Buffalo Rising Online

Jan 25th 2007, 11:57am By Tom Dooney

Theater Plus, the woman's theater company under the Alleyway Theater umbrella, will be pretty darn busy over the next few weeks. So busy, in fact, that the T+ programming spills into just about every available space in the building...Alleyway's mainstage, its cabaret space and its gallery will all be deployed to showcase arts, performed and presented, by women.

Theatre Plus is the new name for the company originally named Pandora's Box. The new name reflects a new administration but the woman focused performances and programming tradition continue as in the same vein. In the coming weeks, Kim Piazza, artistic director of Theater Plus, pulls together three different theater bills.

First up is Plus And Beyond (an event known as Beyond The Box in the Pandora Box days). For two weekends Theatre Plus combines theater as well as performances by actresses, dancers and musicians and gallery hangings of photos and paintings by female artists.

Victoria Perez-Maggiolo will perform scenes from David Mamet's play Oleanna. Audiences may remember (...or should remember) Perez-Maggiolo for her comic turn in "Babies Or Bust", a highlight of Theatre Plus' production of earlier this season.

Darice Sampson and Destiny Sampson are mother-daughter dancers and, as enrolled members of the Seneca nations, will perform traditional dances from that culture. Also on the dance card is Karen Sterling who, accompanied by driving rock music, uses fire as her partner. (Plenty of seating in the back of the theater for the timid.)

Music will be provided by composer-singer Tina-Marie Williams, a young performer who, at the mere age of 16, won national awards in the Kingdom Bound talent search for Christian rock. Cherie Ruben appears with her band, Dosa Reality. Patti Bartkowiak plays her own original piano compositions.

The lobby gallery will be used to display photos of Kristin Partis and the paintings of Karen Sterling. Partis uses infrared photography to capture hidden scenes from nature in upstate New York and throughout the northeast. Sterling's paintings are in the Warhol-pop tradition.

Phew.

Then, Theatre Plus proves there are no age limits in appreciating the work of female artists by presenting, for two performances, a dance-theater adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Matchgirl. Veteran director and choregrapher Bernadine deMike uses a youthful cast to illustrate the story of a young girl who remains hopeful in the face of the worst of adversity.

On the mainstage, Theatre Plus welcomes Air Heart, a new show written and performed by Mara Nemanis, who has been absent from Buffalo for far too long. Nemanis is an innovative and provocative actor who pulls together a variety of disciplines... from clowning to acrobatics... to perform highly imaginative, physicalized works.

Instigated by the ambitions of Amelia Earhart, as well as the legends about her, Nemanis has created a distinctive history about this pioneer of airplane flight. Earhart monopolized headlines with her adventures then, at peak of her career, disappeared during a trans-Pacific flight. The stage is dominated by a sculpture that is a cross between and airplane and a jungle gym (plane sculpture by Laura Shults and Tim Scofield) and Nemanis dominates the sculpture as she recounts and relives Earhart's adventures.

Advance ticket purchase for any of these shows can be made by phone (716-852-2600) or online (alleyway.com). Box office opens 30 minutes before showtime.

Plus and Beyond JAN 18 - 27; THURS & FRI at 8PM SAT at 8:30PM, Alleyway Cabaret Little Match Girl JAN 20 & 27, 4:30PM, Alleyway Cabaret Air Heart FEB 8 - 17, THURS & FRI, 7:30PM, SAT, 4 & 8PM, Alleyway Mainstage

Alleyway Theatre: 672 Main Street, between Tupper and Chippewa