BOBRAUSCHENBERGAMERICA: A ROMP
TheSpyAnts Ensemble at The Ford
Clare Elfman
Literary Editor
Los Angeles, California – My bad. I did not do my research. So please, before you see this interesting kaleidoscope of a performance, do yours. I come from old school. A play speaks for itself. Linear. The last act leaves you with something concrete: a message, an emotion, a something. Charles Mee, with this — I guess you’d call this his homage to Rauschenberg — is non-linear, and if you are a careless reviewer who never has studied or appreciated the style of Rauschenberg nor read the text of the inserts in the black folder given at the box office, you will spend the first 30 minutes of this almost two-hour, no-intermission piece rather perplexed, asking what the merde is happening onstage?
I sat for that long in confusion, watching what, to me, looked like a mish-mash of unconnected bits and pieces of action, until finally one character did a monologue that moved me. I recognized that I was not giving the piece its due. I had not done my work as well as the company onstage was madly and non-linearly cavorting to present theirs.
If I had become more familiar with Rauschenberg’s collages, his combination of bits and pieces, thises and thats, unrelated stuff that, once assembled, create a whole, I would simply have known to sit back and let the action sweep over me. This concept of unrelated bits of action Mee has created to mirror the artist’s style of collage, so that, as the “play” progressed, a man professes love for a woman, she offers love to an unlikely character, a girl roller-skates by, a guy pushes a bathtub onstage…do I remember a goat? A guy in a chicken suit walks by, a mother shows old snaps (projections) of her artist son but the commentary does not match the pics… And what else? Suddenly the cast breaks into a Broadway chorus or they start to folk dance, or there is a murder, and I’m hanging there thinking, “What the f…” until a pizza guy enters and delivers an entrancing monologue of the three people he killed and another guy does a remarkable Walt Whitman piece, and it becomes quite something else.
So the piece is a non-linear version of Rauschenberg’s style, and to enjoy it, you simply have to let go and stop looking for logic. If I walk through a gallery, my own tastes have been so long developing that, unlike you and you and you and you, I love Matisse colors and Kirschner’s angular faces and Freud’s explicit nakedness and Bacon’s anguished etcetera etcetera, and you like something different. I love Theater of the Absurd because, when you finish with the absurdity, you have a message as clear as if you’d just picked yourself up from your stone bench in an ancient Greek theater. Once I saw a Kelly exhibit — a dirty old rug with an old teddy bear under it — and I asked, “What? What?” Okay, that’s me. Someone else saw it and was moved to tears. In a San Francisco museum, I saw a yellow canvas. Just yellow. What?? And the lecturer explained that it was the “yellowness” that made it so great.
Art is in the eye of the beholder, and if you (I) just let go of traditional notions and sit back and simply experience this one and then come out and hash over what you just saw…you’ve had a great evening of …an homage to Rauschenberg and a bit of a romp.
TheSpyAnts ensemble who performed this interesting piece are: Rollergirl, Breeze Braunschweig, Eric Bunton, Adam Dornbusch, Jennifer Etienne Eckert, Brett Hren, Mari Marks, John Charles Meyer who does a wonderful pizza boy, Danny Parker-Lopes, Mark Slater, Maria Tomas — a great bunch doing their wild thing.
So come prepared, just let go, and afterward decide if this left you with the same “feeling” as does a collage by Rauschenberg.
Interesting and challenging evening.
Ford (inside) until February 28th.
Showing posts with label Mark Slater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Slater. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
LA Premiere of "bobrauschenbergamerica"
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L.A. premiere of 'bobrauschenbergamerica
January 20, 12:29 PM Candyce Columbus
TheSpyAnts Theatre Company presents the long-awaited Los Angeles premiere of Charles L. Mee's delightful, kaleidoscopic play, bobrauschenbergamerica. Director Bart DeLorenzo teams up with choreographer Ken Roht to dish up Mee's rollicking collage-montage tribute to Robert Rauschenberg that captures the happy, improvisational quality of the artist's singular vision. bobrauschenbergamerica opens at [Inside] the Ford on January 23, with Pay-What-You-Can previews on January 21 and 22.
bobrauschenbergamerica is a wild road trip through our American landscape, a play made as one of America's greatest artists, Robert Rauschenberg, might have conceived it if he had been a playwright instead of a painter. TheSpyAnts Breeze Braunschweig, Eric Bunton, Adam Dornbusch, Jennifer Etienne Eckert, Brett Hren, Mari Marks, John Charles Meyer, Danny Parker-Lopes, Mark Slater, and Maria Tomas create a collage of people and places, of music and dancing, of love stories and picnics and business schemes and shootings and chicken jokes and golfing, and of the sheer exhilaration of living in a country where people make up their lives as they go.
Artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) once said, "A painting is more like the real world if it is made out of the real world." This infatuation with art and everyday life led him to pioneer the idea of "Combines," provocative collages created out of nontraditional materials. Taking a single canvas, Rauschenberg would combine pictures, familiar prints, sculptures and everyday objects (like tennis balls and stuffed goats), blurring the line between art and sculpture, between art and life.
In bobrauschenbergamerica, the stage is the canvas, and TheSpyAnts create a living, breathing "Combine." The eclectic group of characters and collage of colorful vignettes and fantastical images may seem to unfold like juxtaposing elements, but when seen as a whole they produce a loving tribute to American life.
"The play is a celebration," enthuses DeLorenzo. "It's a collage play written by a collagist about another collagist - an appropriate homage to our crazy quilt of a country."
TheSpyAnts is a 26-member company that started as play reading group and quickly evolved into a formidable theater company that has developed numerous critically acclaimed hit productions including The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, The Birds, Hellcab, Edmond, Infinite Black Suitcase, Rudolph The Red Hosed Reindeer, The Reunion and Kidnapped By Craigslist. TheSpyAnts strive to provide a quality theater experience while challenging the audience to "think outside the box."
bobrauschenbergamerica previews 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, January 21 and 22 and performs 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 3 and 7 p.m. Sunday January 23 through February 28. General admission is $20; $12 seniors and full-time students with ID; Pay-What-You-Can tickets are available for previews and all Sunday matinee performances when purchased at the door (subject to availability). Call 323-461-3673 or visit www.FordTheatres.org.
[Inside] the Ford is located in the Ford Theatres complex at 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East in Hollywood just off the 101 Hollywood Freeway across from the Hollywood Bowl and south of Universal Studios. On-site, non-stacked parking is free.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Inside the Ford, it's all about Mee
Inside the Ford, it's all about Mee
January 15, 11:59 AM
Evan Henerson
That’s Charles Mee, the kaleidoscopic human grabbag of a playwright whose works include Big Love, First Love, Wintertime and A perfect Wedding among many others. Mee puts his plays up on the Internet at Charlesmee.com and, via his (re)making project, encourages fellow writers to take from them freely (“pillage” is the word he uses).
“Pillage the plays as I have pillaged the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet, and build your own, entirely new, piece,” Mee writes, “--and then, please, put your own name to the work that results."
Those who elect to do Mee’s plays largely as written should pay him royalties.
Kicking off the year at the Ford Amphitheatre’s [Inside] the Ford space series, the SpyAnts Theatre Company and director Bart DeLorenzo are offering the L.A. premiere of bobrauschenbergamerica, a tribute to collage artist Bob Rauschenberg.
Billed as a trip through America as Rauschenberg might have envisioned it, Mee’s play features “Rauschenberg’s childhood home a human martini, a pizza delivery boy and the world’s worst collection of chicken jokes.”
Choreography is by Ken Roht and the cast members include Eric Bunton, Adam Dornbusch, Jennifer Etienne Eckert, Brett Hren, Mari Marks, John Charles Meyer, Danny Parker-Lopes, Mark Slater, Maria Tomas and Breeze Braunschweig who – if her moniker is real -- may well have hit the top 5 in my most memorable actor name list.
For this play, however, I suspect Ms. Braunschweig -- who will play Roller Girl -- will fit right in bobrauschenbergamerica.
opens Jan. 23 and plays 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sun.; through Feb. 28 at 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E, Hollywood. $12-$20. (323) 461-3673 (GO 1-FORD) or www.FordTheatres.org
January 15, 11:59 AM
Evan Henerson
That’s Charles Mee, the kaleidoscopic human grabbag of a playwright whose works include Big Love, First Love, Wintertime and A perfect Wedding among many others. Mee puts his plays up on the Internet at Charlesmee.com and, via his (re)making project, encourages fellow writers to take from them freely (“pillage” is the word he uses).
