Lula is ALIVE and she wears RED!

Last Wednesday, I attended the 3rd anniversary of RED, the brainchild of Lisa Pijuan-Nomura. The event was at the Lula Lounge, where the waiter had the grace to ignore me for the entire night (good thing too, as I am broke as all hell).

RED draws from the best of three years of live performance cabarets that Lisa, founder of Girlcancreate, has curated.The MC was Lula (embodied by Lisa, pictured here), a wisecracking Latina dame from New York sporting a long red dress and de rigour feather boa.

Let me tell you this show was worth the drive to Acton - or at least, the streetcar ride to Dufferin and Dundas.

Some of the performers were known to me. Roula Said (seen recently in the film Sabah) was at her usual top bellydancing form performing using her ass (her words) to perform "Home Renovations by Roula Said Interiors", a theatrical exericism of the world's ills. It was nice to get to see Roula the actress as well as Roula the dancer.

Miko Sobreira ( This Castle), joined by Hana Watanabe, wowed the audience with their salsa rendition of a swimming race. I had seen Miko do a version of this concept of the race performed on stage before, but this one was a stunner.

The other performers were great - two thumbs up for roots duo The Undesirables who have a knack for moving metaphor.

But the most incredible performance had to be of "Glimpses of Extra-Ordinary Life (An Ode to Noah)". Conceived by Noah Keneally, this performance involved 16 puppeteers, each with their own puppet play and portable puppet stage, giving a personal dinner-table puppet show.

I can only hope that this is remounted for the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2006.

[Image from Girl Can Create]