Political Farce CANT Begins Tonight at The Brick Theater

The Brick Theater, Inc. and Gemini CollisionWorks present CANT, a new play by Ian W. Hill and Gemini CollisionWorks, written, designed, and directed by Ian W. Hill and assisted by Berit Johnson.

Cant - An oblique or slanting surface; to pitch to one side; to talk hypocritically; affected singsong or whiny speech; the private language of the underworld; a set or stock phrase; the insincere use of pious words; to sing.

Sinclair Lewis & Nathanael West meeting Vladimir Nabokov on a Firesign Theatre album directed by Jean-Luc Godard. An account for those that don't keep them. The House always wins.

Five-time 2016 New York Innovative Theatre Award winners for The Golfer return with a new work that combines their loves of farce and of structural innovation, as the allegorical (and topically familiar) story of a demagogue rising to power in the USA is mirrored by the narrative of the actors seeking to battle the work itself, as it attempts to force their experimental drama to become a simplistic, well-meaning, well-made, magical realist living room family play for uptown/regional audiences. Comedy becomes horror as the cast battles to stay true to their work in the face of a theatrical status quo that consumes and makes safe all forms of radicalism. Six Characters in Search of an Author becomes John Carpenter's The Thing.

This is 2016. A political play. A critique of political plays. And politics. And plays. And Art. The same old story, a Boy of the People becomes a Man of Fascism. Again. This is what makes a Significant Work. 15 actors, count 'em, fighting a brave fight against the status quo. As always, doomed, but it must be done. You must slay a few waxwings to make a Hamlet.

Ian W. Hill has been part of Indie Theater in NYC since 1989, creating theatre as Gemini CollisionWorks since 1997, and working in collaboration with Berit Johnson since 2000 - including their landmark productions of Even the Jungle (slight return), Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, and the noir fantasia World Gone Wrong. Besides original plays and collages, GCW has produced productions of works by Richard Foreman, Mac Wellman, Clive Barker, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Eugene Ionesco, Shakespeare, John Whiting, Trav S.D., Marc Spitz, Jeff Goode, and Dean Haspiel, among others, and is known for a dense mise-en-scene colliding text, light, music and sound, projections, and multiple art forms in an attempt to heighten awareness through sensory oversaturation as well as a tortuous, drunken obsession with the supposEd Battle between order and chaos. Nominated for 9 New York Innovative Theatre Awards in 2016 for their productions of Nord Hausen Fly Robot, Fawnbook, and The Golfer, winner of 5 IT awards for The Golfer.

The cast of this production is John Amir, Rolls Andre, David Arthur Bachrach*, Olivia Baseman*, Ivanna Cullinan*, Linus Gelber,Amanda LaPergola, Leila Okafor, DerRick Peterson*, Michael Rishawn*, Alyssa Simon*, Anna Stefanic*, and Zuri Washinton*, with the participation of Lex Friedman and Rebecca Gray Davis and costumes by Kaitlyn Elizabeth Day (2016 IT Award winner for The Golfer). *appears Courtesy of Actors Equity Association

Performances play November 10, 11, 14, 16, 18 and 19 at 8.00 pm; November 13 at 7.00 pm; November 19 and 20 at 4.00 pm at The Brick, 575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211 (½ a block from the Lorimer stop of the L Train / Metropolitan-Grand stop of the G Train). For tickets and more information, visit www.bricktheater.com. All tickets: $18.00 - approximately 140 minutes long including 1 intermission. Tickets available at the door or online at www.bricktheater.com or 866-811-4111.

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