“Pillage the plays as I have pillaged the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet, and build your own, entirely new, piece,” Mee writes, “--and then, please, put your own name to the work that results."
Those who elect to do Mee’s plays largely as written should pay him royalties.
Kicking off the year at the Ford Amphitheatre’s [Inside] the Ford space series, the SpyAnts Theatre Company and director Bart DeLorenzo are offering the L.A. premiere of bobrauschenbergamerica, a tribute to collage artist Bob Rauschenberg.
Billed as a trip through America as Rauschenberg might have envisioned it, Mee’s play features “Rauschenberg’s childhood home a human martini, a pizza delivery boy and the world’s worst collection of chicken jokes.”
Choreography is by Ken Roht and the cast members include Eric Bunton, Adam Dornbusch, Jennifer Etienne Eckert, Brett Hren, Mari Marks, John Charles Meyer, Danny Parker-Lopes, Mark Slater, Maria Tomas and Breeze Braunschweig who – if her moniker is real -- may well have hit the top 5 in my most memorable actor name list.
For this play, however, I suspect Ms. Braunschweig -- who will play Roller Girl -- will fit right in bobrauschenbergamerica.
opens Jan. 23 and plays 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sun.; through Feb. 28 at 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E, Hollywood. $12-$20. (323) 461-3673 (GO 1-FORD) or www.FordTheatres.org
Saturday, January 9, 2010
TheSpyAnts presents the Los Angeles premiere of Charles L. Mee's "bobrauschenbergamerica" at [Inside] the Ford.
TheSpyAnts presents
the Los Angeles premiere of Charles L. Mee's
bobrauschenbergamerica
at [Inside] the Ford.
written by Charles L. Mee
directed by Bart DeLorenzo
“…brashly and unapologetically entertaining,” - The New York Times
“…a liberating, life-giving work of art…” - Chicago Tribune
“…gleeful orgy of Americana…” – The Village Voice
January 23 – February 28
Thu. – Sat. at 8pm, Sun. 3pm (Pay What You Can at the door) and 7pm
Preview Jan. 21 and 22 at 8pm (Pay What You Can at the door)
[Inside] the Ford
2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, 90068
Tickets at www.FordTheatres.org or 323.461.3673
Group Sales at 323.769.2147 (8 or more)
A limited number of 1/2 price tickets are available at Goldstar, and LA Stage Alliance.
Have you ever wondered what it was like to swim in a giant martini? TheSpyAnts Theatre Company presents the long-awaited Los Angeles premiere of Charles L. Mee's delightful, kaleidoscopic play, bobrauschenbergamerica. Director Bart DeLorenzo teams up with choreographer Ken Roht to dish up Mee's rollicking collage-montage tribute to Robert Rauschenberg that captures the happy, improvisational quality of the artist's singular vision. bobrauschenbergamerica opens at [Inside] the Ford on January 23, with Pay-What-You-Can previews on January 21 and 22.
bobrauschenbergamerica is a wild road trip through our American landscape, a play made as one of America's greatest artists, Robert Rauschenberg, might have conceived it if he had been a playwright instead of a painter. TheSpyAnts create a collage of people and places, of music and dancing, of love stories and picnics and business schemes and shootings and chicken jokes and golfing, and of the sheer exhilaration of living in a country where people make up their lives as they go.
Artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) once said, "A painting is more like the real world if it is made out of the real world." This infatuation with art and everyday life led him to pioneer the idea of "Combines," provocative collages created out of nontraditional materials. Taking a single canvas, Rauschenberg would combine pictures, familiar prints, sculptures and everyday objects (like tennis balls and stuffed goats), blurring the line between art and sculpture, between art and life. In bobrauschenbergamerica, the stage is the canvas, and TheSpyAnts create a living, breathing "Combine." The eclectic group of characters and collage of colorful vignettes and fantastical images may seem to unfold like juxtaposing elements, but when seen as a whole they produce a loving tribute to American life.
starring Breeze Braunschweig, Eric Bunton, Adam Dornbusch, Jennifer Etienne Eckert, Brett Hren, Mari Marks, John Charles Meyer, Danny Parker-Lopes, Mark Slater, Maria Tomas
producer Lori Evans Taylor
lighting design Christopher Kuhl
sound design Cricket Myers
set design Marina Mouhibian
costume design Leah Piehl
choreographer Ken Roht
publicity Lucy Pollak
photography Debi Landrie
graphic design Josh Worth
Thursday, December 17, 2009
‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ - Bart DeLorenzo Directs LA Premiere
‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ - Bart DeLorenzo Directs LA Premiere
from: John Anson Ford Theatres
category: Arts and Entertainment
posted: December 15th, 2009
The SpyAnts presents the Los Angeles Premiere Of Charles L. Mee's ‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ At [Inside] The Ford.
