Gas & Electric Arts Announces the World Premiere of CABINET OF WONDERS, Runs 9/29-10/24

Renowned for concocting wildly imaginative adventures, playwright Kira Obolensky and visual artist Irve Dell of Minneapolis join forces with Gas & Electric Arts, bringing fierce physicality and object theater together for a multi-sensory ride through the magical mesh of fiction and reality that reside in family stories.

This collaboration will bring audiences, Cabinet of Wonders, An Impossible History, the first commission for Gas & Electric Arts, the now four-year old physical theatre specialists. The show will have its World Premiere September 29-October 24, 2009 at Underground Arts at the Wolf, 340 N. 12 St. The show opens October 1. Tickets are available at 215-407-0556 or at www.gasandelectricarts.org. Tickets: Previews: $18 / Tues - Thrus: $22, Fri-Sun, $25

Siblings Leopold and Christina Carcass are at the center of Cabinet of Wonders. The enigmatic and charismatic offspring of a family of immigrants, revolutionaries and entertainers, they live on The Edge of eviction, in a free fall from grace. The Carcasses debate salvation strategies and tussle over the plethora of family possessions stashed inside the ancestral cabinets. With impending foreclosure, no destination or relatives in site, they can only take away what they can carry.

Cabinet of Wonders, An Impossible History explores the definition of a family. Is it a collection of artifacts and stories, memories, genetic information or what the census tells us? In the course of this highly theatrical evening, Leopold and Christina attempt to reconcile their own impossible histories with the story that the cabinet reveals. Caught in an elaborate web of family fairy tales, the characters impress us with a torrent of stories, songs, vaudeville routines and the animation of unlikely heirlooms. Secret drawers pop open unannounced, letting loose lemons and letters, bones and beans, wishbones and rats - and the boundaries between tale and fact, between memoir and fiction burst apart, unleashing shards of truth that insist upon their own new story.

This inventive new show brings together a multi-talented team of creative collaborators, committed to developing a theatrical experience that will take the audience on a journey that activates minds and stimulates the imagination. Directed by Lisa Jo Epstein, and performed by Catharine K. Slusar & Ross Beschler, this World Premiere marks Gas & Electric Arts' official move to become specialists in immersive, experiential theatre productions. Cabinet and object creations are by Minneapolis visual artist Irve Dell, and the soundscape is by Tim Harbeson, light design by James Clotfelter and costumes by Rosemarie McKelvey.

At Gas & Electric Arts, the ordinary and the extraordinary fluidly mingle. In their productions, they strive to make the invisible visible through provocative, evocative physicality, vocal exploration and unique scenography that embraces and explores the plasticity of bodies, voice, objects and light, cut out in theatrical space and time, thus creating an entire theatrical universe unto itself. Gas & Electric Arts' intrepid performance style is an athletic task for the actors' bodies, voices, imagination, heart and the senses. Their intensely physical approach to acting leaves quotidian expression behind as the actors devise vivid, extraordinary forms for their bodies so that thought becomes a physical activity.

Kira Obolensky's plays have been produced Off-Broadway and across the country and have been commissioned by theatres such as the McCarter, the Guthrie, Geva, and Steppenwolf. She was a playwright in residence at the Julliard School, has received a Guggeheim Fellowship as well as numerous grants and commissions. Lobster Alice won the 1998 Kesselring Prize (Tony Kushner's Angels in America was an earlier winner), and it premiered at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis and was produced by Playwrights' Horizons in New York. After seeing Gas & Electric Arts' unique, physical and visual approach to her play Quick Silver in 2007, Obolensky entered into conversations with artistic director Lisa Jo Epstein about originating a new play with The company. In 2008, with funding from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, Gas & Electric Arts was able to officially commission Obolensky to write and collaborate on Cabinet of Wonders along with her husband Irve Dell as the installation artist and creator of puppets and molded objects. Cabinet of Wonders, An Impossible History has become a bi-city collaboration with a creative team in Minneapolis (playwright, visual artists and a crew of object and cabinet builders) and a team in Philadelphia (director, designers & performers). After a year in the making, the project will come together this fall as a multi-sensory ride through the basement space of the Wolf a former paper company then water gun factory and now a multi-use building located at 12th Street (off Vine St.) in Center City Philadelphia.

