Oops, we did it again: created a brand new show with a brand new theme voted on by you! This year, we'll be partying like it's 1999 BCE at A Very Poppy Purim. You are in store for a night of six-pointed star power, featuring pop legends from every generation including Queen V (AKA Veyashti), the King Achashverosh of Pop, Lady Estha, Morty Mars, and the Asshole Formerly Known as Prime Minister.

Philly - verypoppypurim.eventbrite.com Thursday, March 5th Friday, March 6th Saturday, March 14th

NYC - Saturday, March 7th.

Purim is a Jewish holiday. But A Very Awesome Purim is an interactive musical and after-party about a drunken king, an evil prime minister, and a brave queen who saves the entire Jewish population. The production strikes a careful balance of off-color humor, on-key parodies, and surprisingly poignant lessons about cultural acceptance. With your help, we choose a theme—this year, thanks to more than 200 of you who voted, we're excited to bring you A Very Poppy Purim.

This is what you can expect from the night:

An interactive musical featuring parodies of your favorite Pop songs.

Drinking! In Purim tradition, you're supposed to drink until you can't tell the difference between the good guy and the bad guy in the story. (It's not difficult.)

A costume party. Dress to the theme, or any costume will do. There may even be a reward for the best-dressed...

A boisterous sing-a-long. A boisterous dance-along: With songs like "Like a Persian" and "Thrill me Queen" and more audience participation than ever before, this is not a year to miss.

The greatest party of the year. We might be biased. Guess you'll have to find out.

A VERY POPPY PURIM

Philadelphia Thursday, March 5th, 2020 at 8 p.m. Friday, March 6th, 2020 at 8:30 p.m Saturday, March 14th, 2020 at 8:30 p.m

Please join us for a very special double bill featuring two uncategorizable ensembles: Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society and Xylouris White.

Bassist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Joshua Abrams formed Natural Information Society in 2010. With his orchestration of traditional and contemporary instruments, the ensemble creates long-form psychedelic environments that join the hypnotic qualities of the guimbri, a Gnawan lute, with a wide range of contemporary musics and methodologies including jazz, minimalism, and experimental rock. Nearly impossible to define, the group’s nebulous nature has allowed Abrams to gather aesthetic input from all over the map into vivid personal statements. The ever-shifting line-up of Natural Information Society has included Jason Adasiewicz, Hamid Drake, Ben Lamar Gay, Jeff Parker, Jason Stein, and many others.

“It feels startlingly new, in terms of how the music is extrapolated, how the players relate, even as it feels like an ur-music, primal, body-centered, essential.” —The Wire

Abrams’ early formative musical experiences include performing in a chamber group conducted by Earle Brown and busking on the streets of Philadelphia as an original member of The Roots. Since the mid-1990s, Abrams has been a key figure in Chicago’s creative music communities and an international touring musician with artists across genres. Abrams has scored numerous feature films, including The Trials of Muhammad Ali and several projects with award-winning director Steve James. He has appeared on over 100 recordings, including those by Fred Anderson, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Neil Michael Hagerty, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, Matana Roberts, The Roots, and Town and Country.

Please join us for a performance by the explosive trio mssv (Main Steam Stop Valve) led by guitarist Mike Baggetta, teaming him with drummer Stephen Hodges and punk legend Mike Watt for a window-rattling obliteration of the walls between jazz and rock. This performance celebrates the release of Live Flowers (Striped Light Records), which documents last year’s legendary Ars Nova-produced performance at Johnny Brenda’s.

New York guitarist Mike Baggetta has it all, from swinging modern-bop chops that flow like John Abercrombie to whammy-bar, pedal-steel licks influenced by his first guitar hero, David Torn. In this raucous new trio he’s joined by drummer Stephen Hodges (Tom Waits, Mavis Staples, David Lynch) and Minutemen bassist Mike Watt, whose wide-ranging career also spans work with Iggy Pop and the Stooges and fIREHOSE. The music this trio creates together is utterly unclassifiable: calling it “post-genre-improv-jazz-rock” may come close, but that still doesn’t even begin to touch on the wild electric textures Baggetta’s guitar alone brings to the table.

::::Dave Kiss Presents::::

Steve Hofstetter https://www.stevehofstetter.com/

One of YouTube’s biggest breakout comedy stars (with more than 140 million views and counting), Steve Hofstetter now brings his no-holds-barred stand-up show to your city. “Comedy Without Apology” features some of his most unfiltered, hilarious and very adult observations about virtually anything and everything under the sun. Along with his popular YouTube videos, Hofstetter’s performed on TV, with sets on “The Late Late Show” and “Comics Unleashed”, and headlined at some of the country’s top comedy clubs.

Doors at 7 pm, Show at 7: 30 pm 21+ at Ruba Club