Los Angeles - Have you ever wondered what it was like to swim in a giant martini? TheSpyAnts Theatre Company presents the long-awaited Los Angeles premiere of Charles L. Mee's delightful, kaleidoscopic play, bobrauschenbergamerica. Director Bart DeLorenzo teams up with choreographer Ken Roht to dish up Mee's rollicking collage-montage tribute to Robert Rauschenberg that captures the happy, improvisational quality of the artist's singular vision. bobrauschenbergamerica opens at [Inside] the Ford on January 23, with Pay-What-You-Can previews on January 21 and 22.
bobrauschenbergamerica is a wild road trip through our American landscape, a play made as one of America's greatest artists, Robert Rauschenberg, might have conceived it if he had been a playwright instead of a painter. TheSpyAnts Breeze Braunschweig, Eric Bunton, Adam Dornbusch, Jennifer Etienne Eckert, Brett Hren, Mari Marks, John Charles Meyer, Danny Parker-Lopes, Mark Slater, and Maria Tomas create a collage of people and places, of music and dancing, of love stories and picnics and business schemes and shootings and chicken jokes and golfing, and of the sheer exhilaration of living in a country where people make up their lives as they go.
Artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) once said, "A painting is more like the real world if it is made out of the real world." This infatuation with art and everyday life led him to pioneer the idea of "Combines," provocative collages created out of nontraditional materials. Taking a single canvas, Rauschenberg would combine pictures, familiar prints, sculptures and everyday objects (like tennis balls and stuffed goats), blurring the line between art and sculpture, between art and life. In bobrauschenbergamerica, the stage is the canvas, and TheSpyAnts create a living, breathing "Combine." The eclectic group of characters and collage of colorful vignettes and fantastical images may seem to unfold like juxtaposing elements, but when seen as a whole they produce a loving tribute to American life. "The play is a celebration," enthuses DeLorenzo. "It's a collage play written by a collagist about another collagist - an appropriate homage to our crazy quilt of a country."
bobrauschenbergamerica originally premiered at the 2001 Humana Festival in Louisville. Conceived and produced by Anne Bogart and New York's SITI Company, where Mee is resident playwright, it enjoyed limited runs in New York, at Boston's ART, Chicago, France and Germany. The New York Times called it, "Brashly, unapologetically entertaining... a work that will resonate even with someone who has never seen one of Mr. Rauschenberg's famous collages."
Charles L. Mee was born in Barrington, Illinois in 1938. He was stricken with polio in 1953, which he details in his 1999 memoir A Nearly Normal Life. His plays include The Imperialists at the Club Cave Canem, Full Circle, The Trojan Women: A Love Story, Snow in June, Hotel Cassiopeia, True Love, A Perfect Wedding, Big Love, Viena Lusthaus, Orestes 2.0, The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador, Fetes de la Nuit, Summertime, Wintertime, Agamemnon 2.0, Iphigenia 2.0, Paradise Park, Queens Boulevard, Chiang Kai Shek and First Love. As of February, 2007, he has made all of his plays available on his Web site ( www.charlesmee.org) with an invitation to other artists to use them as copyright-free texts as a "resource" for their own work. However, the Web site indicates that the play texts as they appear on the site are protected by copyright, and that permission from his agent must be obtained before performing them "essentially or substantially as I have composed them." Mee is also an accomplished historian, having written about the Potsdam Conference and World War II. He currently teaches playwriting at the Columbia University School of the Arts.
