Tonight, Sept 12

Straight Up, Vampire!
ARS NOVA THEATER
511 W.54th St. at 10th Avenue
(next to The Colbert Report)
8pm
I'll be playing Ben Franklin, turning into a werewolf.
TICKETS

The New Yorker: What does Paula Abdul have in common with vampires, werewolves, and Benjamin Franklin? One group of performers, including members of the puppet-human hybrid company Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, set out to find the answer this past weekend, at the Bowery Poetry Club. Michael Schulman caught the show and offers this report:"Straight up, now tell me / do you really want to love me forever?" The songs of Paula Abdul obviously carry hidden messages about the living dead. That, anyway, was the idea behind "Straight Up Vampire: The History of Vampires in Colonial Pennsylvania as Performed to the Music of Paula Abdul." The show, by Nick Jones (of the inspired rock-and-roll puppet band Jollyship the Whiz-Bang), Zak Vreeland, and Peter J. Cook, was surprisingly intricate, with a cast of characters that included Paula Abdul Blackwood-a young Quaker girl with a penchant for bloodsuckers-and a werewolf incarnation of Benjamin Franklin (Corn Mo). No telling whether Abdul's oeuvre will be fodder for the next Broadway jukebox musical. Still, now seems as good a time as ever to revisit the Abdul songbook through the lens of vampire-human love.