Tchotkies at Twilight: An Estate Sale - Everything must go! Forced by foreclosure, Leopold and Christina Carcass will hold a nightly estate sale of one-of-a-kind treasures and other family heirlooms. Come early to get the best bargains! Free refreshments. The estate sale happens an hour before each performance.

Chocolate Tastings - There will be a chocolates tasting by John & Kira's "Revolutionary" Chocolates every Wednesdays during the run of the show at 6 pm. John & Kira's -featured in Cabinet of Wonders - are artisan chocolates handmade in Philadelphia with Valrhona couverture and flavored with exquisite sustainable & natural ingredients. Featured on Martha Stewart, on Gourmet Magazine's cover as their "Favorite Chocolates," raved about in NYT, Oprah Magazine, Wine Spectator, Food & Wine, and USAToday. www.johnandkiras.com.

GENERATING: An Urban Storytelling Series

Theme: un/told family stories

Come laugh, reminisce, confirm and connect with others by telling seemingly impossible yet amazing true tales about your family histories. In Gas & Electric Arts' intimate "Generating" storycircles, you'll tell and hear inspiring stories while being reminded of the power of your own. Led by Artistic Director Lisa Jo Epstein, these free events will take place at:

· InFusion Coffee & Tea Gallery - 7133 Germantown Ave in Mt. Airy

Dates in September & October TBA - FREE

· Mugshots Coffee House & Cafe - 2100 Fairmount Avenue

Tuesdays, Aug 11, Sept 8 and Oct 13, 7pm - FREE

Lisa Jo Epstein - Director

Lisa Jo is a theatre director, educator and community-based artist. Her foray into physical theatre began in Minneapolis at Theatre de la Jeune Lune. She continued her explorations in physical and intercultural theatre and socially-engaged theatre practices at the University of Texas at Austin where she obtained a Master's and Ph.D. She then moved to Paris France where she served as Ariane Mnouchkine's assistant during the Théâtre du Soleil's creation of Molière's Tartuffe. While in Paris, she also worked at Augusto Boal's Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed. Upon returning to the US, Lisa Jo became an Assistant Professor of Theatre in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Tulane University for seven years where she won awards for teaching and directing, both inside the university and in the community. Lisa Jo facilitates interactive, experiential theatre workshops with a variety of populations around issues of identity and empowerment, community and social justice. Recent productions include: Anna Bella Eema (Lisa d'Amour) 2008, 2005; O Yes I Will (Deb Margolin), Quick Silver (Kira Obolensky) Voices Underwater (premiere, Abi Basch) for Gas & Electric Arts, Pop Out (Jessie Bear) and Everlasting Father: A Religious Fantasy (premiere, Hannah Harvester) at Swarthmore College; O Wholly Night and Other Jewish Solecisms (remount, Deb Margolin) at Painted Bride Art Center; What the Moon Saw; or, I Only Appear to be Dead (Stephanie Fleischmann), The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek (Naomi Wallace) and The Love of the Nightingale (Timberlake Wertenbaker) at Ursinus College; Spinning into Butter (Rebecca Gilman) Southern Repertory Theatre, New Orleans. In Philadelphia, she has taught at Temple University, Arcadia, and University of the Arts and is currently a guest artist at Towson University's MFA in performance.