Bart DeLorenzo is founding Artistic Director of the Evidence Room in Los Angeles where he has directed many shows over the last 14 years including local and world premieres by Charles L. Mee, David Greenspan, Kelly Stuart, Philip K. Dick, Gordon Dahlquist, Martin Crimp, David Edgar, Naomi Wallace, and Edward Bond, as well as his own adaptation of Dickens' Hard Times, The Cherry Orchard, and Don Carlos, among many others. His freelance work includes the world premiere of Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked! An Entertainment at South Coast Repertory, later revived at the Geffen Playhouse; the world premiere of Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress at the Geffen; Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone at South Coast Rep; Racine's Britannicus at Cal Rep; and Around the World in 80 Days at the Cleveland Playhouse. 2009 productions include Adam Bock's The Receptionist and Caryl Churchill's A Number at the Odyssey, and the world premieres of Justin Tanner's Voice Lessons at the Zephyr, and Michael Sargent's The Projectionist at the Kirk Douglas. For his work, he has received five LA Weekly awards and three Back Stage Garlands.
A member of the company since January 2008, Breeze Braunschweig has appeared in TheSpyAnts' The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild and What If? Other L.A. theater roles include Peggy in The Women, The Moon in Bloodwedding, Nina in The Seagull, and "The woman who loved to make vagina's happy" in The Vagina Monologues.
Eric Bunton, a founding member of TheSpyAnts Theatre Company as well as a member of the Elephant Theatre Company, has appeared in TheSpyAnts' hit productions of Kidnapped by Craigslist, Infinite Black Suitcase, Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer, The Reunion, The Birds, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Terminus Americana, Hellcab, La Ronde, and Edmond.
Adam Dornbusch previously appeared with TheSpyAnts as Charlie (the coworker) and Jason (the pothead) in Terminus Americana.
Jennifer Etienne Eckert is a long time member of TheSpyAnts and is also on the board of the Elephant Theatre Company. Recent stage credits include Seven Redneck Cheerleaders, Tooth and Nail, and One Fell Swoop, all of which were original world premiere productions.
Brett Hren has been a member of TheSpyAnts since 2001 and is also a member of the Elephant Theatre Company. For his role in TheSpyAnts 2009 production of Terminus Americana, he was nominated by StageSceneLA.com for Best Performance by a Lead Actor.
Mari Marks has appeared in TheSpyAnts' productions of What If? (original works by company members), Susan Smith Could Talk, and The Reunion. Other L.A. theater roles include Nat in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Rabbit Hole (The Complex), Karla in Wonder of the World (Hollywood Fight Club), the Doctor in Getting Out (Lyric Hyperion), and a year-and-a-half run as the woman who couldn't get no satisfaction in Sex, Relationships and Sometimes Love (Sierra Stages).
A former front man for the rock band Strawman, John Charles Meyer returned to acting three years ago. TV credits include CSI: NY, The Forgotten, iCarly and Zoey 101. Films include upcoming features The Taqwacores and The Millennium Bug; the Emmy-winning USC pilot The Cost of Living; and more than twenty shorts, including In Twilight's Shadow, love/junkie, Lily and Sam, and Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer.
Danny Parker-Lopes is a founding member of TheSpyAnts and has been on the Board of Directors since its inception a decade ago. He starred in Hellcab, Kidnapped By Craigslist, and The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild among others, and directed Infinite Black Suitcase, Terminus Americana and The Reunion, which he also co-wrote and acted in.
Mark Slater has performed in The Reunion (TheSpyAnts); In The Boom Boom Room (Underground Theater); Welcome To The Moon and The Woolgatherer (2nd Story Theater); Working (Ascending Artists Theater); Twelfth Night (Descanso Gardens Outdoor Theatre). A dancer, he was a member of Le Studio Dancecorps.
Maria Tomas has been a member of TheSpyAnts since 2003, performing in critically-acclaimed productions of Terminus Americana, The Birds (LA Weekly Award nomination for Best Comedy Ensemble), Hellcab, and La Ronde, among others. Maria portrayed Gabriela in the Los Angeles premiere of Jose Rivera's References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot (directed by Jon Rivera).
Scenic Design for bobrauschenbergamierca is by Marina Mouhibian; Lighting Design is by Christopher Kuhl; Sound Design is by Cricket S. Myers; Costume Design is by Leah Piehl; and Lori Evans Taylor produces for TheSpyAnts.
