Liars & Believers Bring ICARUS to OBERON, Now thru May 11

After a successful launch in Cambridge, a capacity crowd at Boston's Outside the Box 2013 and an acclaimed run in New York last summer, ICARUS flies back to Boston for a two-week run at OBERON. Liars & Believers, a local experimental theatre company and Resident Artists at OBERON, will present its new iteration of this myth today, May 1-11.

Devised collaboratively by the LAB ensemble, under the direction of Artistic Director Jason Slavick, ICARUS is an Americana Myth Musical. Based on the myth of the same name, ICARUS is set in a dark traveling side-show during the Great Depression. With young lovers, magical machines and monsters, it tells a tale of oppression and hope for a better future.

ICARUS features an original Americana score by Nathan Leigh (IRNE award), the fantastical puppetry of Faye Dupras and the indie-folk sound of the ICARUS house band, Store Bought Absinthe. Every performance begins at 7pm with local guest bands, sideshow acts and specialty drinks. Tickets start at $25 and are on sale now.

At the New York Musical Theatre Festival last summer, ICARUS received Honorable Mention for both book and design. The New York Times called it an "...intriguingly ominous ... showbiz fable" with "clever lyrics and a tangy score."

The ICARUS Ensemble

Cast
Aimee Rose Ranger - Minnie Minoseczeck
Jonathan Horvath - Daedalus
Lukas Papenfusscline - Icarus
Liz Tancredi - Penny
Veronica Barron - The rest of the world

Store Bought Absinthe
Jay Mobley - Music Director & Guitar
Jenn Bliss - Accordion & Flute
Eric Lee - Fiddle

About the Lead Artistic Team

Writer/Director Jason Slavick is a director, writer, educator and the Artistic Director of Liars & Believers. For the LAB, he directed and co-wrote ICARUS, which premiered in Cambridge, played Outside The Box in Boston and made an acclaimed New York debut in 2013 at the New York Musical Theatre Festival (honorable mention for book and design). Jason directed 28 Seeds, he co-wrote and directed, Song of Songs: a LoveRomp and wrote and directed Le Cabaret Grimm - a punk cabaret fairy tale {sans fairies}, which premiered in Boston in 2010 and played in New York in 2012 at the New York Musical Theatre Festival (best featured performer and best design, honorable mention for choreography). Jason wrote and directed Heaven & Hell - The Fantastical Temptation of the 7 Deadly Sins, a new musical adapted from the album by Joe Jackson that was commissioned by and presented at The Boston Conservatory in 2007. As a company member of Boston Theatre Works, Jason directed Othello (Elliot Norton Award nominated for Best Production and Best Actor), The Tempest, Antony & Cleopatra and Macbeth. He helped develop and directed Emily Mann's critically acclaimed Meshugah, Olga Humphrey's Veronika Vavoom Volcanologist, and his own play J: A One-Act Improvised Tragi-Comedy. Jason directed at The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre, The Boston Conservatory, The New Theatre, The Stanley B. Theatre, InCharge Productions, The Left Bank Theatre in Tel Aviv, and The Second Hand Independent Theatre, which he founded in Philadelphia. Besides the shows listed above, Jason has written The Dancing Bear, The Golem, Icaphish and Alice: A Grotesque Turn in Twelve Scenes. He received his MFA in directing from The Trinity Repertory Conservatory in Providence, where he was awarded the Pell Scholar Award.

Composer/Lyricist Nathan Leigh is an award winning composer, producer, and writer. He plays in the bands Super Mirage, A Thousand Ships, and Nathan Leigh and the Traveling Salesmen. As a national touring act, Nathan has performed in nearly every state in the country at legendary venues like Pianos, the Webster Theatre, Copperfield's, The Middle East, Galapagos Art Space, and The Blue Note. As a composer for theatre, Nathan has written scores for shows at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, American Repertory Theatre, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, PS122, and Off-Broadway at New World Stages. In 2007, his work on the Debate Society's The Eaten Heart was the Gothamist's Sound Design of the Year. He won the IRNE for Best Sound Design in 2009 and 2010 for his scores for Strangers on A Train at the Stoneham Theatre and The Hound of The Baskervilles at Central Square Theatre respectively.

Nathan was a recipient of the Boris Segal Fellowship in 2008 to develop the musical Big Money with Super Mirage bandmate and Obie Award-winning playwright Kyle Jarrow at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. In 2011 Nathan received a fellowship from the Banff Center for the Arts to develop the score for the play Froggy by Jennifer Haley. With Kyle Jarrow, Nathan is the co-author of Big Money, and The Consequences (world premiere: Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre June 2012). With book writer Jesse Geiger, Nathan is the co-author of the musical Darling. Nathan has written music and lyrics for Song of Songs (world premiere: BCA Plaza June 2011) and Icarus with book writer Jason Slavick for Liars and Believers. Nathan is currently developing the new musical Sealand, which ran in serialized form from July to December 2011 as part of the #serials@TheFlea. Nathan writes a regular column for #SoundCheck for Afropunk.com, and is a proud member of the Occupy Wall Street Puppetry Guild. His latest solo album is A Life In Transit.

Director/Designer of Puppetry Faye Dupras has worked as a director, puppeteer and educator throughout Eastern Canada and the USA. As an image based theater artist she is dedicated to creating visually and thematically rich, cross-disciplinary new works. She is the artistic director of Foreign Landscapes Productions, under which she wrote and produced The Great Red Ball Rescue and produced the award-winning play Bird's Eye View and co-produced By the Willow (UNIMA-USA Citation of Excellence 2005). Star Sisters, Faye's most recent co-production, was created with the permission of, and in collaboration with, Canadian oral tradition storyteller Louise Profeit LeBlanc. As a collaborator Faye has worked with many exciting artist including Clea Minaker on the Feist Tour projection work (2007) and Beauty First (2010.) She has worked with Jumblies Theatre in various capacities including directing Tea and Bridges (2006) and the World Stage production of Bridge of One Hair (2007). Faye has had the honor of working with Hua Hua Chang, performing in her internationally touring production of Butterfly Dreams (2002-06). She has also worked with Underground Railway Theatre on several projects including States of Grace (2007), How do you Spell Hope (2008), Galileo (2009), Abiyoyo (2012), and Tokoloshe (2013). Faye has apprenticed under several inspiring artists, perhaps most notably Canada's acclaimed puppeteer Noreen Young. Faye holds an MFA in "Puppetry Arts" from the University of Connecticut and a BFA in "Theater and Development" from Concordia University in Montreal Canada.

ICARUS
Conceived and Directed by Jason Slavick
Music and Lyrics by Nathan Leigh
Puppetry Direction and Design by Faye Dupras
Written by the LAB Ensemble
May 1 - 11 @ 7:30pm. Doors open and preshow begins at 7pm.
OBERON, 2 Arrow St. in Cambridge.
Tickets available at Tickets.AmericanRepertoryTheater.org and 617.547.8300.
Tickets from $25.

Liars & Believers creates original live performances which move the heart, challenge the mind and feast the senses. Dubbed "the region's most experimental and visionary artists" by the Boston Survival Guide, Liars & Believers expands the language of live performance. In its first five years, the LAB produced six original, multi-disciplinary shows in Boston, two of which went on to win awards at the New York Musical Theatre Festival.

Photo Credit: Chris McIntosh

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