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Look around.
Nearly one in four people you see on the streets of Philadelphia are millennials, aged 30 to 45, the largest population group by far, numbering close to 365,000.
Notice anything else?
They’re having kids. Lots of strollers, lots of first-day-of-school photos on social media, and in the background, lots of talk and anxiety about navigating new adult relationships with their Boomer and older Gen X parents.
And because theater riffs off reality, it’s no surprise that this year’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival presents four, and maybe more, shows about dads – two comedies and two dramas, but all, in a certain way, balanced between love and loss.
‘Well-Balanced Dads’
“Your kid wants to connect with you as an adult, but you still think of your kid in your mind as a child or a teenager. And then on the other side, what does it look like when your kid wants to pull away and have some more independence?”
That’s Britt Anderson, whose play, “Well-Balanced Dads,” addresses this question. Along with her husband, Richie Schiraldi, the pair stand on their heads and teeter off each other while wearing cheesy white socks, and sporting fake moustaches. They’re the two dads in the circus-y comedy at the Fringe.
‘Custody’
For playwright Derrell Lawrence, the twin themes of love and loss come in his more poignant dramedy “Custody” about fathers struggling to stay connected with their children when they don’t have custody and their relationships with the children’s mothers have ended.
“From the male perspective, this is not about deadbeat dads,” said Lawrence, who has two grown children. “These are dads who are there for their children, but the mother is making it difficult for him to take care of the child.”
Growing up in Philadelphia, Lawrence was the last of his friends to have children. Many of them, he said, never lent any support to their kids, so he was determined that he would be different when he became a father. He wouldn’t neglect his children financially or emotionally.
When he had his kids, he said, he and their mothers had good relations, so he never experienced the situation confronting the play’s main character.
The main character is modeled after some of his other friends, who were desperate to stay in touch with their children and willing to support them financially. But, Lawrence said, for many reasons the mothers made it difficult. Maybe they were angry that the father had moved on to a new relationship. Or maybe they had a new relationship with someone who didn’t want the old flame hanging around.
Directed by Damien J. Wallace, “Custody” is a one-man show with actor Craig McLaren playing all 13 or 14 roles, including the mother.
“It’s not about the mother. It’s not about the father,” Lawrence said, describing the message that he’d like audiences to take from his play. “It’s the child that’s the one who is being subjected to the foolery and the BS of the two parents. Who’s the adult? Because right now, both parents are acting like kids.”
‘Baggage from BaghDAD’
The third, “Baggage From BaghDAD: Becoming My Father’s Daughter,” by Valerie David, pulls together many themes – anti-Semitism, the hardships of immigration and the struggles of Ukrainian and Gaza refugees. Weaving them together is David’s own story of her evolving relationship with her father. It’s a story of survival, identity and reconciliation.
A little love for Keith Urban
The fourth and much less-serious play, “My Needy Letters to Keith Urban,” by Michael Dermansky, puts the father squarely in the middle of child-rearing.
He’s a stay-at-home dad. And, like many fledgling stay-at-home parents confronted with the shocking new reality of parenthood, he’s in desperate need of a friend. After buying Keith Urban’s “30 Songs in 30 Days” during an infomercial, the new dad starts writing letters. Topics include playdates, birthday parties and gender-neutral B-mitzvahs.
Michael Dermansky, the stand-up comedian and real-life dad in this solo show, is an uber-dad who actually modeled dad jeans for Elle.com.
Anderson and Schiraldi, two millennials who aren’t parents, have nieces, nephews, two cats, and about 30 plants. What they do have are fathers who love them, but…
“Well-Balanced Dads” started as an impromptu three-minute clownish-type improv act that was so popular that the couple kept building it into a longer piece. “We started looking at our own relationship to our own fathers and to fatherhood. We began infusing some of our own Dads’ traits into our characters that were very cartoonish to ground them a bit,” Anderson said.
Part of what they wanted to explore was what happens when dads “still need to be a dad, but that dad-hood is not needed,” Schiraldi said.
“The reason we come at this material the way we do is that everything they do, we know somewhere that it comes from a place of caring and love, even if it does feel controlling and restricting,” he said.
In the show, Dick and Dale, empty-nesters go on camping adventures in their trusty man-van. dad jokes, embarrassing dance parties, and macho movie references abound, along with, they promise, unthreatening audience participation.
Schiraldi and Anderson live in Chicago, but they have presented the play elsewhere. They’ll come to Philly after finishing 21 shows in 23 or 24 days at last month’s 4,000-plus production Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, the mother of all Fringes. After Philly, it’s on to Rochester and maybe San Diego.
Wherever they go, they hear stories from every generation about being a child and a parent, whatever the ages. “It’s very touching,” Schiraldi said.
“Remember that your parents and you are doing [or were doing parenting] for the first time,” Anderson said. “As we become adults, we look back into our histories or our pasts and have some blame or opinions or judgment that we wanted things to be different. But the truth is, you are going through a common experience for the first time, so extend that empathy.”
That’s Anderson’s advice for her contemporaries.
As for the empty-nester dads: “Embarrass your kids as much as possible,” she said. “You’ll create memories. They’ll laugh later.”
FYI
- “Well-Balanced Dads,” Whisper Theatre Collective, Sept. 11, 12, 13, Asian Arts Initiative Black Box Theater, 1219 Vine St., Phila.
- “Custody,” Lawrence Theatre Co., Sept. 17, 18, The Latvian Society of Philadelphia, 531 N. 7thSt., Phila.
- “Baggage From BaghDAD: Becoming My Father’s Daughter,” Sept. 17, 19, 20, Asian Arts Initiative Black Box Theater, 1219 Vine St., Phila.
- “My Needy Letters to Keith Urban,” Sept. 23, 24, and 25, Yellow Bicycle Theater, 1435 Arch St., 2d floor, Phila.
