humorously – in acts created to stretch the imagination and delight witnesses.
Each show features a live band playing amidst a whirlwind schedule of aerialists, jugglers, comedians, dancers, rope acts, bubble blowers, clowns, acrobats, can-can girls, contortionists, tap dancers, drill teams, strip-teasers, fan dancers, and musical numbers. Best of all, each Moisture Festival show features a different combination of performers, bands, MC – but all come with that potential for spontaneous, impromptu comedy inherent to live, cutting-edge performances.
“It’s hard to describe,” acknowledged Sherrie Crow, a Moisture Festival donor, who also noted, “It’s hard to get people to go.” Crow, and Mike Broz, were at a recent ‘thank you’ party given by Moisture to donors, which included entertainment by Festival performers, food by Pecado Bueno, dessert by Theo Chocolate and drinks from other donors, including Sparkle Donkey tequila. Crow and Broz spoke while riding the Hale’s Ales Brewery double-decker bus, to free flying trapeze lessons given by SANCA, another special feature of the party. They both agreed that getting people to go to a Moisture Festival show for the first time can be remarkably difficult – particularly given how much everyone who does attend walks away wondering why they waited!
First Week Won’t Wait
Begun in 2004 as a five-day festival under a big top tent on the Fremont Outdoor Cinema/U-Park lot, Moisture has grown to be the largest comedy/varieté festival of its kind in the world, the organizers claim. Certainly, there isn’t much else like Moisture Festival around – and Seattle audiences have a few short weeks to enjoy it.
Last year, the producers went all out to celebrate the 10th Anniversary. In 2013 they presented 52 different shows at four venues. Yet, don’t expect Moisture Festival organizers to rest on the tumbling mats for 2014 – the urge to create bigger and better stunts runs strong through this group of outrageous performers.
Audience members, however, often succumb to a Fremont tendency towards procrastination. Yet, Moisture Festival shows will sell out, and the show does end April 13th. Going the first week means getting in on the secret early, and being witness to the performances that procrastinators miss!
A Brief Four Weeks Of Moisture
First Week: The fun starts in the Palladium (where the founders moved the Festival for its second year, and where each year the Festival volunteers, called Hammer Heads, have improved and transformed it into a professional theater.) On Sunday, March 23rd, Moisture will host a special benefit show for B.F. Day Elementary School, and Monday, March 24th, will be the first of special, educational presentations at the Palladium – this one with Dr. Patch Adams, a powerful medical social activist.
Second Week: At the Palladium, evening shows continue on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with the late-night shows (where the jokes get a bit more blue, and a the acts a lot more raucous,) on Friday & Saturday. However, this will be the first week for burlesque (blue, and bawdy) at the Broadway Performance Hall, on Friday and Saturday night. On Sunday, March 30th, vaudeville varieté will come to Broadway with a special benefit show for the Backbone Campaign, a local political activist’s organization. Back at Hale’s, on Monday, March 31st, John Carney, one of the world’s finest magicians, will give a seminar on presentation, routining, misdirection and creativity in creating magic.
April Fool’s Day: As might be expected, the classy clowns at Moisture like to celebrate what they call ‘a day of play’ – and this year they have arranged a special collaboration (already sold out before Moisture even officially arrived) with Teatro ZinZanni. Teatro is widely-regarded, with reason, as the penultimate in contemporary circus shows, and over the last ten years, Moisture Festival has shared performers and audiences with them. This year the two have come together to form ‘The MishMash Circus Bash’ on April 1st, with the music by the Mish Mash Circus Band, under the antique Teatro spiegeltent on Mercer Street.
Third Week: The fun continues, with many Moisture mischief and mayhem moving it along! Varieté shows continue at Hale’s Palladium. On Saturday, April 5th, at 10a, at West of Lenin theater, a special, limited-admission workshop will take place with Kenny Raskin teaching those who already have some acting or clowning experience, tricks of the trade for physical comedy. The Libertease Burlesque shows at Broadway get additional boosts with the Buckaroos Comedic Male Revue on April 3rd, and another benefit varieté show on April 6th for SANCA.
Fourth & Final Week: The Broadway Performance Hall is taken over as the Festival and SANCA join forces to form the IMPulse Circus Collective. Based on a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, this inspirational performance explores the perversity of human impulses, and the amazing acrobatic turns of talented SANCA artists. Meanwhile, back in Fremont, Hale’s Palladium welcomes the final line-up of performers, performing the final line-up of shows, with shows that always sell-out, and leave procrastinators musing on next year…
Buy Tickets Now. Seriously.
For those who haven’t gone, attend Moisture Festival now. For those who have seen the spectacle before, let nothing stand in your way of enjoying another year of the comedy/varieté, vaudeville of Fremont, jaw-dropping great time that is Moisture Festival. Remember, it may have just started but it will end soon.
Tickets for all shows can be purchased, in advance, through the Moisture Festival website. A few tickets can be purchased at the doors before certain shows, but not once they sell-out…and they do. More Moisture can be predicted for the future, but this is the time to get in while you can!
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- At Moisture Festival, Hammer Heads ‘Make Art Work’
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©2014 Kirby Lindsay. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Reproduction, adaptation or distribution without permission is prohibited.