Rude Mechs Piece Returns To The Texas Theatre & Dance Stage In THE METHOD GUN

The Method Gun, created by Rude Mechs, returns to the Texas Theatre and Dance stage October 4-5, 2019 at the B. Iden Payne Theatre. The piece explores the life and techniques of Stella Burden, actor-training guru of the 1960s and 70s, whose sudden emigration to South America still haunts her most fervent followers. Burden's training technique, The Approach (often referred to as "the most dangerous acting technique in the world"), fused Western acting methods with risk-based rituals in order to infuse even the smallest role with sex, death and violence.

Using found text from the journals and performance reports of Stella Burden's company, The Method Gun re-enacts the final months of her company's rehearsals for their nine-years-in-the-making production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Burden left the company under mysterious circumstances in 1972. Diaries and letters from actors in the company express a sense of desperation, inadequacy and frustration inherent to the process of creating meaningful work for the stage and in everyday life. The Method Gun bounces between interior monologues, rehearsal sequences of Streetcar, and group interactions - all gleaned from historical documents - to express a longing for the return of inspiration and a more believable presentation of self in everyday life.

"It's always great to aim The Method Gun at new audiences," share Theatre and Dance faculty member and Co-Producing Artistic Director of the Rude Mechs, Kirk Lynn, and Business Manager/Marketing Director Lana Lesley. "Thanks to this presentation by The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance, we're able to do just that. The big questions inside this play are germane to the state of our country today - who we are listening to, what we are choosing to believe and who we are leaving behind."

Based in Austin, Texas, Rude Mechs creates genre-averse live performance peppered with big ideas, cheap laughs and dizzying spectacle. What these works hold in common is the use of play to make performance, the use of theatres as meeting places for audiences and artists, and the use of humor as a tool for intellectual investigation. Rude Mechs tours these performances nationally and abroad, as well as maintaining Crashbox, a suite of rooms that are home to artists of every discipline; housing a scenic lending library and running Why We Are Here, a writing and performance workshop for displaced refugees.

For more information about The Method Gun, please visit JoinTheDrama.org

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