convergence-continuum Presents DARK RIDE, Opens 5/21

Tremont's resident theatre company, convergence-continuum, continues its 2010 season at the Liminis theatre with the Ohio premiere of DARK RIDE, a convoluted, phantasmagoric and strangely comic tale by Len Jenkin.

A mysterious figure gives a translator an ancient manuscript; a thief steals an enormous cursed jewel; a dream-like waitress gives her customers plenty to think about (but no food); a jeweler and a general kidnap the thief's couch-potato girlfriend; a carnival con-man displays the mummified remains of John Wilkes Booth. These are just a few of the series of bizarre events that merge into a phantasmagoric and convoluted journey - Len Jenkin's masterpiece Dark Ride. Taking its title from the term for an amusement-park fun-house ride, Dark Ride expertly weaves the unlikely threads of his story together into a whole that goes beyond the physical world to explore the true seat of reality - the inner recesses of the mind. As the play progresses, one by one the seemingly unrelated stories merge and collide until they conclude in a spectacularly strange oculist convention in Mexico City that challenges the very bounds of reality itself. And isn't that what a good fun-house ride is suppose to do?

DARK RIDE is directed by company member Geoffrey Hoffman (who directed convergence's Finn in the Underworld, Freakshow and Demon Baby) and features actors Curt Arnold, Lucy Bredeson-Smith, Cliff Bailey, Stuart Hoffman, Sarah Kunchik, Christian Prentice, Michael Regnier, Erin Scerbak, Clyde Simon and Lauren B. Smith. Designers include Rob Wachala (lights), Bill Amato (sound), Sade Wolfkitten and Scott Gorbach (costumes), and Jim Valore (set) . Stage Manager is Stephanie Bahnij.

DARK RIDE opens Friday, May 21 and runs at 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through June 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.

The Playwright: Len Jenkin

Len Jenkin is a novelist, playwright, director, and screenwriter. He has written over 30 plays since the 1980's, including Dark Ride, Pilgrims of the Night, Tallahassee (with Mac Wellman), Careless Love, My Uncle Sam, Limbo Tales, the Dream Express, American Notes and Like I Say.. His works for the stage have been produced throughout the United States, as well as in England, Germany, France, Denmark, and Japan. Novels include N Judah, New Jerusalem and The Secret Life of Billy's Uncle Myron (with Emily Jenkins). His films include Blame it on the Night, Welcome to Oblivion and American Notes.
He has received many honors and awards, including three OBIE awards for Directing and Playwriting, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Award, a nomination for an EMMY Award, and four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Mr. Jenkin holds a PhD in American Literature from Columbia University. He's a Professor in the Dramatic Writing Department, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and lives in New York City.

The Play: DARK RIDE

Dark Ride was first presented by the Soho Repertory Theatre, in New York City, on November 12, 1981. It subsequently has had productions in alternative theaters from coast to coast.
"Few playwrights have Jenkin's skill at theatrical sleight-of-hand." -NY Daily News
"The trip itself, like a spooky show in a carnival tunnel, is full of bright, surprising images, scary and funny." -The Village Voice
"Playwright Len Jenkin is also trying to work out a new theatrical language, one that combines the film-noir milieus and detective-story plots of Raymond Chandler novels with the literary metaphysics of Jorge Luis Borges. The plot of Dark Ride, which Soho Rep premiered in 1981 and is reviving now [1996], concerns a far-flung collection of demimondaines who converge at an oculists' convention in Mexico City. But the story is about the terrifying chaos of existence, signified not by the stupidity and senseless violence that fills Hollywood movies but by the fact that smart people can't locate the truth no matter how many books they read. In this play the characters' lives are linked by reading and writing. The translator working on a supposedly ancient Chinese epic comes across a passage about Margo, who's reading a novel and gets postcards from her boyfriend, a thief who reads an article in UFO Review by Mrs. Carl Lammle, who has spent 30 years studying coincidences that show up in the Bible...and so on." -New York Press
The convergence-continuum production is produced by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing, Inc..

The Company: convergence-continuum

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, a four-weekend run of 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.)

KIMBERLY AKIMBO, the company's 34th production, is the second of six in the 2010 Season (our ninth). The company's season runs from Spring through Fall, with a hiatus over the Winter.

All of the cast and crew for DARK RIDE 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.

For more information, visit convergence-continuum.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.