2009 Preview

Operetta by Witold Gombrowicz, directed by Michal Zadara (Poland)

From Poland, in an epically-sized Live Arts production, comes a radical rendition of Witold Gombrowicz's Operetta, directed by '99 Swarthmore alumn Michal Zadara.

This production of Operetta was created, directed, and scored by artists in their early 30s. Featuring irreverent pop music, the tone is fun, farcical, and firmly tongue-in-cheek. It tells the story of a young woman who is groped by a pickpocket while sleeping and forever after longs to be nude, in a decidedly repressed aristocratic society.

Watch a 30 second clip from Operetta here.

small metal objects
small metal objects by Back to Back Theatre (Australia)

The ingenious small metal objects by Australia's Back to Back Theatre will unfold amid the surging pedestrian traffic of an undercover public space in Philadelphia. On a seating riser with individual headphones, the audience will be wired in to the performance played out somewhere in the crowd.

When the show begins, you're not sure who you should be watching. Gary and Steve are the kind of men who normally escape notice. When they emerge, it is only gradually, two points slowly moving towards us through the crowd. We are the only witnesses to their small and intensely personal drama, passers by oblivious to their conversation. As the intimacy of their situation develops, small metal objects becomes a sly and luminous depiction of everyday issues most take for granted.

Back to Back Theatre is driven by an ensemble of six actors considered to have intellectual disabilities. Here, the company explores how respect is withheld from outsiders - the disabled or unemployed - who society deems 'unproductive'.

Welcome to Yuba City
Welcome to Yuba City by Pig Iron Theatre Company (Sweet By and By, 2008)

Outsiders, eccentrics, oddballs, and loners.

In the spirit of punk rock and in the guise of a variety show, Pig Iron ensemble Cassie Friend, Sarah Sanford, Geoff Sobelle, and James Sugg will abandon narrative as they veer toward lunacy and physical expression in making the margins of society’s “invisibles” visible through the lowbrow theatrical styles of burlesque and vaudeville.

Live music performed by the actors on tubas, spoons, bagpipes, and mouth harps; dancing; and even a vacation slideshow are all part of the Yuba City adventure.

Through collaboration with composer Michael Friedman and physical theater teacher Giovanni Fusetti, Pig Iron’s Welcome to Yuba City absurdly and affectingly finds harmony between that which is beautiful, and that which is broken and ridiculous. It is a portrait of America with no kings but fools, no heroes but clowns, no poets and philosophers, but laborers and drifters.

Fatebook: a cyberspace ghost story by New Paradise Laboratories (BATCH, 2007)

Local multidisciplinary dance/theater company New Paradise Laboratories' Fatebook: a cyberspace ghost story will begin online via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more one month out from the Festival before the live performance takes place. This completely unique, multi-faceted show explores the collision of the cyber- and real-spatial realms and their impact on our experience and how we think. Even if you don't join the online drama in August, the live performance in September is not-to-be-missed!

TIDE by SCRAP Performance Group (Between the Pages, 2007)

A new work by Merián Soto (States of Gravity & Light #2, 2007)

A new work from Headlong Dance Theater (Explanatorium, 2007)

A new work from Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre (Babel, 2004)

A new work from Willi Dorner (bodies in urban spaces, 2008)