Kira Obolensky - Playwright

Kira Obolensky's new work includes Raskol, an adaptation of Crime and Punishment with an improvisational jazz band, which was commissioned by Ten Thousand Things Theatre and premiered in an area prison in April 2009. She wrote the story for Open Eye Figure Theatre's winter show, Snowman, and is currently adapting Alice in Wonderland for The Acting Company in New York: the play will open at the Guthrie Theatre in January, 2011. Her novella, "The Anarchists Float to St. Louis", recently won Quarterly West's national novella contest and will be published in the winter. Other plays: Quick Silver, a play for puppets and actors, commissioned by 3 Legged Race and produced in Minneapolis, Prague and in Philadelphia by Gas & Electric Arts. Modern House (finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize); Lune, pronounced loony, commissioned and produced by B Street; Lobster Alice (Kesselring Prize winner; productions in Atlanta, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Off Broadway) The Adventures of Herculina, productions in Chicago, Minneapolis. Awards and Fellowships include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a McKnight Advancement Grant, Jerome Fellowships, two Henson Foundation grants, a Bush Foundation Fellowship. Kira is a graduate of Williams College; she attended the Playwrights' Program at the Juilliard School; and recently received an MFA in Fiction from Warren Wilson's MFA Program for Writers. She teaches at the University of Minnesota, at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and is on faculty at Goddard College's MFA Program in Interdisciplinary Arts.

Irve Dell - Objects and Cabinets

Irve has exhibited both in Minneapolis and regionally including exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Rochester Arts Center and St. John's University. He was awarded a Bush Fellowship in 1988. His work is fairly evenly divided between gallery or studio pieces, private commissions, and public art projects. Recent commissions include work for the Ohio State University, Grinnell College, Inver Hills Community College and the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Having become increasingly interested in the creative intersection of art and theater or performance, Dell worked on a successful collaboration with Kira Obolensky called Quick Silver -- an object and puppet theater piece which was named by Twin Cities' critics as the "most outstanding experimental theatre event of 2003." He has also has worked with Obolensky and Shawn McConneloug on Force Matter, which was recently performed at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. In February of 2008, he created and performed his first solo piece called Hierarchy of the Box at Open Eye Figure Theater in Minneapolis.

Dell graduated from Williams College in 1983 with a major in biology and significant course work in art. He received an MFA in sculpture from the University of Minnesota in 1988 and is currently an Associate Professor of Art at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Dell lives in Minneapolis with his wife, playwright, Kira Obolensky and their son Isaac.

About Gas & Electric Arts
Gas & Electric Arts was founded in 2005 by Lisa Jo Epstein and David Brown. Our purpose is to lead audiences to experiences that shimmer with theatricality and shiver with social reality. In our work, we are passionately committed to corporeal, visual, vocal and spatial investigation, fusing the richly textured language of risk-taking playwrights with a physically rigorous performance style and compelling stage imagery. Together, we hope they offer a great sense of play, which unshackle our imaginations and renew our perceptions of the exquisiteness of being alive and of our mortality, the necessity of empathy and the imperative to live responsibly.

Through our productions, we are instrumental in introducing Philadelphia to exemplary, nationally-recognized women playwrights who are boldly redefining American theatre. These are playwrights who are in love with the art of theatre as a way to respond to the ever-shifting cultural and political landscapes that comprise our lives. Their plays lead us to unchartered theatrical territories and enable us to make total, fresh theatre whose images and stories linger long after the show is over.

Productions include: Anna Bella Eema by Lisa d'Amour (2005, 2008), Quick Silver by Kira Obolensky (2007), O Yes I Will (I Will Remember the Spirit and Texture of this Conversation) by Deb Margolin (2008) and Voices Underwater by Abi Basch (2006).

Cabinet of Wonders: An Impossible History

Listings Description:

Philadelphia and Minneapolis performance & visual artists collaborate to create evocative physicality and object theater in this multi-sensory, magical ride through the tangle of family fairy tales. Two enigmatic siblings on the verge of eviction collide over family heirlooms through a torrent of stories, songs, and vaudeville routines, unleashing shards of truth that topple their house of cards forever. Presented by Gas & Electric Arts. Location: Underground Arts at the Wolf, 340 N. 12th St. in Center City Philadelphia Tickets: www.GasAndElectricArts.org or 215.407.0556.

September 29-October 24

Tickets: Previews: $18 / Tues - Thrus: $22, Fri-Sun, $25

Come early: Tchotki Tag Sale and Refreshments (one hour before show time)

Chocolate Tasting by John & Kira's Wednesdays at 6pm 

 

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