Lit Moon Theatre Company
Reimagining the Theatrical Experience
Lit Moon Theatre Company
Reimagining the Theatrical Experience
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Inventive Theatre from the Czech Republic and U.S.October 13-18, 2009, |
Another triumph for our city’s most consistently innovative and daring theatrical organization.” – The Independent
By Carolina Beltran Charles Donelan Cecilia Gonzalez
Independent,
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great, Tuesday, October 13
With this great new show Lit Moon steps into the world that Shakespeare made,
the boisterous scene of the London theater world circa 1730. Henry Fielding,
best known for his novel Tom Jones, was once one of the most popular playwrights
in England, and The Tragedy of Tragedies represents his second stage version
of the popular legend of Tom Thumb, a tiny man of great accomplishments who
swaggers through the court of King Arthur, slaying dragons and seducing queens
and princesses, all from a height of no more than a few inches. In Lit Moon’s
version of this satire, which was aimed at the inflated language and theatrical
clichés of then-current productions of tragedy, the comedy of scale
opens onto vistas of absurdity that finally lead to savagery and death. If
last year’s The Wedding (also in the festival this year, see below) was
Lit Moon’s pop rock musical, then The Tragedy of Tragedies might be said
to be Lit Moon’s foray
into punk, the deliberately provocative, stripped-down style of music
that crashed the classic rock party at the end of the 1970s.
Peter John Duda has two of his best roles in this show as King Arthur and his alter-ego, the dreadful Lord Grizzle. Duda sings and recites some of the evening’s most memorable speeches, especially Arthur’s extraordinary denunciation of simile. As Queen Dollallolla, Sarah Halford performs the show’s harshest, most cathartic song, a screamed soliloquy that would make Courtney Love sit up and take notice.
James “Jaco” Connolly adds some of his most inventive work to date in the form of onstage musical devices ranging from plastic tubes and balls for percussion to a tiny toy piano that falls over. His ingenious playing with the idea of smallness leads to some of the night’s biggest laughs.
Overall The Tragedy of Tragedies is terrifically satirical without necessarily being very funny—or wanting to be. Sure, there are running jokes, including one in which the actresses bicker over who is Helen Mirren (Lit Moon code for the missing Victoria Finlayson?), but by the time the dreadful final act arrives, with its reams of red cloth signifying blood, something too awful for laughs has made its presence known. The Tragedy of Tragedies is another triumph for our city’s most consistently innovative and daring theatrical organization. —Charles Donelan
Polaris, Wednesday, October 14
From their first entrance, when Jan Benes-McGadie and Vojta Svejda come onstage straining to pull an invisible sled and letting off small puffs of talcum powder condensation, the tremendous attention to detail and imagination that has gone into their show Polaris is apparent. A two-man show from the Adriatic Presents theater of Prague, Polaris is a nearly wordless hour-long physical drama that draws the audience into a vivid and seamless dream of polar exploration. The two performers are virtuosi of what dancers call “traveling”—i.e., finding different, distinctive and significant ways to cross the stage. The talc they shed as stage-vapor eventually coats the floor, the better for Benes-McGadie and Svejda to slide, waddle, skip, slither, and stalk through the space. In several scenes simple traveling motifs conjure entire settings, as when the pair side-stepped synchronously to indicate riding together on a train, or when they slid and slithered on palms and elbows dragging bent knees behind them and bellowing like sea lions.
In Polaris, it seems as though every aspect of arctic life is touched upon, and often in alternating, complementary perspectives, as when the opening segment involving two human explorers huddling in a shelter was inter-cut with deft shots of the explorer’s huskies shivering outside. From a standpoint of sheer technique, this is some of the most impressive acting you will see anywhere. For instance, they can move so quickly and quietly during the blackouts that at times it’s hard to accept that they could have changed position so drastically in such a short amount of time without anyone noticing. Although the animal sequences are in some ways the most memorable, they are by no means the most significant of the show. Through deft characterization and fascinating lighting and performance techniques designed to mimic other media such as early film, Polaris embeds its explorers amid a world of poignant reminders of past ambition and archaic notions of fame and glory. —Charles Donelan
Flush, Thursday, October 15
Billed as a two-man show, Flush actually involved a larger cast, since
the audience was drawn into the action, both onstage and off, at several points
in the evening. This is a very demanding work, both for the actors -- James
Donlon and Howard Lotker -- and for the spectator. It explores difficult subject
matter, specifically the use of torture for interrogation, and persistently
erases the fourth wall separating the audience from the actors onstage. On
Thursday night three audience members were brought onstage as representatives
of the medical, legal, and educational professions to literally blow the whistle
on improper treatment of the interrogated subject, and later on, another audience
member was recruited as an apprentice interrogator.
