THE RISE AND FALL OF JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME Comes to Brooklyn Art Haus

Notable agents of chaos, Psycho Clan, will return this summer with their ridiculous story of an 80's/90's action hero in Timothy Haskell's The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed By A Relative Fall Of... Jean Claude Van Damme As Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months Earlier (can be shortened to The Rise and Fall Of Jean Claude Van Damme). It had a critically acclaimed short run in the summer of 2022, and is now returning for an extended run at the new performance space, the Brooklyn Art Haus, located at 24 Marcy Avenue in Williamsburg (L train to Lorimer). The production will run on Sundays beginning June 11th at 7 PM for an open ended run. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at https://www.bkarthaus.com/.

The Rise and Fall of Jean Claude Van Damme is told largely through puppets that beat the crap out of each other. Stylistically inspired by the writing of Kurt Vonnegut, especially Breakfast of Champions, this production is about the life and times of 80's/90's action icon Jean Claude Van Damme, the Muscles from Brussels, kind of. It can easily be about Steven Segal or Dolf Lundgren or Wesley Snipes or... It's a redemption tale, or a cautionary tale, or a comedy of manners, or hard-hitting melodrama, and mostly absurd.

The Rise and Fall of Jean Claude Van Damme is directed by Paul Smithyman, puppet design, creation and direction by Aaron Haskell and features frequent Psycho Clan collaborator John Harlacher as well as Joseph Cordaro, set design by Paul Smithyman, lighting by Yang Yu and Sound design by Zoe Stanton Savitz

"This thing is, among other things, a satire of Hollywood's golden age of unabashed machismo and toxic masculinity - action movies of the 1980's/ early 90's," says writer Timothy Haskell "It truly could be about any number of action stars from the era, and in fact, there is likely crucial information about other people that I have attributed to Monsieur Van Damme. I wouldn't know, I didn't bother to research or fact check, or even proofread it. The thing is full of typos. I hope the actors act the typos. Grammatically incorrect sentences, and words that mean other things or aren't even real words makes me sound like I deconstruct language and not just lazy."

Timothy Haskell most recently directed a deconstructed version of High School The Musical starring actual high school students at the Secret Theater in Queens, as well as Nightmare Gothic last October in the lower east side. Other recent productions include The Dark House in the heart of the Hudson Valley, a blindfolded immersive audio horror show that was a follow up to I Can't See in Tribeca in 2019. He also directed the acclaimed, sold out run of the immersive horror offering THIS IS REAL, an abduction experience situated in a Brooklyn warehouse. He created and directed the wildly popular Easter spectacle Full Bunny Contact as well as the ridiculous Christmas wonderland Santastical. He has also directed more traditional theater in James and the Giant Peach at St. John's University and Sex You (I'm Gonna) by Nathan Phillips at the ACE Hotel and then in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well as Off-Broadway's Stitching (The Wild Project and The Elephant in Los Angeles), The Jaded Assassin (Ohio Theatre), Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy starring Corey Feldman at the Classic Stage Company, the Paris Hilton spoof I Love Paris by Doug Fields also at the Blue Heron Arts Center and the cult hit Road House: The Stage Play, which transferred from Off-Off Broadway to Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre. Mr. Haskell also created and directed the annual Nightmare: New York's Most Horrifying Haunted House, which ran every fall for 17 seasons.

Paul Smithyman directed last summer's wildly successful premiere of this very play and will continue his magic this summer. He is an original member of Psycho Clan and has been a part of every production for the past 20+ years. He was also the artistic director of the InterArt Theater Annex in midtown which did countless awesome stuff.

Aaron Haskell War Horse 1st National Tour, Cirque du Soleil's Toruk: First Flight, Some credits as a Creator and Director are: Wake Up, You're Dead (2010 La MaMa), Me_irl: The Crow (2016 Horror Play Festival NYC). Resident artist at La MaMa developing The Pact (Other workshops have been at St. Ann's Warehouse puppet festival, Dixon Place and internationally), and Dream Sequence 1: Find the Light (Workshops at Dixon Place). Puppet technician for Lion King Broadway, Acheson Walsh Studios NYC, as well as developing and creating puppets/ theatre spectacles for projects around the world.

John Harlacher performed as a lovable blowhard in the feature film Love Simple, as Jesus in the NFL opera Bum Phillips (LA MAMA/Monk Parrots), and as Character Man in Off-Broadway's Dog Day Afternoon (Barefoot Theatre Company), among others. Directing credits include the feature film Urchin; Penetrating The Space by Kim Katzberg and Callous Cad by Tom X. Chao (HERE ARTS CENTER); Franklin Stein by CJ Thom; and seven installments of Nightmare Haunted House with Timothy Haskell. He appears on several episodes of Nat Geo's Brain Games as a fear and imagination expert, founded Ninja Escape in Seattle where he created 12 immersive theatre games, and is the Creative Director of Weird Tales Magazine- now in its 99th year of existence.

Psycho Clan is the artistic team behind the world renowned "Nightmare Haunted House" that ran on the Lower East Side and elsewhere for 14 seasons. They also created and produced the recent immersive horror theater experiences The Dark House, I Can't See and This is Real. They've also produced the extreme Easter egg hunt "Full Bunny Contact" and the twisted Christmas spectacular "SANTASTICAL". The original Psycho Clan members, Timothy Haskell (the creator of Nightmare Haunted House) and Paul Smithyman (Production Designer), Faye Armon (Broadway Props Designer) have been joined by Charles Dunham, and Nathaniel Nowak to expand productions of the Psycho Clan company to include various immersive theatrical spectacles.

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