Out of the Loop Fringe Festival

Presented by WaterTower Theatre

March 5 - 15

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$60 festival pass: $10-$15 individual tickets

At this year’s 10-day Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, opening Thursday, March 5, a galaxy of theater, music and dance from more than 20 companies will fill the three performance spaces at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre. But one actor and his repertoire of Wookies, ’droids and humans from a beloved series of outer space flicks could be the show with the biggest buzz—and not just from its star’s pitch-perfect imitation of a light saber.

The One Man Star Wars Trilogy created and performed by Canadian actor Charlie Ross (check out his five-minute video preview) has been a big draw on the fringe festival circuit since 2001, when Ross debuted it in Toronto. It’s the Festival Main Stage attraction on the first weekend of Out of the Loop (7:30 p.m., March 5; 8 p.m., March 6; 5 & 8 p.m., March 7; and 5 p.m., March 8).

“We have been following the success of this show for a number of years, thinking that it would be a great addition to Out of the Loop,” says James Lemons, artistic associate at WaterTower. “It's edgy enough to almost be considered performance art, yet the subject matter appeals to a wide range of people. Who isn't familiar with the original Star Wars trilogy? A whole generation of us grew up on the exploits of Han Solo and Princess Leia.”

A generation that included Charlie Ross. His obsession with the movies started at age 8, when his father moved the family to a remote 27-acre farm in British Columbia. To pass the time, Ross watched a video of Star Wars he’d taped off TV. Four hundred viewings later, he could perform it line for line.

As a grown-up, Ross, now in his mid-30s, spent a decade in Canadian regional theater before deciding to condense Star Wars into a solo show. After playing to sold-out houses all over the world, One Man Star Wars Trilogy earned the approval of filmmaker George Lucas, who hired Ross to perform at a sci-fi convention as a prelude to the premiere of Revenge of the Sith.

The performance happens on a bare stage with no technical assists, just Ross, wearing plain black clothes and throwing his yoga-toned bod around in a frenetic homage to Luke, Leia and Obi-Won Kenobi. In just under an hour, he manages to zip through all the major plot points, dialogue, battle scenes, special effects, music and other highlights of the first three Star Wars movies (that would be Episodes IV through VI). And though he admits his Yoda voice “sucks,” he has nearly perfected Darth Vader’s asthmatic wheeze and R2D2’s complicated language of squeaky beeps and whistles.

The Force is strong with this one.

Fringe festivals like Out of the Loop allow artists who lack a home theater a place to perform for a large audience (Loop will attract between 4,000 and 5,000 theatergoers over the next two weeks). The “fringe” element of the shows is in their edgier, contemporary content.

“It is becoming increasingly hard for artists who lie on the fringe to find places willing to take a risk on them,” says WaterTower’s James Lemons. “Out of the Loop embraces that challenge, allowing a wide range of performance pieces and styles to come together under one roof.”

Here's a rundown of some of the other shows on the Loop schedule (for a complete list, with times and dates of performance, go here):

• Pvt. Wars. Second Thought Theatre stages James McClure’s acidly funny 1970s one-act about three vets in a stateside army hospital.
• Hopelessly Puccini. StageWorks debuts a new play by Dallas writer/actor Steve Lovett. It’s a romantic comedy about four men snowed-in for a weekend and their conversation about who they are, where they’ve been and what they’ve learned about life.
• Vincent River. Theatre Britain offers Philip Ridley’s mysterious drama, also set in a snowy clime.
• I google myself. Uncommon Ground, a new Dallas troupe, presents Jason Schafer’s unusual story of three men with the same name, brought together by an Internet search engine. Kevin Moore and Chad Peterson, who’ve co-starred several times at Uptown Players, lead the cast.
• The Interrogation of Vince Banyon. SceneShop of Fort Worth, in its fifth appearance at the Out of the Loop festival, performs a new play by Fort Worth writer and artist Grayson Harper. A charismatic drifter is questioned by stern detectives about a missing girl, though the crime in question isn’t specified.
• The Play about the Coach. Rocketship Productions from New York City takes the audience courtside in the final minutes of an NCAA tournament game. As the clocks ticks down, a coach desperately tries to pull his team to victory while his own world is disintegrating. Written and performed by Paden Fallis.
• Deconstructing….  Improv group The Victims create a totally different show each night, based on the true stories of their special guests.
• Takin’ a Break from Sex. Andy and Joleen Mullins take a romp through this original sketch comedy show.
• Under a Montana Moon. Mime artist Bill Bowers returns to WaterTower with a new performance piece, a collection of silent stories all taking place under a western sky.
• Straight. David Schmader wrote and performs this subversive one-man piece about gay-to-straight “conversion therapy.”
• Cowboy versus Samurai. Michael Golamco wrote this short play, performed by Diwa Theater, about a Korean-American living in a dusty cowboy town in Wyoming.
• Green. Flying Man Productions of Dallas debuts at the Loop with this performance by Brandon Smith about a man who thinks he’s discovered the solution to cheap, universal energy.
• [sic]. Jocelyn Wiebe presents Melissa James Gibson’s quirky play about three young urbanites having quarter-life crises.
• Last Lists of My Mad Mother. The Mad Mamas—Jeanne Evans, Pam Dougherty and Lisa Fairchild—perform a comedy about the effects of Alzheimer’s on sufferers and their caretakers.
• Breaking News: Dancing with the Media. Muscle Memory Dance Theatre interprets the societal consequences of a soundbite-hungry media.
• Some People. Project X, the Dallas theater company, debut a play by Thomas Riccio set in a Dallas suburb. Is it a dream? A comedy routine? Or a trip into a 21st century twilight zone.
• Holy Mother of God. Waco’s Rite of Passage Theatre Company stage Clay Wheeler’s play about a screenwriter struggling to cope with the death of his younger sister.

Festival passes are $60 (for admission to all shows). Individual tickets are $10-$15. Reserve seats by calling the WaterTower box office: 972-450-6232 or go online at http://www.watertowertheatre.org/outoftheloop.asp. The festival blog is online at http://outoftheloopfringe.blogspot.com.