Donlon and Lotker handled the delicate task of arming and then defusing this explosive topic with great compassion and strict attention to emotional detail. In a question and answer session following the show they revealed its origins and agenda, putting the strenuous experience into a larger context of theater and activism. Flush, a world premiere, was one of the most memorable and important shows to be seen here this season. —Charles Donelan
Albert’s Fear, Saturday, October 17
Albert’s Fear is a one-man show directed by James Donlon that blends mime and comedy in a story anyone can identify with -- the story of facing one’s fears. Vojta Svejda, the performer and man behind the concept, plays Albert: a shy, likable boy who jumps at the sight of a spider in the bathroom and is relentlessly bullied. Watching an adult actor play a ten-year-old boy is captivating. When Albert is scared, the audience is too, and when Albert acquires his tough persona, the audience recognizes the feeling. From nightmares to hospitals to bouncing bus rides, Albert’s scenes of fear are created out of thin air in seconds, without props, like a magic show with a plot line. In less than an hour, Albert’s Fear conjures the years filled with courage and humor and fear that swallow up a child and spit him out a man. —Carolina Beltran
The Wedding, Saturday, October 17
A young woman dreams of the perfect wedding. As a child, she may have played
dress-up with her best friend, trading off the roles of the bride and groom,
or dressed up her Ken and Barbie dolls, using them to act out her own wedding —imagining
just what her groom would look like and what he would say. Yet, as much as
we young women do imagine ourselves getting married, having babies, and living
happily ever after, we also wonder about the falling in love part.
Ultimately, we wonder what marriage is supposed to be about. In Lit Moon’s
The Wedding, the Bachelor, played by Stanley Hoffman, is spotted by three women:
Victoria Finlayson, Sarah Halford, and Kate Paulsen. Seeing as
he is the only eligible bachelor in their path, they all decide to pursue him.
The female actors represent each period in a woman's life, from girlhood to
young adulthood to womanhood, and they go through a series of experiences,
including going out to
dinner, dancing, and having a baby. The play reflects on the pressures
and fear of rejection that a woman goes through in the course of attempting
to get the attention of the perfect man for the perfect wedding. Through catchy
original pop songs, symbolism, movement, and dialogue, The Wedding paints a
picture of love and marriage as fraught with anxiety as it is funny. —Cecilia
Gonzalez
Photos by David Bazemore
By Daniel Kepl, News-Press Correspondent
October 15, 2009
Lit Moon Theatre, founded in 1991 by a collective of professional Santa
Barbara-based theater artists under the artistic direction of John
Blondell, opened its 2009 "Czech & Mates" World
Theater Festival at Center Stage Theater Tuesday evening. There were two shows:
a zany adaptation of John Fielding’s 1730 comedy "The Tragedy of
Tragedies, Or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb The Great" and later in the
evening, "Brick Circk," an hour-long solo clown piece by Stevo Capko,
founder of Prague’s Circus Sacra.
Both shows illustrated the festival’s theme — an inter-cultural, athletic approach to storytelling through a marriage of movement-based narrative and traditional theater technique. The Festival continues through Sunday at Center Stage with a dizzying glut of cutting-edge productions from four Czech and two U.S. companies. Put simply, Czech & Mates is a must-see event.