TheSpyAnts is a 26-member company that started as play reading group and quickly evolved into a formidable theater company that has developed numerous critically acclaimed hit productions including The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, The Birds, Hellcab (1st production) and the co-production with the Elephant Theater Company, Edmond, Infinite Black Suitcase, Rudolph The Red Hosed Reindeer, The Reunion (2006 production and 2007 production) and Kidnapped By Craigslist. TheSpyAnts strive to provide a quality theater experience while challenging the audience to "think outside the box."
bobrauschebergamerica is the second production in the 2009-10 Season at [Inside] the Ford, a three-play, curated series of new works from three L.A.-based theater companies. The 2009-10 Season at [Inside] the Ford is supported by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Ford Theatre Foundation, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
bobrauschenbergamerica runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 3 pm and 7pm, January 23 through February 28. Two previews take place on Thursday, January 21 and Friday, January 22, both at 8 pm. General admission is $20; seniors and full-time students with ID are $12; Pay-What-You-Can tickets are available for previews and all Sunday matinee performances when purchased at the door (subject to availability). [Inside] the Ford is located in the Ford Theatres complex at 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood, CA 90068, just off the 101 Hollywood Freeway across from the Hollywood Bowl and south of Universal Studios. On-site, non-stacked parking is free. For reservations and information, call the Ford Theatres Box Office at 323.461.3673 (323.GO1.FORD) or go to www.FordTheatres.org.
When:
Previews: January 21 and 22 Performances: January 23 through February 28: - Thursdays at 8 pm: January 21 (preview), 28; February 4, 11, 18, 25 - Fridays at 8 pm: January 22 (preview), 29; February 5, 12, 19, 26 - Saturdays at 8 pm: January 23 (opening night), 30; February 6, 13, 20, 27 - Sundays at 3 pm: January 24, 31; February 7, 14, 21, 28 - Sundays at 7 pm: January 24, 31; February 7, 14, 21, 28
Where: [Inside] the Ford (the 87-seat indoor theater in the Ford Theatres complex) 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East Hollywood, CA 90068 (just off the 101, across the freeway from the Hollywood Bowl and south of Universal Studios) How: (323) 461-3673 (GO 1-FORD) or www.FordTheatres.org
Tickets:
General admission: $20 Students with ID and Seniors: $12 Pay-What-You-Can . Tickets are available for previews and all Sunday matinee performances when purchased at the door (subject to availability). Parking: Free on-site (non-stacked)
from: John Anson Ford Theatres
category: Arts and Entertainment
posted: December 15th, 2009
The SpyAnts presents the Los Angeles Premiere Of Charles L. Mee's ‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ At [Inside] The Ford.
Los Angeles - Have you ever wondered what it was like to swim in a giant martini? TheSpyAnts Theatre Company presents the long-awaited Los Angeles premiere of Charles L. Mee's delightful, kaleidoscopic play, bobrauschenbergamerica. Director Bart DeLorenzo teams up with choreographer Ken Roht to dish up Mee's rollicking collage-montage tribute to Robert Rauschenberg that captures the happy, improvisational quality of the artist's singular vision. bobrauschenbergamerica opens at [Inside] the Ford on January 23, with Pay-What-You-Can previews on January 21 and 22.
bobrauschenbergamerica is a wild road trip through our American landscape, a play made as one of America's greatest artists, Robert Rauschenberg, might have conceived it if he had been a playwright instead of a painter. TheSpyAnts Breeze Braunschweig, Eric Bunton, Adam Dornbusch, Jennifer Etienne Eckert, Brett Hren, Mari Marks, John Charles Meyer, Danny Parker-Lopes, Mark Slater, and Maria Tomas create a collage of people and places, of music and dancing, of love stories and picnics and business schemes and shootings and chicken jokes and golfing, and of the sheer exhilaration of living in a country where people make up their lives as they go.
Artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) once said, "A painting is more like the real world if it is made out of the real world." This infatuation with art and everyday life led him to pioneer the idea of "Combines," provocative collages created out of nontraditional materials. Taking a single canvas, Rauschenberg would combine pictures, familiar prints, sculptures and everyday objects (like tennis balls and stuffed goats), blurring the line between art and sculpture, between art and life. In bobrauschenbergamerica, the stage is the canvas, and TheSpyAnts create a living, breathing "Combine." The eclectic group of characters and collage of colorful vignettes and fantastical images may seem to unfold like juxtaposing elements, but when seen as a whole they produce a loving tribute to American life. "The play is a celebration," enthuses DeLorenzo. "It's a collage play written by a collagist about another collagist - an appropriate homage to our crazy quilt of a country."
bobrauschenbergamerica originally premiered at the 2001 Humana Festival in Louisville. Conceived and produced by Anne Bogart and New York's SITI Company, where Mee is resident playwright, it enjoyed limited runs in New York, at Boston's ART, Chicago, France and Germany. The New York Times called it, "Brashly, unapologetically entertaining... a work that will resonate even with someone who has never seen one of Mr. Rauschenberg's famous collages."
Charles L. Mee was born in Barrington, Illinois in 1938. He was stricken with polio in 1953, which he details in his 1999 memoir A Nearly Normal Life. His plays include The Imperialists at the Club Cave Canem, Full Circle, The Trojan Women: A Love Story, Snow in June, Hotel Cassiopeia, True Love, A Perfect Wedding, Big Love, Viena Lusthaus, Orestes 2.0, The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador, Fetes de la Nuit, Summertime, Wintertime, Agamemnon 2.0, Iphigenia 2.0, Paradise Park, Queens Boulevard, Chiang Kai Shek and First Love. As of February, 2007, he has made all of his plays available on his Web site ( www.charlesmee.org) with an invitation to other artists to use them as copyright-free texts as a "resource" for their own work. However, the Web site indicates that the play texts as they appear on the site are protected by copyright, and that permission from his agent must be obtained before performing them "essentially or substantially as I have composed them." Mee is also an accomplished historian, having written about the Potsdam Conference and World War II. He currently teaches playwriting at the Columbia University School of the Arts.
Bart DeLorenzo is founding Artistic Director of the Evidence Room in Los Angeles where he has directed many shows over the last 14 years including local and world premieres by Charles L. Mee, David Greenspan, Kelly Stuart, Philip K. Dick, Gordon Dahlquist, Martin Crimp, David Edgar, Naomi Wallace, and Edward Bond, as well as his own adaptation of Dickens' Hard Times, The Cherry Orchard, and Don Carlos, among many others. His freelance work includes the world premiere of Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked! An Entertainment at South Coast Repertory, later revived at the Geffen Playhouse; the world premiere of Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress at the Geffen; Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone at South Coast Rep; Racine's Britannicus at Cal Rep; and Around the World in 80 Days at the Cleveland Playhouse. 2009 productions include Adam Bock's The Receptionist and Caryl Churchill's A Number at the Odyssey, and the world premieres of Justin Tanner's Voice Lessons at the Zephyr, and Michael Sargent's The Projectionist at the Kirk Douglas. For his work, he has received five LA Weekly awards and three Back Stage Garlands.
A member of the company since January 2008, Breeze Braunschweig has appeared in TheSpyAnts' The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild and What If? Other L.A. theater roles include Peggy in The Women, The Moon in Bloodwedding, Nina in The Seagull, and "The woman who loved to make vagina's happy" in The Vagina Monologues.
Eric Bunton, a founding member of TheSpyAnts Theatre Company as well as a member of the Elephant Theatre Company, has appeared in TheSpyAnts' hit productions of Kidnapped by Craigslist, Infinite Black Suitcase, Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer, The Reunion, The Birds, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Terminus Americana, Hellcab, La Ronde, and Edmond.
Adam Dornbusch previously appeared with TheSpyAnts as Charlie (the coworker) and Jason (the pothead) in Terminus Americana.
Jennifer Etienne Eckert is a long time member of TheSpyAnts and is also on the board of the Elephant Theatre Company. Recent stage credits include Seven Redneck Cheerleaders, Tooth and Nail, and One Fell Swoop, all of which were original world premiere productions.
Brett Hren has been a member of TheSpyAnts since 2001 and is also a member of the Elephant Theatre Company. For his role in TheSpyAnts 2009 production of Terminus Americana, he was nominated by StageSceneLA.com for Best Performance by a Lead Actor.
Mari Marks has appeared in TheSpyAnts' productions of What If? (original works by company members), Susan Smith Could Talk, and The Reunion. Other L.A. theater roles include Nat in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Rabbit Hole (The Complex), Karla in Wonder of the World (Hollywood Fight Club), the Doctor in Getting Out (Lyric Hyperion), and a year-and-a-half run as the woman who couldn't get no satisfaction in Sex, Relationships and Sometimes Love (Sierra Stages).
