The New York premiere of the acclaimed The Nonsense Company's Storm Still will close Sunday, March 6th at Performance Space 122 (150 First Avenue at E. 9th Street). To purchase tickets please call 212-352-3101 or visit www.ps122.org.
An extended meditation on Act Three, Scene Six of King Lear, Storm Still takes place inside an abandoned school where three children are trapped and taking refuge from the raging war outside. Years pass, and these children become grown men who have spent their lives performing King Lear, unsupervised, over and over again. After so many performances, the mad King has developed a theory about the purpose of theatre, which he debates with his Fool/psychologist. In Storm Still, The Nonsense Company use their musical sensibilities to manipulate sound and Shakespeare's classic text to consider madness, childhood, war, and the vast history of and various treatments for insanity.
Hailed as risk-taking, virtuosic performers that deliver thrilling performances, The Nonsense Company (
Rick Burkhardt, Obie-award-winning co-creator of New York Theatre Workshop's Three Pianos, Andy Gricevich, and Ryan Higgins) filter the sounds and actions of Shakespeare's King Lear through many sonic and textual layers as only this award-winning trio (made up of classically-trained musicians/composers, accomplished actors, and published poets) can. The result is a philosophical yet playfully unhinged romp through a world of poetic language, political trials, medical examinations, and unrestrained childhood exploration.
The Nonsense Company (
Rick Burkhardt, Andy Gricevich, and Ryan Higgins) from San Diego, California (now based in Brooklyn, NY) performs new and innovative works of contemporary music and theater, with an emphasis on the musical use of speech in estranged contexts and the application in theater of techniques more commonly associated with music. The company's name is borrowed from
Franz Schubert's ensemble, die Unsinn Gesellschaft, who with radically spare resources spawned a revolution in the music and poetry of the nineteenth century. The Nonsense Company has performed in over 30 US cities, presenting new music and theater in unexpected combinations for a wide range of audiences. Their concert in Darmstadt in 2004 was hailed as "one of the most solid, free, and critical aesthetic propositions... of the festival." Their 2008 performance in NYC's Frigid Theater Festival was reviewed as "the must see show of the festival" and won Best Show and Audience Choice awards.
http://nonsensecompany.com/home.html
Rick Burkhardt is an Obie-award-winning playwright, performer, composer, and songwriter with degrees in Music Composition from the University of California San Diego and the University of Illinois. His chamber music, theater, and text pieces have been commissioned and performed throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Australia by groups such as the Ensemble Surplus, Ensemble Ascolta, Ensemble Chronophonie, the La Jolla Symphony, sfSound, Toca Loca, the (past)modern duo, the NOISE quartet, Watts Village Theater Company, and the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. With Andy Gricevich he tours the US in the cabaret duo The Prince Myshkins, whose original songs have been performed and recorded by folk musicians across the country. He also performs with Brooklyn theater companies Hoi Polloi and Banana Bag and Bodice and was most recently seen in the New York Theater Workshop production of Three Pianos.
Andy Gricevich is a guitarist, singer, poet, actor and composer of music for tape, and perhaps the world's foremost avant-garde autoharpist. With
Rick Burkhardt, he founded the Utopia Train Theater collective in Urbana, IL and San Diego, CA, as well as the political cabaret duo The Prince Myshkins, who for ten years have travelled the country performing for everyone from long-time activists and unionists to theatergoers, high school students, philosophy departments, clowns and nuns. His poems and essays have appeared in various journals of innovative writing. Andy edits CANNOT EXIST, a small poetry press and print quarterly published in Madison, Wisconsin, and co-hosts the "_____-Shaped" reading series.
Ryan Higgins is a writer, actor, and musician who graduated from UC San Diego's theater program. A founding member of the acclaimed San Diego / Los Angeles theater company Blebbings, he has created roles in dozens of theatrical, musical, and choreographic works composed for him by Nick Olney, Lisa Fay, and
Rick Burkhardt. Working frequently with Los Angeles theater directors
Matt Wilder and Stefan Novinksi, he has performed major roles in plays by
Samuel Beckett,
Bertolt Brecht,
Marguerite Duras, and
Wallace Shawn, and in contemporary adaptations from the Noh theater.
Performance Space 122 is one of New York's ultimate destinations for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art and multi-media. PS 122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists who explore innovative form and provocative content and who rigorously challenge the boundaries of contemporary performance. PS122 is committed to a steadfast search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures, nations and beliefs.
For thirty years, Performance Space 122 has been a hub for contemporary performance and an active member of the East Village, as well as the wider cultural community in N.Y.C. and across the globe. In just the past 5 years, under the curatorial vision of Artistic Director
Vallejo Gantner, PS122 has opened the curtain on more than 2,500 performances, welcomed over 125,000 visitors, and supported the work of more than 2,100 artists, performers, choreographers, playwrights, directors and designers.
Performance Space 122 passionately advocates for U.S. artists in New York and across globe. Its organization and the artists presented are reclaiming their relevance to wider social discourse by engaging artists, audiences and other community leaders in cultural, economic, and environmental debates about what it means to live in contemporary society. www.ps122.org
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THE NONSENSE COMPANY'S STORM STILL plays Saturday, February 19th through Sunday, March 6th, 2010 on the following schedule:
Saturday, February 19 at 8pm
Sunday February 20 at 6pm
Wednesday February 23 through Saturday February 26 at 8pm
Sunday February 27 at 6pm
Wednesday March 2 through Saturday February 5 at 8pm
Sunday March 6 at 6pm
Tickets $20, $15 (students/seniors), $11 (with the PS122 Passport - limited availability!)
Available at www.ps122.org> , 212-352-3101 and at the Box Office.
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