Director John Blondell takes his brilliant Lit Moon cast of six actors so close to the edge of taste’s precipice, the slightest misstep would have sent the delicious pacing and pentameter of John Fielding’s 1730 satiric comedy tumbling. "The Tragedy of Tragedies, or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb The Great" is one of several popular satirical plays Fielding offered in London’s Haymarket during the reigns of George’s II and III. Jabbing mercilessly at the ribs of the rich and powerful of his age, Fielding tongue-in-cheeked his way into trouble with the authorities and was banned from the English stage by an edict of His Majesty’s government against seditious humor. Undeterred, he moved on to write novels like "Tom Jones." The story spoofs Elizabethan tragedy and language, and also comments indirectly on the politics and manners of Fielding’s Britain.
Director Blondell takes the play even further with his signature use
of athleticism, inspired by an American master of physical theater, James
Donlon. Blondell’s
adaptation gives the audience an additional layer of visually anachronous
backstory while presenting the complex wordplay in straight-faced and stunningly
timed masquerade. The result is a virtuosic amalgam of history and humor that
travels well in our time. Henry Fielding would have approved.
The plot is a fantastic confection involving King Arthur and his court, Merlin, an infertile peasant couple given the sorcerer’s gift of a child no bigger than one’s thumb, and assorted subplots too numerous to cogitate, presented in a chain of adventures and silliness. The cast of six, with the exception of Stanley Hoffman as Tom Thumb and Kate Louise Paulsen as Princess Huncamunca, undertake various roles: Peter John Duda is King Arthur and Lord Grizzle; Casey Caldwell is Ghost, Noodle and Follower; Diana Lynn Small is Merlin, Doodle, Foodle, Parson,
Glumdalca and Mustacha; and Sarah Juliet Halford is Bailiff, Queen Dollallolla and Cleora. All make a consummate ensemble team, parsing the crazed and convoluted plot with the clarity of Rand & McNally.
Costume designer Jaco Connolly literally strips the cast of its modern day duds worn during the play’s clever prelude — the actors initially reading from script pages that are also eventually discarded — to vintage 18th-century underwear (long johns and bloomers) in which they frolic the remainder of the tangled tale. An enormous repertoire of physical gags and costume accessories further piffle the goofball plot. Even the music, created by the inimitable James Connolly, is physical. Objects are dropped, hurled, slid and shimmied with uncanny appropriateness.
Theodore Dolas lights the show in the spirit of P. T. Barnum, highlighting the most important of various simultaneous actions in spotlight. This delicious circus, a seamless weave of sensibilities — Fielding’s and Blondell’s — makes for a spirited evening of professional theater that is both aesthetically satisfying and joyously hilarious. "The Life and Death of Tom Thumb The Great" repeats on Friday and Sunday with a raft of superb theater from America and the Czech Republic filling the gaps between. Go see it all.
e-mail: life@newspress.com
Tuesday, October 13, 7 p.m. – Festival Opening Night
Friday, October 16, 9 p.m.
A side-splitting, hilarious spoof on tragedy, based on a play by Henry Fielding. Death and has never been so fun…
“We have taken this marvelous send-up of classical tragedy and translated into a highly intense physical piece. We also poke fun at some of the serious productions we’ve done recently.” – John Blondell
Tuesday, October 13, 9 p.m.
Sunday, October 18, 3 p.m.
Classic clowning from the rich Prague tradition: a green clown with bricks everywhere. Kids and adults alike will take delight.
Stevo Capko received his degree in robotics, but turned his talents to street clowning and performing in theatre and movies in the Czech Republic.
Wednesday, October 14, 7 p.m.
Friday, October 16, 7 p.m.
Two exhausted polar explorers are confronted with polar bears, seals, migrating birds and more in an unforgiving landscape.
“Our performance style is based on subtle, precise expression which is born out of motionlessness and the act of waiting. We deal with confrontations between the inner movement of thought and the motionless body in surroundings which never cease to move.” -- Jan Beneš-McGadie & Vojta Švejda
“A collection of scattered miracles and a startling meditation on nature.” -Guardian (UK)
Wednesday, October 14, 9 p.m.
Saturday, October 17, 7 p.m.
Lit Moon’s smash pop musical about the perils and pitfalls in taking the plunge.
