Fixing King John by Kirk Lynn, Rude Mechanicals at the Off-Shoot, November 7 - 24, 2013

Cast of Fixing King John (photo: Bret Brookshire)

by Michael Meigs

Kirk Lynn's script isn't Shakespeare. Fixing King John is a tight, fast story with dialogue full of fucking obscenities, one suited not for PBS but maybe to HBO.

E. Jason Liebrecht creates King John as an edgy, angry, powerful capo with the force of Jimmy Cagney and the morals of Tony Soprano.

Director Madge Darlington puts the Rude Mechs' staging into the confined space of their Off-Shoot rehearsal studio behind the Off-Center at 2211A Hidalgo Street in Austin. Audience members -- no, make that spectators, practically participants -- arrive to find the big room already milling with cast members in casual contemporary dress. 

The seating is equally casual around the central space, which has the feel of a gym or a space for a cage fight. Risers on two sides of it feature a couple of high-placed rows of chairs for conventional seating with wide platforms below them, and across the playing space are wooden towers with plywood platforms to accommodate watchers. It's a makeshift settle-where-you-wish assemblage directly reminiscent of the Mechs' re-staging of Dionysus in 69 here in 2009 and 2012.

Lynn's reworking of the little-read (and less-acted) Shakespeare hjistory play, written about 1590 but not mentioned in contemporary accounts or published until the 1623 Folio, is a drastic but coherent restructuring. He reduces a cast of 24 characters to one of 10, and he so reworks relations and plot elements that even if you'd actually read this neglected work you might not recognize it.

And the language! Though Lynn's first draft methodically rendered the original verse into pungent contemporary speech, his revisions and remakings fixed it so parallelisms all but disappeared. Take this example, from the opening scene:

King John by William Shakespeare

Fixing King John by Kirk Lynn

Act I, Scene I, lines 1-25 CHATILLON Philip of France, in right and true behalf Of thy deceased brother Geffrey’s son, Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim To this fair island and the territories, To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Desiring thee to lay aside the sword Which sways usurpingly these several titles, And put the same into young Arthur’s hand, Thy nephew and right royal sovereign. KING JOHN. What follows if we disallow of this? CHAT. The proud control of fierce and bloody war, To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld. K. JOHN. Here have we war for war and blood for blood, Controlment for controlment: so answer France. CHAT. Then take my King’s defiance from my mouth, The farthest limit of my embassy. K. JOHN. Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace. Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France; For ere thou canst report, I will be there; The thunder of my cannon shall be heard. So hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath, And sullen presage of your own decay. An honorable conduct let him have. Pembroke, look to’t. Farewell, Chatillion. Exeunt Chatillion and Pembroke.

Act I, Scene I Everything you see is KING JOHN'S castle. And lookit,KING JOHN is on his throne. He looks gooood. He's thehome team along with his mom, QUEEN ELINOR, and PEMBROKE, and anyone else you see. Anyone except that slick DAUPHIN, who's on a visit from France. [. . . skipping to pg 2, from line 5] DAUPHIN [. . .] my father sent me here to tell you this:Step aside! Stop pretending to be the great King of England, because really—truly it’s your nephew, Arfur, who has the most reason to pretend that game. Whoop! We're telling you to step aside and let Arfur be the next King - of England, Ireland, Poitiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine and all that. All that. And now forget I was the King of France, pretending - and now pretend I’m every single one of the citizens who live in every single one of those shitholes in your kingdom I just listed, paying taxes, sleeping, making love on one another, dying and all that and listen as we say to you: Take off your hat. Take off your hat and put it on Arfur’s head. We’ll all be happier when you do. KING JOHN If Arfur wants my crown he’s gonna hafta come back from the grave and chop off my head to get it, ‘cause I’ll kill a motherfucker today just for scheduling a thought like that tomorrow. Fuck Arfur. Tell Philip that. Then what? DAUPHIN Total fucking all-out war. Whoop, whoop! And it’s not just gonna be people dressed in high fashion from France coming at you with army swords. No. Cuz we’re not trying to take the throne from England. We’re just trying to give it to the best English guy for the job. So you’re gonna have people attacking you that dress like you, and talk like you, and look like you, and cousins, and nephews, and sisters, and anybody who ever disagreed with a tax, or a law, or a decree they didn’t like coming after you. So you can see, that’s a hard fucking war to win. KING JOHN All right. You tell France I just said, ‘All right.’ What’s that in French? Just to say, ‘Great. Let’s do it. Fuck you. No big deal.’ I ain’t afraid to kill French people. I ain’t afraid to kill ANYBODY that comes after me. Say that to Philip. Like, no big deal. All right. What’s that in French? Like, ‘No biggie.’ You gotta a phrase for that? DAUPHIN Look in my mouth. You imagine you’re a great King? You got a good imagination. Look in my mouth and see my king’s response pouring out at you like a sewer. The nastiest shit you can imagine just pumping from my heart, up outta my mouth all over your stupid costume and your fake throne and filling up this fucking wayside inn you call a castle till you drown in our bile. Fuck you, too. KING JOHN I want you outta my country quick like lightning, and by the time you get home to your little fucking poodle farm you’re gonna hear the thunder of my cannons blowing up your home, your mom, your dad, your brothers and sisters, your dog. BOOM. You’re like the tip of the sword I’m gonna put in King Philip's mouth and keep pushing ‘til he feels the hilt of it on his chin. Pembroke? PEMBROKE Well said. KING JOHN Shut up, Pembroke. I'm gonna trust you with this snake.Make sure he gets aimed straight back to France, as quick as can be. And Dauphin? Remember what I said. 'Let’s do it. Fuck you. No big deal.' See you later, DAUPHIN. See you later, PEMBROKE.

