Acclaimed Avant Garde Theatre Practitioner Patrick Kennedy Launches The Phenomenological Theatre

Patrick Kennedy today launches The Phenomenological Theatre Company and a 50th anniversary production of Richard Foreman and Stanley Silverman's opera Elephant Steps.

A statement from Patrick Kennedy said, "50 years after Richard Foreman founded his Ontological-Hysteric Theater, I thought it critical that we answer London's need for a new avant garde theatre company which continues Richard's work in the exploration of consciousness. This is especially important given the perilous social, economic and political times we live in."

Previous to the founding of The Phenomenological Theatre Company, Kennedy brought several critically acclaimed Foreman premieres to the UK including last summer's King Cowboy Rufus Rules The Universe! and 2016's Hotel For Criminals. Foreman recently described his "delight" at Kennedy's ambitious work.

"Through The Phenomenological Theatre, we will continue to bring Richard Foreman's work to the United Kingdom including his music-theatre productions written with Stanley Silverman. We have seen time and again over the past 4 years that there is an appetite for multi-layered, deeply complex theatre pieces. Whilst it may never pander to the masses (as Foreman once wrote) nor be highly commercial, it is nevertheless important that we give audiences the opportunity to experience this evocative kind of theatre."

The first production for The Phenomenological Theatre will be a 50th anniversary (and UK premiere) production of Richard Foreman and Stanley Silverman's first music piece, ElephantSteps. It has been described as "mixed-means theater, where music and language, sound and light, images and movement, graphics and films, incense and machinery, props and performers are incorporated into a spectacular mix."

Further details on this production to be released.

For more information, visit www.phenomenological.co.uk

About The Phenomenological Theatre:
The Phenomenological Theatre creates impulsive, chimerical stage productions summoned from deep inside the unconscious which turbulently reverberate. It produces multi-layered, deeply complex theatre pieces which speak to the transcendental phenomenology of humanity. Under Patrick Kennedy's deeply idiosyncratic aesthetic direction, The Phenomenological Theatre incorporates vaudeville, philosophy, slapstick, dadaism, surrealism and limitless other divergent sources.

The Phenomenological Theatre was founded in 2008 by Patrick Kennedy under its original name of PK Productions. The Phenomenological Theatre has premiered 7 productions for a UK audience including several works by Richard Foreman and Stanley Silverman. These critically acclaimed premieres include Arthur Miller's only musical Up From Paradise, an all-female Weimar cabaret Halbwelt Kultur and Richard Foreman's political masterpiece King Cowboy Rufus Rules The Universe!

Patrick Kennedy is the founder of PK Productions (now Patrick Kennedy Phenomenological Theatre Company) and a celebrated avant garde theatre practitioner. He trained as a director at the University of Birmingham attaining a Master of Philosophy postgraduate degree in Directing and Dramaturgy. He is currently the only producer and director in the UK to professionally stage Richard Foreman's work except for Foreman himself. He was described by British Theatre as 'one of the country's most fascinating theatre practitioners'.

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