The art of individuality

It sounds like an ad campaign waiting to happen: Come to Philly for a weekend, stay for a few years.

That was the case for Mark Dahl, a Jersey City native who visited a friend here two years ago, only to fall in love with the city’s art scene. Dahl’s decision to move to Philly paid off in early 2003, when he joined forces with local artists Jenna Serbu and Benjamin Kanes to form Uncut Productions Inc.

The production company was founded on the belief that artists of all mediums and levels of experience could achieve greater work as a group.

The cofounders had grown to disdain working with producers who forced them to compromise their artistic integrity, "so we decided to form our own company to self-produce our work," says Dahl, who lives on the 1200 block of South Broad Street.

The members of the trio each wrote a part of their debut play at last year’s Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe — a showcase for non-mainstream performances. From there, they quickly branched out to producing plays for other artists.

Uncut Productions does not yet have a home base, but that has not prevented the company from bringing performance to the masses.

The artists introduced a series of skits called "Ritalin Theater" to the area’s clubs, bars and coffee shops, mixing costumes and makeup with mainstream nightlife to surprisingly glowing reviews.

"We know there’s a certain stigma attached to the theater — a lot of people don’t want to spend a bunch of money to sit in some stuffy place all night — so we decided to bring the theater to them," explains Kanes, 27. "The shows are kind of like Saturday Night Live, but we go all out with costumes, makeup, music and props."

Now, Uncut Productions is returning to its launching pad, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe, with a topical take on reality television.

Eye of the Tiger: Thrill of the Fight debuts tomorrow night at Club Pure, 1221 St. James St.

The show, which Serbu describes as "an insane, huge spoof of almost everything," takes particular aim at MTV’s flagship reality drama The Real World, which will air its new season, filmed in Philadelphia, beginning Sept. 7.

In an appropriate example of reality imitating life, Real World cast members visited the club during filming this summer.

In the show, eight strangers find themselves stranded on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, forced to live on the streets with nothing but a port-a-potty to call home.

Eventually, things turn ugly between the homeless mates, Dahl notes.

"All I can say is that I have to pick up a box of breakable blood capsules after we’re done talking," he says.

The show will incorporate a video that will be projected above a 12-foot-high, 30-foot-long stage that uses the Art Museum’s trademark pillars as a backdrop.

Since its inception, Uncut has been given actors, writers and directors a chance to express themselves and try out their material — sans any meddlesome producing.

"We are open to pretty much everyone out there. Seasoned actors, unseasoned actors, college kids, older people — we try to help everybody out, and let them be seen by other theaters and production companies," says Serbu, who lives near 17th and Christian streets.

The company holds casting calls and posts ads in clubs and on the Internet, but the founders are not opposed to a more grassroots approach to discovering talent.

"When we were looking for people for Eye of the Tiger, I just stopped some kid in the park one day and told him to try out. He turned out to be a big help," says Serbu, 30.

The company also made extensive use of local actors while shooting its first feature film, Mother’s Day, in April. The black comedy is expected to screen sometime within the next year in Philadelphia.

Uncut’s long-range goal is to open a facility in Center City.

"The bottom line is we just love what we do," Kanes says. "There’s nothing else like it in the world, and we’re always willing to give 110 percent of ourselves."

This year’s Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe will include more than 150 shows and many more actors.

Jesse Wilson stands apart from other performers for one simple reason: He’s all alone.

Wilson, 31, will bring his solo show Triumph of Summer to the Triangle Theater, 1220 N. Lawrence St., on Saturday night.

A graduate of New York’s famed Juilliard School, Wilson says he had a nagging desire to perform solo material early in his career.

"My friends always told me I had great stories. It was just a matter of me looking at them objectively and learning how to tell them in a way that could make them easily relatable," says Wilson, who lives on the 100 block of Hoffman Street.

After traveling the country for a while and performing in small venues, the California native settled in Philadelphia with his wife five years ago.

His show is an autobiographical story of a boy who discovers his own language at camp during three stages of adolescence.

"I reached for those ages — when you’re 10, 12, 16 years old — because it’s a time when who you are has nothing to do with anybody else," Wilson explains.

He acknowledges the inherent risks of doing a show that contains elements of his own life.

"When you’re doing personal stories, you have to have a message that you want to convey to people," Wilson says. "If you don’t, it can come off as narcissistic."

Still, the allure of relating his personal life to the human condition is something he can’t pass up — especially in Philly during the Fringe.

"This is a great place to begin again," Wilson says. "There’s a common thread [in Philly] among artists who have given up something huge in their lives in order to find their voice, their own language. This show is a tribute to Philly, because it’s where I found mine."

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The Philadelphia Arts Festival and Philly Fringe runs tomorrow-Sept. 18. For information on show times, locations and tickets, visit www.livearts-fringe.org or call 215-413-1318.