The Prostate
Daniel Hertz one man show about a prostate exam runs about 12 minutes which is about 11 minutes longer than any prostate exam I’ve ever had and about as enjoyable. It isn’t really funny nor poignant, it’s sort of just a monologue about a prostate exam and the follow up procedures. It lacks any sort of driving force other than to relay what happens. I thought it might be a fun bit, but it’s really lacking anything to say about the prostate, humorous or otherwise. I’m at a loss to understand what Hertz was trying for here and as such, I have to recommend skipping this one.
The Graveyard
A 20 minute video created using Zoom or a similar application featuring 4 high school kids. Written by Alyssa Rae who also portrays one of the teens. The title leads you to believe there might be something spooky in store but there isn’t. It’s simply four friends walking around a graveyard looking for the gravestone of the boy who supposedly haunts the grounds. But that’s just a setting for the characters to be and lends itself to help us accept the artifice of the Zoom format. They are basically just four people surrounded by the pitch black of a graveyard at night. The four actors do a good job of performing their roles naturally, given the fact they are not in the same place. The conversation and where it leads has some thrust but we are left feeling like this is an excerpt from a larger piece. It’s worth checking out if anything for the performers, who along with Rae, are Michael Munoz, Tara Stona, and Elliot Stevens.
A Circus Show
This is a great show for the whole family as long as you don’t have impressionable and daredevil children. It lends a professional quality video recording of an acrobatic act that will have you biting your nails. There is the hint of a story given by a narrator that the two tumblers if you will, are brothers forced to perform until they are released by an audience that doesn’t applaud. They are going to be at this for a very long time. The brothers feats of fitness begin with a giant ring and some balancing acts where they use each others weight to accomplish amazing positions and movements like the one in the photo above. They are so graceful that they make it look easy, which I am sure it’s anything but. They graduate to doing handstands on a precariously balanced stacks of chairs on top of a wooden platform to a height where their feet are literally up in the stage lights and rafters. They end with some high flying on a makeshift teeter totter that will have you flinching waiting for one of them to land wrong and break a leg. Not quite as nerve racking as seeing it live, knowing it was recorded does remove to some extent the fear that they will fall. The narrator and acrobats are Csaba Szilagyi, Zachary Miller, and Alex Wiggins.
The Stages of MN 
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