Review: "Brat Aid" performance aims to keep Philly weird

This past Sunday at Underground Arts, Brat productions hosted a variety show fundraiser, “Brat Aid,” to help fund its next season of experimental productions.

If this event is any indication of what’s to come for Brat, we can look forward to a program committed to keeping Philly weird.  

Starting off the evening was a bizarre drag show and performance art piece featuring Mark McCloughan as his trademark character, Ms. Teena Geist. Teena waltzed on stage wearing nothing but a rather see-through floor length skirt, a long dark wig and a moderately frightening white mask to the sound of some freestyle droning synth noises courtesy of her unnamed musical accompanist.

She spoke through a voice modulator that made her sound like a high school girl mixed with a chipmunk.

“Let’s begin,” she said. “Everyone open your third eye.”

Teena danced around through the crowd, reading our auras before diving into a guided meditation that concluded with her pulling a very long list of “spiritual to-dos” out from under her skirt, effectively warming us up for the Radiohead-themed experience to follow.

The members of On a Sunday, a Radiohead cover plant that only plays on Sundays, all have a palpable reverence for the music and legacy of Radiohead, not to mention the musical chops and stamina to wail on all fourteen tracks like they had written them themselves.

Hail to the Thief is not an easy album to play in its entirety. Besides it being nearly impossible to capture the essence of Thom Yorke on stage, the songs themselves are technically difficult and employ unusual instrumentation, but that didn’t stop the band.  Frontwoman Jess Conda “danced” in the classic Yorke style, ticking and spazzing out in all the right places, while multi-instrumentalist Peter Gaffney switched off between guitar and theremin, an instrument that I have never seen played in the wild.

“Clap if you’re a drone,” Conda said as drummer Evan Smoker counted off track seven, “We Suck Young Blood (Your Time Is Up).” Of course, everyone did. While the band jammed on, the stage also welcomed six dancers from the brand new theater/dance group Birds on a Wire. The women, all dressed in matching futuristic mesh shirts (with On a Sunday’s Conda wearing one as well), performed a heavily improvised collaborative dance both through and in front of the audience and behind an offstage shadow screen.

Birds on a Wire’s founder and the managing director of Brat productions Melissa Rodis admitted that almost every trained modern dancer has at some point danced to Radiohead. “We're throwing a few concepts into the ether, so we'll see what sticks,” she said. “In a nutshell: drones, regimentation, delineated pathways, and rebellion. There's a political underscore but without a cause or agenda.”

Overall, the evening was a success. Granted, the crowd was pretty small and the winner of the 50-50 raffle only made 60 bucks, but when the album came to a close and Conda started chanting “best band ever,” the audience could tell the band was having just as much fun as we were.