The 8th Annual First Person Arts Festival begins tonight and runs through Sunday, perhaps as bold and strong and wily as it’s ever been. First Person has always been a heady mix of storytelling and socializing — it was founded in 2000 with the intently amorphous goal of “transforming the drama of real life into memoir and documentary art to foster appreciation for our unique and shared experience” — and where other arts festivals in Philly have had difficulty retaining both attendees and focus in recent years, it could just be the First Person Arts’ vagueness somehow suits these times a little better: It builds to suit. Bearing that in mind, there are a few strands running through this year’s festival, and they seem to share a common theme: Being hungry, just like they used to do it in the old days.

A “Great Depression” strand at FPA this year combines the present economic situation with some gallows humor: “Songs For Any Depression” features the songs of Woody Guthrie performed by Guthrie’s granddaughter, Sara Lee Guthrie, her husband Johnny Irion, and Kim and Reggie Harris; meanwhile, a “speakeasy,” held each night at the Painted Bride, will be a meeting space throughout the festival. There’s a host of food events as well, with the “America Eats” event retracing the steps of Depression-era regional cuisine.

But it’s not all dustbowls and grapes of wrath: There’s also plenty of FPA’s storytelling roots represented here. The Yes Men’s How To Fix The World finds the provacative Yes Men gassing corporate stiffs, and the “Going to Extremes” presentation features Antarctica trekker/La Colombe impresario Todd Carmichael. And it all wraps up with screening of Still Bill, a documentary about the notoriously reclusive Bill Withers, followed by a performance of Withers’ tunes by Motown legend Johnny Ingram. There’s plenty more on the First Person Arts’ schedule, but that should be plenty to get you started, whichever FPA flavor you prefer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 5:41 pm.