Maximum Verbosity (aka phillip andrew bennett low)'s latest production, "A Revolution Highly Favorable," is one of several good reasons to get my butt over the independent venue of Strike Theater and see some shows there again this year.
I’ve been following phillip’s storytelling ventures around the Minnesota Fringe for (yikes) over 20 year now, since his appearance at #2 on my pre-Fringe Top 10 list back in 2007 (for “Descendant of Dragons”) happened after I’d already seen two other previous Fringe outings from Maximum Verbosity - intrigued by the enjoyable but slightly messy experiment of the first in 2004 and unexpectedly blown away by the storytelling achievement of the second in 2005.
When phillip was last on the Minnesota Fringe schedule back in 2023 with “Too Many Notes,” revisiting a different story from years past in each performance - I rearranged my Fringe schedule so I could catch four out of the five (almost saw ‘em all). If phillip’s got a story to tell, I want to hear it.
Here again, we’re getting a different part of a larger canvas with each of this year’s performances:
Description:
On the 250th anniversary of American Independence, listen to the words of those who were there! Adapting for the first time 18th-century combat medic, historian, and POW David Ramsay, this fully AI-illustrated show features a different collection of readings each night.
Venue - Strike Theater
Content Warnings - Abuse/Physical Violence, Adult language, Gun/Weapon Usage, Loud Noises, Sexual Violence, Violence (Some evenings may contain gunshots and/or racial slurs.)
Genre and Content - Drama, Solo Show, Spoken Word, Storytelling, Historical Content, Political Content
Ages 12 to 15 and Up
The rundown:
Saturday, August 8th at 4pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: Peaceably to Assemble. When a distant autocrat imposes a series of crippling tariffs, a peaceful protest movement is met with overwhelming force.
Sunday, August 9th at 7pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: To Keep and Bear Arms. The first shots of the war are fired as the government attempts to seize a stockpile of contraband weapons.
Monday, August 10th at 7pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: To Dissolve the Political Bands. Differences become irreconcilable and thirteen new states are born, achieving their first victory on a stealth mission across the Delaware.
Wednesday, August 12th at 8:30pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: To Compleat the Works of Death. In the war's darkest hour, a southern capitol falls, and a highly-placed general betrays his commission. (NOTA BENE: this late-night show is focused on the horrors of war, and is not for the faint of heart or stomach. Seriously. I'm not kidding.)
Saturday, August 15th at 2:30pm: A Revolution Highly Favorable: To Form a More Perfect Union. The war is won, and a new nation's citizens wrestle with who will be represented in their new government.
So, depending on your mood, or historical area of interest, there’s a slice of the story for everyone.
The press packet had some thoughts on the genesis of the show:
“I'm an internationally-touring storyteller who's been out of the game for a couple of years, but couldn't resist the opportunity to produce something for the semiquincentennial. This is a weird passion project that started long before the recent political madness that threw our city into the national spotlight, but our founding myth is a story of massacres, government gone mad, and ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances that became far more relevant than I ever hoped they would. We're a traumatized people trying to find a response, and mine is to plunge forward into the past.”
Now, as for the AI of it all…
You’ll be unsurprised to find that phillip has a thoughtful and amusing essay on the topic of the creative use of generative AI - that would be the link on his More Information tab entitled Confessions of a Slopaholic.
You can see an example of how he’s using the artwork in the trailer for the production:
As for the source material for the performances, “David Ramsay was a physician, legislator, and early American historian. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he graduated from Princeton and earned a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania before settling in Charleston, South Carolina, where he introduced vaccination and served in the state legislature. During the Siege of Charleston he worked as a field surgeon and was captured when the British occupied the city, spending nearly a year imprisoned in St. Augustine, Florida. After the war he became one of the nation's first historians, while his outspoken abolitionism cost him a U.S. Senate nomination. In 1815, he was murdered by a former patient.”
And since you’ve got Ramsay’s bio, here’s phillip’s: “phillip andrew bennett low is a Chinese-American playwright and poet, storyteller and mime, theatre critic and libertarian activist. His solo performances have won acclaim from Minneapolis to Atlanta, New York to LA - even as far as Melbourne, Australia. He was the co-founder of the Rockstar Storytellers (a supergroup of bestselling Twin Cities spoken-word artists), founder and producer of the touring theatre troupe Maximum Verbosity, and founder and host of the country's only open-mic dedicated to speculative fiction, The Not-So-Silent Planet, and its associated podcast. He has published collections of political humor, comic fantasy, and horror.
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