For last years' New York Fringe Festival, two Toronto theatre companies pooled together resources for the opportunity to perform in New York. Baby Monster Productions brought Baby Redboots Revenge, while Parallel Exit premiered the company created WHITE/NOISE/JUMP. Both companies received a "Best In Fringe Festival." The two companies have once again teamed forces to bring their shows in a shared program titled The Return of Avante-Vaudeville. Baby Monster will premiere Performance Hell by Baby Redboots playwright Philip Dimitri Galas, while Parallel Exit will present their latest company-created work VELO/CITY. Both shows will be presented at NADA in NY's Lower East Side, May 7-17.

Performance Hell is a darkly comic tale of performers on the backside of fame, the has-beens and never-was, which employs aspects of performances including circus, cabaret, poetry, dance, melodrama, and vaudevillian comedy. Performance Hell stars: Sean Sullivan, Lynne Griffin, Mark Lonergan, and Valerie Buhagiar.

VELO/CITY is a live-action silent "film" devised by Parallel and directed by Lonergan. Blending dance, music and theater, VELO/CITY is a stylized and comic slice-of-life look at corporate drones and stars Scott McCord, Scott Sprague, and Brendan Wall.

The Return of Avante-Vaudeville will be presented May 7 - 17 at NADA, located at 167 Ludlow Street. For reservations and more information call (212) 420-1466.

-- By Sean McGrath