“Jubilant passion… a Santa Barbara version of Spring Awakening.” - Independent (SB)
Thursday, October 15, 7 p.m.
Saturday, October 17, 4 p.m.
A small boy conquers his timidity and indecisiveness. Bring the family and join in the triumph of this intimate, lovely production.
James Donlon directed this play and acts in Flush. One of the actors in Albert’s Fear is also in Polaris. What wonderful cross pollination we have in this festival! -- John Blondell
Thursday, October 15, 9 p.m.
Saturday, October 17, 9 p.m.
An imprisoned comic actor and his jailer display a surreal friendship. A dynamic, cross-cultural co-production sure to intrigue.
A premiere USA/Czech collaboration of riveting physical theater by award-winning actors. A detainee and his interrogator explore a surreal relationship that reveals the guts of power grasped, denied, and surrendered. A dark side of human nature is laid bare.
Sunday, October 18, 1 p.m.
Festival artists in improvisational show… generated by Chance!
Festival actors will have created short pieces, generated by Chance activities, and rehearsed for only two hours before this event.
All performances are in English. General Admission seating, first-come, first-seated.
Czech & Mates is Presented by Lit Moon Theatre Company, Flying Actor Studio (San Francisco), HoME Theatre Company (Prague) and interact.
Sponsors include
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LIT MOON THEATRE COMPANY is a Santa Barbara-bred and based collective of theatre artists. Founded in 1991, Lit Moon staged its first production (Alice in Wonderland) in 1992, and achieved federal non-profit status in 1996. The purpose of the organization is “to offer educational opportunities that broaden and deepen an understanding of world theatre and cultural traditions, and promote and inspire inter-cultural understanding through live theatre performance.” The company’s artistic work cultivates a physical, image-based performance vocabulary. “If you haven’t seen a Lit Moon production,” wrote Santa Barbara News-Press critic Philip Brandes in 1994, “the company’s approach to storytelling through a marriage of movement-based narrative with traditional techniques is inspiring in its sense of reawakened possibilities.” Ten years on, in January 2004, Matt Radz of the Montreal Gazette wrote of Lit Moon’s production of Hamlet, seen at the Centaur Theatre’s Wildside Festival, “The company’s style, melding the rigours of physical theatre with classic text, makes them pioneers, if not unique.”
Lit Moon creates new productions with international collaborators, presents them at home and abroad, and produces alternating bi-annual international theater festivals in Santa Barbara. To date, Lit Moon has produced t23 original productions, six artistic residencies with artists from six different European countries, and ten international theater festivals. Lit Moon’s festivals have featured 32 productions from 12 different countries, including Theatre Credo, Sofia (1998 and 2001), Do-Theatre St. Petersburg (2000, 2001, and 2004), the Market Theatre of Johannesburg (2003), the Bulgarian National Theatre, Sofia (2006), and the Georgian State Theatre, Tbilisi (2008). Lit Moon’s own touring has taken the company to Bulgaria, Scotland, Quebec, the Czech Republic, Poland (three occasions), Montenegro, and Macedonia. Recent invitations include festivals in China, Bulgaria, Albania, and the European Republic of Georgia.
Stevo Capko is the founding director of CIRCUS SACRA, a company devoted to the development and presentation of Street Theatre. Capko has written and directed all of the group’s performances. Draceana (Legenda o Sv. Jiří – The Legend of St. George), the dramatic circus performance Mechanica and the drama Čamburína (a visual comedy in the commedia dell’arte style) were all successively premiered at the 2002 Loutkářská Chrudim festival and at the DIVADLO 2003 and 2005 festivals in Plzeň. In August 2006 Circus Sacra became the cornerstone of the street theatre ritual Vyhánění Nudy zPrahy (Driving the Boredom out of Prague), written and directed by Capko, which was performed at theatrical festival Mimraj 2006 (a celebration of 50 years of Czech pantomime) and the Letní letná 2006 summer festival.
Circus Sacra has also represented Czech culture abroad, including performances Draceana as part of the Invasion of Europe Theatrical Institute in Madrid and with the street event souboj Titánů (Combat of the Titans) at the Tsarskoe Selo Carnival in St. Petersburg.
