Rogue Artists Ensemble Presents 'GOGOL PROJECT', Opens 9/25

Welcome to Nevsky Prospect! With a script by playwright and KPCC journalist Kitty Felde, an original score and songs by indie musician Ego Plum, and Rogue Artists Ensemble's signature mix of live actors, puppetry, masks and digital projection, three of Nikolai Gogol's most famous short stories - Diary of a Madman, The Overcoat and The Nose - will come to "Hyper-theatrical " life this fall. Directed by Sean T. Cawelti, Gogol Project will open at the Bootleg Theater on September 25. Two low-priced previews take place September 19 and 20.

Gogol Project will catapult audiences into the grotesque and whimsical world of Nikolai Gogol's St. Petersburg neighborhood of Nevsky Prospect. A man chronicles his descent into madness. A poor postal clerk's life is turned upside-down by the overcoat he sacrificed so much to obtain. A Very Important Person wakes up one day to discover his nose is missing, only to find out his nose is now a government official - and the nose outranks him!

"We all long for the possibility of magic, that anything can happen at any time or any place," says Felde. "Gogol's stories have a dark side, but the Rogues bring a sense of a fun and play to everything they do. They make magic onstage."

Cawelti, who is also the Artistic Director of the company, agrees. "In our town," he laughs, "noses escape their faces, your rank is judged by the coat you wear and dogs sing love songs. Here, time is ruled by the law - but kept by a clock-keeper who wants to get the girl."

Rogue Artists Ensemble differs from other theater companies in that it's run by a collective of multi-disciplinary artists and designers rather than by actors, writers or directors. The Rogues are known for creating their own brand of "Hyper-theater," an innovative hybrid of theater traditions, puppetry, mask work, dance, music, and modern technology.

Last season, the Rogues Hyper-theatrically adapted Neil Gaiman's graphic novel, The Tragical Comedy of Mr. Punch, promising to "make audience members feel as though they had opened up the graphic novel and wound up trapped deep inside" - and they delivered on their promise, earning rave reviews for the company and garnering three Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for adaptation and design. Now, the Rogues will be prominently featured in a new book entitled "Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman": an entire chapter is dedicated to interviews with ensemble members Sean Cawelti, Cari Turley, Megan Owings and Jenny Owings about the ensemble's process and inspirations.

The cast of Gogol Project features Don Allen, Tom Ashworth, Kristopher Bicknell, Keith Ellis, Estela Garcia, Joel Jiminez, Ben Messmer, Audrey Moore, Nina J. Silver, Miles Taber, April Warren and Jesse Weinberg.

Puppet Design is by Wes Crain, Lena Garcia, Elizabeth Luce and BrIan White; Mask Design is by Pat Rubio; Set Design is by Katie Polebaum; Costume Design is by Kerry Hennessy; Lighting Design is by Haylee Freeman; Sound Design is by John Nobori; Video Design is by BrIan White; Technical Direction is by Michael Jordan; the Assistant Director is Tyler Stamets, and Dramaturge is Ben Phelps. Gogol Project is produced in association with the Bootleg Theater.

The father of modern Russian realism and satire, Nikolai Gogol was a master of the comedy of the absurd. He is the author of several masterpieces of Russian literature, including "Dead Souls," "The Government Inspector," and perhaps most famously, the short story "The Overcoat." The Ukrainian-born son of an amateur playwright, Gogol's works viciously satirized the corrupt bureaucracy of the Russian Empire. Credited with one of the first depictions of schizophrenia in western literature in "Diary of a Madman" and the first depiction of a nose with high social ranking running around town in "The Nose," Gogol's influence on Russian and world literature has been profound, prompting Fyodor Dostoevsky to famously declare, "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'."

Kitty Felde is an award-winning public radio reporter, but she's also been honored for her playwriting. Her Bosnian war crimes play A Patch of Earth won the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition and was just published by the University of Wisconsin Press in a collection called "The Theatre of Genocide: Four Plays about Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia." The play has been produced in Buffalo, Detroit, and Pretoria and broadcast on Orange County's public television station KOCE as part of its Storefront Theatre series. Her one-woman show about Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice, premiered at The National Theatre in Washington, D.C., played at New York City's Miranda Theatre, and will be reprised in Spring 2010 at the Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Florida. Kitty is co-founder of Theatre of Note and a member of the Dramatists Guild. This is the first time she's written for talking dogs and dancing chairs.

Composer and artist Ego Plum was born Ernesto Guerrero and named after one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Ego has waged a D.I.Y. war against the modern conventions of popular music, utilizing an arsenal of unconventional influences: The cartoon jazz and spastic stop & go arrangements of Raymond Scott and Carl Stalling; the ground-breaking New Wave of Oingo Boingo, Devo, and the B-52s; the haunting film scores of Angelo Badalamenti, Bernard Herrmann and Danny Elfman; and the melodic pop sensibilities of XTC, The Beatles and The Beach Boys. Through several critically-acclaimed CD releases on his own imprint, and as musical director of his own 10-piece group (The Ebola Music Orchestra), Ego Plum has continued to push the boundaries of music by creating cinematic compositions with a carnival-esque and surrealist sensibility that are simultaneously unclassifiable and of the pop stratum. The Big Takeover magazine described his latest album with the Ebola Music Orchestra to be "as poignant as it is absurd," and Amplifier magazine claimed, "there is no place in a record store where it fits." In 2008 Ego Plum left the confines of the underground music scene and brought his unorthodox sound to the most popular children's entertainment brand on the planet: Nickelodeon. Ego composed the musical score for Nickelodeon's newest animated series, the strange and hilariously bleak Making Fiends. For more information about Ego Plum, please visit his website at www.ebolamusic.com .

Designer and director Sean Cawelti graduated from the University of California Irvine, where he received his BA in Drama with honors in Stage Direction. Mr. Cawelti has studied puppetry at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and has been a puppeteer since he was just a boy. Sean was awarded a 2006 Technical Achievement Honor for Puppet Oriented Theater Design by the OC Weekly and was nominated for a Los Angeles Ovation Award for his mask design work on HYPERBOLE: epiphany. He serves as the Artistic Director for the performance group the Rogue Artists Ensemble, which creates Hyper-theatrical productions, incorporating puppetry, masked acting, original music scores and theatrical effects. Mr. Cawelti has designed puppets and masks for Cornerstone Theatre Company, International City Theater, The Rude Guerrilla Theater, Opera Pacific, NYU, UCI and many others. He has been awarded a Puppeteers of America 2003 National Festival scholarship and his articles have been featured in several national journals.

Gogol Project runs Fridays at 8 pm; Saturdays at 3 pm and 8 pm; and Sundays at 3 pm, September 25 through November 1. There will be two preview performances on Saturday, September 19 at 8 pm and Sunday, September 20 at 3 pm. Tickets to the Opening Night Gala on Friday, September 25 are $50.00 and include a pre-show reception at 6:30 pm with live music from Gogol Project composer Ego Plum and Friends, gallery, food, drinks and more. Tickets to all other performances are $25.00 general admission and $18.00 for students and seniors with valid ID. There will be two Pay-What-You-Can matinees at 3 pm on Saturday, October 10 and Saturday, October 31. The Bootleg Theater is located at 2220 Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles. For reservations and information, call (800) 838-3006 or visit www.rogueartists.org.

 

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