Convergence-Continuum Presents the World Premiere of APORKALYPSE! 12/3-12/19

Convergence-continuum, concludes its 2010 Season at the Liminis theatre with the world premiere of APORKALYPSE! - our not-for-the-kiddies holiday show by Cleveland playwright and con-con company member Chris Johnston. Christmas, Marines AWOL from Iraq, a Persian love goddess and corporate American agri-business all collide down at Pawpaw's pig farm. And since it's the holiday season, there's some singing and accordion playing, too. For the three-week run, we've added 7 pm Sunday performances in addition to our usual Thu-Sat 8 pm shows.

APORKALYPSE! is set in the mountain country of North Carolina where Pork Corp has bought out nearly all The Farms in the area and set up factory farming of hogs. The last hold-out is Pawpaw and Mawmaw's family pig farm where they, and their PTSD-afflicted, Gulf War vet son Karol, are under siege, surrounded by the stench and environmental degradation of Pork Corp's operations. Into this mess comes son JP, AWOL from duty in Iraq, just in time for Christmas. The stress of cabin fever reigns and leads to some wild shenanigans when the family is visited by Karol's sexy social worker, devious Pork Corp executives, accordion-toting carolers, not to mention, an apparition of a Persian love goddess.

APORKALYPSE! is directed by convergence-continuum's Artistic Director, Clyde Simon, and features actors Michael Regnier, Marcia Mandel, Geoffrey Hoffman, Scott Gorbach, Sarah Kunchik, Tom Kondilas and actor/musicians sade wolfkitten and Joe Milan.

APORKALYPSE! opens Friday, Dec. 3 and runs at 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and 7 pm Sundays through Dec. 19 at the Liminis, 2438 Scranton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113. Tickets are $15 general admission, $12 for students and seniors (65+). For reservations and information call 216-687-0074 or visit www.convergence-continuum.org on the web.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Playwright: Christopher Johnston
Christopher Johnston serves as playwright, company member and constant supporter at convergence-continuum. His powerful play Spawn of the Petrolsexuals was given its world premier by convergence during the 2007 season. Chris' plays have also appeared at Cleveland Public Theatre (Sexually Explicit Material, The Mind Field, Theories of Relativity), and Dobama Theater's Night Kitchen (Murder in Mind, Loud Americans: A Punk Saga). His play The Mad Mask Maker of Maigh Eo premiered in March 2006 at CPT's Gordon Square Theatre and received an Honorable Mention in the Northern Ohio Live Awards of Achievement. His one-act play, Last Light, was performed at the West 78th Street Theatre Lab in New York. He has also directed at various venues, including The Bang & The Clatter Theatre Co., Charenton Theatre Co., CPT, Dobama's Night Kitchen, IngenuityFest, Karamu House, Theater Ninjas, and The Ohio Theatre.

Chris has worked as a freelance writer since February of 1988. He has published more than 3,000 articles in numerous regional and national publications. These include American Theatre, Cleveland, Continental, Crain's Cleveland Business, Northern Ohio Live, The Plain Dealer, Progressive Architecture, Scientific American, and Urban Land. He has also written more than a dozen national Telly Award winning short documentaries and two half-hour television programs for University Hospitals Case Medical Center. He is currently writing a biography of Frederick C. Crawford, founding chairman of TRW Inc. Chris lives with his lovely wife Patrice in Shaker Heights.

The Play: APORKALYPSE!
APORKALYPSE! emerged from a workshop he completed with Mac Wellman at The Flea Theater in New York in 2007. An early draft was given an in-house reading by convergence-continuum in 2009. A later draft subsequently had another reading by convergence in January 2010. This production will be its world premiere.

The Company: convergence-continuum
APORKALYPSE! is the company's 38th production, and is the last of six productions in the 2010 Season (our ninth). The company's season runs March - December, with a hiatus over the Winter. All but one of the cast and crew of APORKALYPSE! have been involved in previous convergence-continuum productions in many and various capacities. The company seeks to create a core ensemble that continues to work together over the long term in exploring and developing its artistic voice and performance and production practices to create up-close, environmentally staged productions that challenge the status quo and extend the boundaries of theatre.

Convergence-continuum was founded in 2001 by Clyde Simon (Artistic Director) and Brian Breth. After completion of the renovations of the Liminis, the company's artistic home in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, into an intimate, versatile, storefront performance space, the company then transformed it into an 18th century French asylum for its first production, Quills by Doug Wright, in August 2002. For the company's second production (Oct. 2002), the Liminis was converted into a junkyard outside the city of Azusa for a four-weekend run of Sam Shepard's The Unseen Hand. Since then, the company has continued to produce alternative/experimental theatre work, and to completely transform the Liminis for each show, immersing audiences in the world of the play in up-close productions. (Maximum seating is 40-50 depending on the set-up for each show.)

 

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