La Jolla Presents Workshop CANKERBLOSSOM, 8/12-15

La Jolla Playhouse announces a new family-friendly Page To Stage Workshop Production: Cankerblossom, conceived and created by Pig Iron Theatre Company, directed by Dan Rothenberg, with cartoonist/puppeteer Beth Nixon, music by Rosie Langabeer, set and animation by Mimi Lien, lighting by James Clotfelter, video projection by Josh Higgason, and performed by Hinako Arao, Beth Nixon, David Sweeney and Alex Torra. Cankerblossom will run August 12 - 15, 2010 in the Mandell Weiss Forum, with performances Thursday, August 12 at 7:00 pm; Friday, August 13 at 7:00 pm; Saturday, August 14 at 2:30 pm and 7:00 pm and Sunday, August 15 at 2:30 pm. Tickets are $25 for adults; $20 for subscribers and $15 for children 12 and under.

Dubbed by The New York Times as "one of the few groups successfully taking theatre in new directions," Pig Iron's production of Cankerblossom was inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The title is a reference to Hermia's line, "O me! You juggler! You canker-blossom! You thief of love! What, have you come by night and stolen my love's heart from him?" Following a two-year exploration of Midsummer's themes and images, Cankerblossom was further developed during Pig Iron's residency at The Playhouse last February, culminating in a "visually unique approach to classic children's storytelling that plays in the same imaginative world as Midsummer," stated Pig Iron's Managing Director John Frisbee. This fascinating, multidisciplinary work provides a perfect counterprogramming opportunity with The Playhouse's own production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, helmed by Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley, which runs July 20 - August 22, 2010 in the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre.

"We were dazzled by Pig Iron during their residency a few months ago," said Ashley. "With their inventive use of video projection, stop-motion animation and puppetry, Pig Iron's work defies classification, and we can't wait to see how Cankerblossom continues to develop when this innovative group returns to present their family-friendly, multi-disciplinary piece opposite the Shakespeare classic that inspired it."

Cankerblossom centers on a young couple who discovers a completely flat cardboard baby on their stoop. They grow to love the child as their own. Then someone or something takes away the baby to a FlatWorld, a planar landscape populated by characters whimsical, sinister, and flat as pancakes. The couple, both ordinary and round, must enter this two-dimensional world to get their baby back. Can they rescue their adopted child and escape from a parallel universe in which there is up-and-down and side-to-side, but no way out? For Cankerblossom, director Dan Rothenberg has teamed up with cartoonist and pioneering puppeteer artist Beth Nixon, whose fantastical cardboard creations work alongside stop motion animation, video projection, live music, and Pig Iron's signature physical style to create this shadowy fairytale land. In the spirit of The Phantom Tollbooth and Spirited Away, Cankerblossom invites you into a hidden, magical world that once you enter has no intention of letting you leave.

Pig Iron Theatre Company was founded in 1995 as an interdisciplinary ensemble dedicated to the creation of new and exuberant performance works that defy easy categorization. In the past 14 years the company has created 24 original works and has toured to festivals and theatres in England, Scotland, Poland, Lithuania, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Romania and Germany. Pig Iron has won two Village Voice OBIE Awards and nine Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre. The mission of Pig Iron Theatre Company is to expand what is possible in performance by creating rigorous and unusual ensemble-devised works; by training the next generation of daring, innovative theatre artists; and by consistently asking the hardest questions, both in our art and in its relation to the world around us.

The nationally acclaimed, Tony Award-winning La Jolla Playhouse is known for its tradition of creating the most exciting and adventurous new work in regional theatre. The Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, and is considered one of the most well-respected not-for-profit theatres in the country. Numerous Playhouse productions have moved to Broadway, including Big River, The Who's Tommy, Thoroughly Modern Millie, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Walk in the Woods, Dracula, Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, Jersey Boys, The Farnsworth Invention, 33 Variations and the 2010 Tony Award-winning musical Memphis. Located on the UC San Diego campus, La Jolla Playhouse is made up of three primary performance spaces: the Mandell Weiss Theatre, the Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre, and the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for La Jolla Playhouse, a state-of-the-Art Theatre complex which features the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre. La Jolla Playhouse is led by Artistic Director Christopher Ashley and Managing Director Michael S. Rosenberg.

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