COVER STORY SIDEBAR
Everyone's a star
By Cate McQuaid
Looking for cheap entertainment? Grass-roots performance and music that you can watch or take part in?
Boston boasts a thriving underground performance scene. Musicians, dancers, and actors who fall between the cracks of the usual genres - or who cross genres, like combining puppetry with techno-funk or video projection - show their wares to young audiences in parks, storage rooms, and bowling alleys.
Open Faucet Productions (617-983-0180) curates performances around the city. This Sunday , its monthly "Genre Pool" opens at a new venue, the Milky Way Lounge and Lanes in Jamaica Plain. Go with an open mind: Once the act was a barbershop quartet that performed while crushing cinder blocks off the bass singer's chest.
Mobius is the grand old lady of performance art in Boston. Open Faucet brings its annual Haunted Huis to Mobius Halloween weekend, Oct. 28-31, a creepy installation with performance and music. Interested in volunteering? E-mail [email protected].
The Zeitgeist Gallery in Cambridge hosts not only local visual artists, but also Playground Jazz, improvisational performances that push the boundaries of what's music and what's noise (Fridays 8-10 p.m.) and poetry readings (Mondays 8-10 p.m.). You never know what to expect.
As the FCC debates low-power radio, Zeitgeist sets up camp this Sunday across the street to host Radio Bayou. Starting at 2 p.m. and going into the wee hours, Zeitgeist will broadcast a mini-watt radio transmission - that's under one watt - that should just cover the size of the park. Folks from the late, lamented low-power station Radio Free Allston will be there. There will be live music, DJs, and food. Stop by and do your own broadcast. Be sure to bring a radio.
Frideen is the Friday of each month that falls between the 13th and 19th, inclusive. On that night, in a storage room at the MIT Museum, Miters Club holds its "Show and Tell." Anyone with a slightly skewed sense of theater can strut his or her stuff. You'll find puppeteers, storytellers, and techie performers who combine their computer skills with bizarre stage tricks. The MIT Museum (room N52-115) is at 265 Mass. Ave., Cambridge (enter by the handicap ramp in the rear of the building). 617-253-2060 or http://www.MIT.edu/activities/miters.
These venues are just the tip of the iceberg. If you go, you'll find folks who can point you to other places to see and be seen.
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