In 2008 Capko created two theatrical productions for Circus Sacra: Lazy Varieté, a performance using of the methods of the new circus, and the family humor clownery show Brick Circk. Both were premiered at the Celetná Theatre, which is operated by the Kašpar Association.
FLYING ACTOR STUDIO founded by James Donlon and Leonard Pitt, is one of the few international centers in North America dedicated to the study of physical theatre with world-class master teachers. Located in downtown San Francisco, the studio celebrates the imagination and invites a journey into the heart of life. Students learn the great world theater traditions of physical expression, neo-classic clown and mime, mask, circus, new vaudeville, and commedia dell 'arte. A wide selection of classesare offered including weekend intensives, continuing month long courses, and a 28 week professional conservatory program of daily rigorous training.
The neo-classic art of the clown/mime is a special emphasis of study. Actors expand the command of their bodies and imaginations. Directors discover new ideas about dramatic structure, space, timing and energy. The faculty includes James Donlon, Leonard Pitt, Tony Award winner Bill Irwin, Geoff Hoyle, veteran Cirque du Soleil clown John Gilkey, and Robert Shields of the CBS Shields & Yarnell show. For more information go to www.flyingactorstudio.com.
HoME theater company is a collaborative organization dedicated to the development, performance and dissemination of contemporary theater genres. Each HoME performance or project features an international group of artists, including, so far, Czech, American, British, Swiss, Austrian, Slovak, Israeli, Canadian, Serb, Mexican, Argentinean, and Belgian artists. HoME o.s. is, along with L&S Company, one of the organizers of the residency space Studio Kokovice 4, which is located in Kokovice, 40 km outside of Prague (some Flush rehearsals took place there).
Howard Lotker, the founding director of HoME theater, is an American artist living, working and studying in the Czech Republic for 10 years, and a former student of James Donlon (Santa Barbara). Lotker cooperated with many of Turba's students in Prague, making him a natural bridge between the two cultures. He has taken advantage of this connection, such as in 2006, when he brought bring professors Ivan Vyskocil and Jan Hancil of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU) to New York City showcasing Vyskocil's psychophysical improvisation discipline, “Acting with the Inner Partner (Dialogicky jednani)” to American theater artists at Columbia University and the Czech Center, NY.
THEATER ALFRED VE DVORE was founded in 1997 by mime, choreographer, and director Ctibor Turba. During the following two years, eleven performances were created, many of which, some of which were directed by Turba himself, went on to be presented at international festivals. Foreign companies were also invited to perform at Alfred individually, and as participants in festivals. In 2001, Turba handed over the artistic and organizational management of Alfred ve dvore to the Motus production company, who has been running it ever since, with Sarka Havlickova at the helm since 2002.
Motus o.s. creates a framework for creative development by supporting alternative and unusual theatrical and artistic activities, by actively improving beginning artists’ work conditions, and by bringing new directions in art to Czech audiences. Motus is also founder of Nova Síť - the New Web project – a network for the circulation of independent theatre projects throughout the Czech Republic. New Web provides administrative, production, organizational and financial support for these projects with the goal of the professionalization of this type of creative activity in the Czech Republic and neighboring countries. In October 2004 Motus received the Příští vlna/Next Wave alternative theater award for “Production Activity Of The Year,” for its outstanding work at Alfred ve dvore. The theater routinely hosts high-caliber international guest performers, who teach workshops at the theater as well.
PRESENTER
interACT is an international consortium of theatre companies and festivals, developed to support and present new, progressive theatre through inter-cultural residencies, artistic barter, and festival participation. interACT connects progressive theatres, institutions, and festivals in Europe, North America, and Asia, and provides sources of inspiration, artistic possibility, travel, and networking opportunities. The main purpose of interACT is to create, develop, and sustain artistic co-productions between member theatres, and use theatre as an active agent in cultural transformation and renewal. The Lit Moon Theatre Company, Santa Barbara, and HoME Theatre, Prague are founding members of the network. Lit Moon artistic director John Blondell is founding president of interACT.