Seattle's leading art collective spent 2 months transforming On the Boards' building from a recognizably respectable institution to a delightfully convoluted artistic tangle with unconventional surprise performances at every turn. Watch as people came to wander the "new" On the Boards and be charmed by the boundless creativity and detailed craftsmanship of SuttonBeresCuller.
It’s 1999 in Buenos Aires. Mario, Laura, Pablo, and Vicky are in their mid-twenties and ready for careers, love, and adulthood. Over the next decade, Argentina’s economy will collapse and their lives will take a series of unexpected turns. In this fast-paced, multilayered “mega fiction,” director Mariano Pensotti deftly unfolds the lives of these 4 characters. El pasado es un animal grotesco is a funny and moving portrait that takes place atop a slowly spinning turntable stage.
An assemblage of film, performance and visual art, Newyorkland follows 4 police officers struggling with the demands of their chosen profession and the high costs of working within the fraternal and secretive society of the NYPD. Inspired by the gritty cop movies of the 1970s, popular TV police procedurals and real-life cop stories, the production is staged in one of Temporary Distortion’s signature box-like structures. This installation serves as a framework for both the ensemble’s uniquely restrained acting style and as a canvas for its intricate and gorgeous video.
The Method Gun explores the life and techniques of Stella Burden, the actor-training guru of the 60s and 70s and creator of "The Approach" (referred to as "the most dangerous acting technique in the world"), which fused Western acting methods with risk-based rituals to infuse even the smallest role with sex, death, and violence. Using found text from the journals and performance reports of Burden's company, The Method Gun reenacts the final months of her company's rehearsals for their nine-years-in-the-making production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
A wild musical combining a live string octet, an entirely new language and 6 international performers from Mexico, France, Japan and Iran, El Gallo portrays the challenges a composer and a group of singers face when trying to mount a performance in just 2 weeks. The original music theater work is the result of a collaboration between renowned director Claudio Valdés Kuri and British composer Paul Barker.
Inspired by postmodern visual artist Yves Klein, Into the Void mixes visual arts, drag performance and precise choreography performed by 5 dancers to evoke the complex gender politics of Klein’s work. Juxtaposing ornate materials with open spaces and transparent fabrics, the stage environment and materials mimic Klein’s artistic ideals as re-envisioned by a creative team including Michael Cepress (costume design), Kane Mathis (music), Susan Robb (sculpture), Tivon Rice (digital media) and Connie Yun (lighting).
Styled like an Eastern European punk concert, director Radosław Rychcik’s contemporary spin on In the Solitude of Cotton Fields features two actors in chic suits backed by a house band, The Natural Born Chillers. Based on the French play of the same name by Bernard-Marie Koltès, the action follows an illicit, unnamed deal expressed between men known only as The Dealer and The Client. Featuring a cast from the Stefan Zeromski Theatre of Kielce, Poland.
Transition is an absurd yet addictive mix of stereophonic effects, live video, geometric movement and improvisation created by comedic musician Reggie Watts and playwright/director Tommy Smith. Watts’ many talents—standup comedian, former front man of rock band Maktub, R&B soul singer and experimental performer—have made him an audience favorite at venues and festivals around the world.
NYC’s genre-bending Temporary Distortion mines the worlds of Japanese ghost stories and J-Horror in Americana Kamikaze. Inside one of Temporary Distortion’s signature box structures, an East-meets-West psychological horror story unspools, complete with vengeful spirits, impossible physical manipulations, elliptical storylines, nightmarish cinematography and stunning visuals. Temporary Distortion has been making new works that seamlessly blend theater, cinema and installation since 2002. Their work has been presented in the US, Canada, France and Austria.
Playwright and director Young Jean Lee and a cast of 5 African-American performers create an unsettling terrain of well-trodden stereotypes that dare audiences to laugh as they consider their own preconceptions about race and culture. One of the leading and most provocative voices in American contemporary theater, Lee pushes herself to new artistic heights as she confronts her fear about creating an ethnic identity play through the lens of a “black identity politics show.”
