Pay what you can and choose from 44 performances during Philly Theatre Week

A blind man, an invisible man, a donkey and a bird get on a boat.

Three performers, playing pirates, share the stage – a four-foot by three-foot wooden crate.

Two actors switch parts every show.

Philly Theatre Week’s list of interesting and weird goes long and lively, because this 10-day stretch from April 3 to April 13 is when theater folks invite audiences to their shows and let them pay whatever they can.

For audiences, it amounts to low-cost and risk-free sampling.

And for the theater makers?

“Philly Theatre Week is a huge spotlight on the Philly theater community and not just the major theater companies, or even the midsize one, but also the smaller collectives,” said Sabriaya Shipley, executive director of Theatre Philadelphia, the theater community’s umbrella marketing organization that runs Philly Theatre Week.

“We have 44 different productions, and they all have different themes and audiences they are trying to address,” she said.

There are twin goals, she said. One is, at least for 10 days, to make theater accessible to people who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to afford a pricier ticket. The other is to entice people – or even whole communities – who aren’t familiar with theater to the area’s stages.

“For us, we like participating in any effort to bring awareness to the great quantity, quality and diversity of theater in Philadelphia,” said Seth Rozin, InterAct Theatre Company’s founding and artistic director.

InterAct’s Theatre Week offering is a world premiere, “Rift, or White Lies,” Longtime theater pros Matteo Scammell and Jered McLenigan play two estranged brothers.

United through their traumatic childhood, one brother is a progressive novelist and the other a convicted murderer and high-ranking member of a white supremacist prison gang. The two actors take on each other’s roles in alternating performances that run beyond Theatre Week through April 27 at the Drake Theatre, 302 S. Hicks St. in Center City.

“We actually do think about which shows we might do during Theatre Week and what our offering might be in that scenario,” Rozin said. “A good number of new patrons show up to see what our plays are all about.”

“Two of Philly’s best actors and a local playwright [Gabriel Jason Dean] showcase our mission and the quality of the work we do in a new play. That felt like a no-brainer for Philly Theatre Week,” Rozin said. “The main goal would be to reach people who don’t know you that well and give them an incentive to try something new.”

There is a catch, though.

Tickets must be purchased through the Theatre Philadelphia website and each participating company only offers a handful of tickets at Theatre Week’s Pay-What-You-Can price point. Tickets are available at the listed prices if the Theatre Week tickets sell out.

How likely that is depends on the show.

Last year, about half the available 3,082 Philly Theatre Week tickets were sold, sending patrons to 99 performances offered by 24 groups. Eight days before this year’s April 3 opening, customers had purchased about one-sixth of the 2,756 available tickets.

So, what’s on tap?

Here’s a smattering of the many available shows.

Let’s start with the blind man, the invisible man, the bird and the donkey, part of “Total Modeling,” from Benjamin Stieler, staged at a West Philadelphia yoga studio. Stieler promises professional wrestling, nakedness, buffoonery and despair.

What more could one desire from a theater show? How about three actors contorting around each other on a tiny wooden crate or the chance to renew wedding vows?

Performed on the crate, “Pirate Queens” premiered in the fall at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. It’s the semi-true story of an 18^th-century woman who dressed as a boy from childhood, is captured by pirates, and falls in love. It’s showing at the Pig Iron Theatre Company’s headquarters in the Crane Old School, 1417 N. 2d St., Philadelphia.

Somehow, renewing wedding vows is a possibility at 1812 Productions’ Theatre Week offering of “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” with lots of love songs. Plus, the audience can play an updated version of “The Newlywed Game.” That’s at Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey St.

SideQuest Theater’s April 12 performance of “Roll Play” at The Adrienne Theater, 2030 Sansom St., is adults-only. Valiant heroes, a wizard, a cleric and a sword all play into performances that are different for every show (April 4-13) and are governed by the roll of the dice.

Free drinks come with tickets to The Savoy Company’s “Trial by Jury,” an operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan, performed at the Trinity Center for Urban Life, 2212 Spruce St.

Some of Theatre Week’s shows include a number of shorter acts, starting with Theatre Week’s free kickoff party on March 31, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Temple University’s Performing Arts Center, 1837 N. Broad St., with preview snippets from upcoming performances. 

In “Spotlight 3X30,” audiences can check out three 30-minute excerpts from musicals under development by Philly artists organized by MusiCoLab, a local nonprofit that helps develop new musicals. On the program are “Electric & Benevolent,” with songs by The Extraordinaires, “Lawless” about Charles Dickens and his secret mistress, and “Elderland,” about seniors reclaiming their inspiring lives through storytelling. They’re showing at CSz Theater at The Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., April 12 and 13.

Cannonball, a festival within the annual autumn Philadelphia Fringe Festival, offers Miniball, a weekend lineup of theater, circus, dance and genre-defying shows at the Fringe Arts building, 140 N. Christopher Columbus Blvd. A Miniball kickoff party starts the festivities there on April 3.