A former front man for the rock band Strawman, John Charles Meyer returned to acting three years ago. TV credits include CSI: NY, The Forgotten, iCarly and Zoey 101. Films include upcoming features The Taqwacores and The Millennium Bug; the Emmy-winning USC pilot The Cost of Living; and more than twenty shorts, including In Twilight's Shadow, love/junkie, Lily and Sam, and Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer.
Danny Parker-Lopes is a founding member of TheSpyAnts and has been on the Board of Directors since its inception a decade ago. He starred in Hellcab, Kidnapped By Craigslist, and The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild among others, and directed Infinite Black Suitcase, Terminus Americana and The Reunion, which he also co-wrote and acted in.
Mark Slater has performed in The Reunion (TheSpyAnts); In The Boom Boom Room (Underground Theater); Welcome To The Moon and The Woolgatherer (2nd Story Theater); Working (Ascending Artists Theater); Twelfth Night (Descanso Gardens Outdoor Theatre). A dancer, he was a member of Le Studio Dancecorps.
Maria Tomas has been a member of TheSpyAnts since 2003, performing in critically-acclaimed productions of Terminus Americana, The Birds (LA Weekly Award nomination for Best Comedy Ensemble), Hellcab, and La Ronde, among others. Maria portrayed Gabriela in the Los Angeles premiere of Jose Rivera's References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot (directed by Jon Rivera).
Scenic Design for bobrauschenbergamierca is by Marina Mouhibian; Lighting Design is by Christopher Kuhl; Sound Design is by Cricket S. Myers; Costume Design is by Leah Piehl; and Lori Evans Taylor produces for TheSpyAnts.
TheSpyAnts is a 26-member company that started as play reading group and quickly evolved into a formidable theater company that has developed numerous critically acclaimed hit productions including The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, The Birds, Hellcab (1st production) and the co-production with the Elephant Theater Company, Edmond, Infinite Black Suitcase, Rudolph The Red Hosed Reindeer, The Reunion (2006 production and 2007 production) and Kidnapped By Craigslist. TheSpyAnts strive to provide a quality theater experience while challenging the audience to "think outside the box."
bobrauschebergamerica is the second production in the 2009-10 Season at [Inside] the Ford, a three-play, curated series of new works from three L.A.-based theater companies. The 2009-10 Season at [Inside] the Ford is supported by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Ford Theatre Foundation, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
bobrauschenbergamerica runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 3 pm and 7pm, January 23 through February 28. Two previews take place on Thursday, January 21 and Friday, January 22, both at 8 pm. General admission is $20; seniors and full-time students with ID are $12; Pay-What-You-Can tickets are available for previews and all Sunday matinee performances when purchased at the door (subject to availability). [Inside] the Ford is located in the Ford Theatres complex at 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood, CA 90068, just off the 101 Hollywood Freeway across from the Hollywood Bowl and south of Universal Studios. On-site, non-stacked parking is free. For reservations and information, call the Ford Theatres Box Office at 323.461.3673 (323.GO1.FORD) or go to www.FordTheatres.org.
When:
Previews: January 21 and 22 Performances: January 23 through February 28: - Thursdays at 8 pm: January 21 (preview), 28; February 4, 11, 18, 25 - Fridays at 8 pm: January 22 (preview), 29; February 5, 12, 19, 26 - Saturdays at 8 pm: January 23 (opening night), 30; February 6, 13, 20, 27 - Sundays at 3 pm: January 24, 31; February 7, 14, 21, 28 - Sundays at 7 pm: January 24, 31; February 7, 14, 21, 28
Where: [Inside] the Ford (the 87-seat indoor theater in the Ford Theatres complex) 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East Hollywood, CA 90068 (just off the 101, across the freeway from the Hollywood Bowl and south of Universal Studios) How: (323) 461-3673 (GO 1-FORD) or www.FordTheatres.org
Tickets:
General admission: $20 Students with ID and Seniors: $12 Pay-What-You-Can . Tickets are available for previews and all Sunday matinee performances when purchased at the door (subject to availability). Parking: Free on-site (non-stacked)
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