THE BARBARIANS Comes to La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club will host the premiere of The Barbarians, a new play from acclaimed dramatist Jerry Lieblich (they/them) directed by director, choreographer, and actor Paul Lazar (We're Gonna Die, Silence of the Lambs, Snowpiercer). The play will premiere at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre (66 East 4th Street) on February 14th, 2025, and will run through March 2nd, 2025.

Countries are made of laws, and laws are made of words. So are plays. How strange. The Barbarians is an imaginative, word-drunk romp through that strangeness, a play about a description of a play about a group of scientists gumming up the linkage between language and political power (much to Madam President Fake President's chagrin). The Barbarians nestle in the valley between the word and the world, the declaration of war and the war itself - what if the President declared a war, but the words wouldn't work?

Lieblich's inspiration behind The Barbarians is twofold: the poisonous clouds of political rhetoric that have billowed over the country throughout the Obama, Trump, and Biden presidencies; and the philosophical concept of a "speech act," or how language can create obligations and shape reality. Their argument is chillingly clear: flagrant lies and violent fearmongering are entirely consistent with the death powers accrued by previous presidents. All the tools were already in American democracy's toolkit-the only difference is that they may now be used to dismantle American democracy itself.

Despite its bleak ruminations, it should be noted that The Barbarians is wildly funny, in the style of Dr. Strangelove or Mac Wellman's The Offending Gesture. As the director, Lazar-a co-founder of Big Dance Theater-found that the play requires a certain "thinness and lightness," though characters "have to be real enough to make sure you don't say in the first instant that you won't engage with them."

Through his direction, the play is imbued with vivid and wonderfully weird performances from a cast including downtown geniuses Naren Weiss as "We," Anne Gridley as "Madam President Fake President," two-time Obie-winner Steve Mellor as "Witness, Ciggy Nubbin, and Old Dog Turd," Jess Barbagallo as "Ana Coluthia, Man Suspended, and Dad," Chloe Claudel as "Woman with the Robot Voice, Pimply Errand Boy," and Jennifer Ikeda as "St. Crispin."

To engage with Lieblich's plays is to become obsessed with how language works, how it works on us, and how we use it to work on others. Past productions like D Deb Debbie Deborah (2015), Ghost Stories (2015), Your Hair Looked Great (2017), Tongue Depressor(2018), and Mahinerator (2023) have all been lauded for their "rare lucidity, the way [Lieblich's] delving, roving intelligence is so closely attuned to language" (Culturebot) and "a deep understanding of what live performance makes possible" (Time Out New York). Their ear, so rigorous and tender, so alive to what's broken, attunes us to the high frequencies of our violations while opening apertures onto the other worlds we might express.

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