Naked Empire Bouffon Company Presents DO WHAT YOU LOVE & YOU FUCKING EARNED IT

DO WHAT YOU LOVE and YOU f-ing EARNED IT. Naked Empire Bouffon Company is pulling out all the stops to celebrate you with the premiere of two plays in two hours. Two searing satires extolling the virtues of hard working Americans like you who make class privilege and economic imperialism feel so damn good. Featuring in-your-face physical comedy, sing-a-long jingles, puppets, outrageous costumes, and an anything-goes relationship with the audience, there will be plenty of dazzle to distract you from the moral of the story.

In the solo show, Do What You Love, Artistic Director, Nathaniel Justiniano, is a misshapen and shameless mountain climber who goes by the name of Amy, and he has an obsession with the recently-deceased, real-life entrepreneur, Scott Dinsmore. Amy enjoys the privilege of doing what he loves and is thrilled, to a disturbing degree, to share his wisdom with you. Through storytelling, puppetry, catastrophic mime, and lip syncing to Joni Mitchell, he gleefully complicates the ethos that equates doing what you love with success.

In You f-ing Earned It, Sabrina Wenske plays a grotesquely pear-shaped bouffon in a wicked partnership with a humpbacked and wiry giggle monster played by Cara McClendon. Together they pull the audience into the joyous, jingle-filled depths of America's economic imperialism and its influence around the world. Stops on your journey include The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, New York City, Pac Heights, and your very own soul. These two disturbing anti-clowns shapeshift into sex slaves, Eric Garner, orangutans, Carmen Miranda, Cherokees, Stephen Hawking, hipsters and yoga moms all in an effort to satirically celebrate our convenient consumerism.

Costumes for the both shows were designed by Brooke Jennings, last year's TBA Award Winner for best costumes.

Do What You Love & You f-ing Earned It were created over the last two years with the generous support of grants, artist residencies, and input from renowned theatre artists. Do What You Love is written and performed by Justiniano, with the help of several key collaborators. For 8 weeks, he worked with Minneapolis-based theatre artist, Robert Rosen, who served as co-artistic director of the Tony Award-winning company, Theatre de la Jeune Lune. He also worked with Adam Lazarus, a Toronto-based bouffon, teacher, and former apprentice to Philippe Gaulier. Most recently, he worked under the direction of Gabriel McKinney, a Las Vegas-based creator-performer who currently stars as the Gazillionaire in the award-winning show, Absinthe, at Caesar's Palace. The creation of the show was generously supported through funding from the Center for Cultural Innovation and The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, along with an 8-week SpaceTime Artist Residency at Studio 206 in Minneapolis. An earlier version of the show appeared at Shotgun Players 1st annual BLAST Festival last March. You f-ing Earned It was directed by Justiniano, and co-created by all three company members. The show initiated as a 12-minute performance for MOJO Theater's American Dream Cabaret in the summer of 2014, and then in 2015 it went on to win 3rd place in PianoFight's audience-judged play competition, ShortLived. You f-ing Earned It has been generously supported by grants from Theatre Bay Area, the SF Arts Commission, and the Puffin Foundation, along with two artist residencies at the San Francisco Circus Center and Drop Forge & Tool, in Hudson, New York.

Performances are September 29th to October 15th, Thursday - Saturday, 7:30pm at PianoFight, 144 Taylor St., San Francisc. Tickets are $15 - $30 (Limited number of ½ off tickets available on Goldstar)

About the company:

Naked Empire Bouffon Company is a performance ensemble dedicated to teaching and performing bouffon that undermines apathy and inspires discourse. Bouffon is a rarely seen form of highly-physical, image-driven satire that is at once profane and profound. "We hate didacticism, judgment, and seriousness," says Artistic Director, Nathaniel Justiniano. "Instead, we celebrate shame and play irreverently with difficult truths. We distill human nastiness into moments of grotesque and prophetic physical poetry designed to be both painful and hilarious." Since 2009, Naked Empire has been an international pioneer of bouffon and is still the only company in the United States exclusively dedicated to the practice.

To post a comment, you must register and login.