Three Stories High festival promises 5 days of theater

Three productions, three venues and 13 performances will transform downtown Lafayette into a big-city theater district for five days next week, thanks to an event dubbed Three Stories High Theatre Festival, hosted by Purdue Convocations.

The festival runs from Jan. 28 to Feb. 1, and all three plays can be seen in one day or spread across the five days.

‘The Cardinals’

Audiences can choose from five show times at Long Center for the Performing Arts for “The Cardinals,” a play-within-a-play by Stan’s Café, a Brighton, England, collective.

Drawing on the historical puppet shows once used to educate the masses about religion, this 90-minute piece brings Catholic cardinals to the stage as evangelizing puppeteers, with a bit of mystery and humor thrown in.

Its Jan. 28 performance opens the festival, with shows on Jan. 29 and 30 and two shows on Jan. 31.

‘Alvin Sputnik’

Lafayette Theater, meanwhile, will feature five performances of “The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer,” which Purdue Convocations bills as “quirky, uplifting and thought-provoking.” Using music, puppetry and animation, Tim Watts presents the one-hour show solo, telling the story of Alvin’s quest to find his lost love and save mankind.

It runs Jan. 29 and 30, twice on Jan. 31, with a noon Feb. 1 show closing the festival.

‘No Place to Go’

Music will be the medium three times at Carnahan Hall with “No Place to Go,” a story told in song and speech about a soon-to-be displaced worker, running Jan. 29-31. Playwright, vocalist and actor Ethan Lipton calls the piece “a hybrid form that pulls on the cabaret and storytelling traditions.”

With the Ethan Lipton Orchestra — Eben Levy on guitar, Ian Riggs playing standup bass and Vito Dieterle on sax — music will range from jazz to blues, folk, country, lounge and cabaret. They’ve played together for a decade; this is their first theatrical piece.

The main character is Ethan Lipton, played by himself, as he explores the fears of his pending job loss.

“It’s about an office worker whose company is relocating to Mars. It’s about being disenfranchised, and all the levels of loss and denial that entails,” he said.

“It’s personal, it’s political, it’s universal,” Lipton said of the story. “People respond very deeply. The event of losing one’s job or being displaced is not spoken about so much in art. There’s a timeliness to the piece, and it says some things that don’t get said elsewhere.”

They’ve performed “No Place to Go” in about 20 cities.

“Every time we do the show, somebody tells me afterward, ‘That was my office,’ or ‘I used to work for that company,’ ” Lipton said.

A 1992 University of California at Los Angeles theater graduate, Lipton was a playwright first. “I like storytelling and imaginative experiences, and theater seemed like a good place for those things to happen.”

He added singing to his talent repertoire when he was 30. This is the first time he’s combined the two in a single production.

“I kept the two forms separate for a long time, often finding refuge from one in the other,” he said. “Then I was asked to write an evening of music with a narrative through-line by Shanta Thake, director at Joe’s Pub, a music venue in New York City. This show was born from that.”

His intent was “to write a theater piece that would showcase the band’s chops and that we could stand behind as a band” while telling a story.

This will be the group’s first visit to Indiana, and Lipton promises “great musicians in a theatrical setting” for Lafayette audiences, who will see “a universal story told from a specific point of view and backed by a unique band.”

If You Go

“The Cardinals”

Where: Long Center for the Performing Arts, 111 N. Sixth St.

When: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 28, 7:45 p.m. Jan. 29, 9:30 p.m. Jan. 30, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Jan. 31

“The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik”

Where: Lafayette Theater, 600 Main St.

When: 6:30 p.m. Jan. 29, 8:15 p.m. Jan. 30, noon and 5 p.m. Jan. 31, noon Feb. 1

“No Place to Go”

Where: Carnahan Hall, 800 Main St.

When: 9:30 p.m. Jan. 29, 6:30 p.m. Jan. 30, 9:30 p.m. Jan. 31

Cost: $15 to $20 for each performance. Cash bar at all venues.

For times and tickets: Call 765-494-3933 or visit www.purdue.edu/convocations.