“Antarctica is the last place where you may drop down, when you shake the earth and can’t stay put anywhere else.”
Inspired by this quote from the documentary Encouters at the End of the World by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, Wunderbaum and Touki Delphine will cooperate for a second time, six years after Lost Chord Radio. Wunderbaum, a Dutch-Flemish group of actors/musicians performs a high-energy concert spectacle about dreams, choices and possibilities set in Antartica.
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.
Choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey offer a surreal, visually arresting examination of the gap between cause and effect in A Crack in Everything. The evening-length work explores the enduring questions of justice posed in the Greek tragedy The Oresteia through dramatic video and costumes, atmospheric installations and lighting, and Scofield’s ritualistic movement. A Crack in Everything was made over a span of 2 years with production residencies at On the Boards and in Hungary, New Zealand and at the prestigious MacDowell Colony (New Hampshire).
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).
An angry puppet propels the action in this Frankenstein-esque tale from choreographer and OtB audience favorite Crystal Pite. Pite’s most ambitious work of the time features a heightened set, theatrical tricks and 7 talented dancers hand selected from around the world. Dark Matters has toured widely across Europe, including the prestigious Venice Biennale.
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.
Faith is the first performance in Seattle choreographer Pat Graney’s Faith Triptych. Combining 3 iconic performances that investigate the lives of women and that were created over the span of a decade (1991-2001), the triptych creates a mini retrospective of Graney’s work. Faith (1991), Sleep (1997) and Tattoo (2001) were each originally commissioned by On the Boards and feature 12 of the original cast members.
