Then in the coming weeks the Miss Rockaway Armada will take to the streets to parade from its home at Broad and Spruce to Clark Park (Sept. 3), as part of the Philly Fringe and Live Arts Festival, and then through Kensington (Sept. 10). The project culminates in an exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, which brought the Miss Rockaway Armada to Philly in the first place. The exhibit runs there through early January.
The armada project was born in 2006 when a group of artists from all over the country converged on Minneapolis to build flotillas to travel down the Mississippi River, stopping to perform in towns along the way. The idea was to reclaim public space along the country's waterways. Unfortunately, frigid winter weather put the kibosh to those plans. That's when the Miss Rockaway Armada reinvented itself as a traveling art project.
The performance style of the Miss Rockaway Armada hews closest to the clownishness of vaudeville. "It's a natural companion to the older form of storytelling that goes with floating on the river," Page said, referencing author Mark Twain. That sense of humor tends to draw people who would normally be turned off by serious public or performance art. "The way you can distance people is never admit something can be funny," Page said. "A sense of humor incorporates many more perspectives."
The boat-bound performances include a series of small - and very funny - plays. Those skits will be expanded during the subsequent September parades to include puppets, a brass band led by Brooklyn, N.Y.-based musician Phil Andrews, and elaborately-crafted floats. There even will be a bike-powered Ferris wheel taking visitors for a ride.
