Spotlight: Fresh Ink 2006

Next year will mark Illusion’s 20th Fresh Ink summer series of new works, and this season’s run-up to that anniversary is about as far-ranging as theater gets. Tod Petersen, author of A Christmas Carole Petersen, leads off the weekend with Boldly Going Nowhere, in which he acts out the parts of five lost souls including a TV addict and a Southern beauty-pageant contestant. Next week Gary Rue leads more than a dozen musicians in A Tribute to Gene Pitney, which is sure to include ’60s hits such as “Hello Mary Lou,” and “Town Without Pity.” Amy Anderson follows with her first local stand-up comedy show since moving to L.A. five years ago, Amy Anderson Live. The fourth week of the festival offers Draw Two Circles, in which Aamera Siddiqui and Suzy Messerole weave stories from Islam and Christianity into their own personal biographies. The final Fresh Ink show will be Allison Moore’s American Klepto, a comedic drama in which a young girl deals with her father’s death--as well as her displeased step-mother--through the time-honored American fallback strategies of materialism and compulsion. So in no fixed order we have: a two-woman show, a one-man show, a rock show, a dark comedy, and stand-up. Coming in July 2007: a poodle act?