Lynn describes his composition process in a thoughtful note in the program, and on their website the Mechs in their characteristic irreverent, ironic style state, "In some ways, we're offering you a more authentic experience of what a new Shakespeare play might be like than an actual Shakespeare play. In other ways, not so much." After all, Elizabethan playwrights borrowed liberally from one another and freely reworked earlier works; G.B. Harrison identifies Shakespeare's source as a two-part anonymous work printed in 1591 titled The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England and reprinted in 1611 with the addition of the words 'Written by W. Sh.' -- "a dishonest attempt to pass it off as Shakespeare's work." (Maybe much of it was Shakespeare's work, considering that Harrison writes at length about the uneven quality of the accepted text of King John.)

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

STOP HITTING YOURSELF, Rude Mechanicals at the Off Center, April 4 - 21, 2013

Rude Mechs will present the first work-in-progress showing of

 



Stop Hitting Yourself
The show runs April 4 - April 21, 2013, Thursday - Sunday at 8:00 pm., at The Off Center, 2211 A Hidalgo, Austin, TX. 

Tickets: Thursday and Sunday - Pay What You Can; Friday and Saturday - $12 - 25 Sliding Scale. 

Tickets go on sale March 4th at www.rudemechs.com. 

The final weekend tickets will also be available through Fusebox Festival. 

Purchase with credit card in advance. Cash only at the door.


"At tonight's party you were observed and those observations are currently being compiled into a list of the things you need to be taught. We have one month to perfect you. In one month, we're going to have another party. The difference is at this next party, the Queen will be in attendance. Improvement. Succor. Fate. Queso. Wardrobe. Charity. Belief."

Once a year at the Charity Ball a single worthy cause is selected to benefit from the Queen's annual good deed. Families of note compete to find the citizens most in need and deserving of assistance. This year, a socialite has discovered a wildman in the forest and brings him home to improve him. The wildman's desire to save the natural world and to bring about an era of love and harmony is a sure-winner. Now she must teach him how to eat and dance, how to bow and flatter, how to behave in society so that his cause can be victorious.

Rude Mechs is currently embracing the fundamental beliefs underlying late-stage capitalism and indulging in some 1930's Hollywood glamour. Part Pygmalion, Busby Berkley, part self-help lexicon -- all while tap-dancing around a queso fountain. STOP HITTING YOURSELF borrows from the plots of 1930's musicals to dig into the contemporary conservative dilemma: how to honor the steely individualism of Ayn Rand without disavowing the ministry of Jesus Christ. Tap dancing, fine dining, and the missionary position will all be employed in order to help all Americans stop hitting yourself.

Some of the Many People Involved: Hope Bennett, Thomas Graves, Heather Hanna, Matt Hislope, Hannah Kenah, Lisa Laratta, Lana Lesley, Jason Liebrecht, Kirk Lynn, Graham Reynolds, Brian Scott, Shawn Sides, Paul Soileau, Dallas Tate, plus awesome technicians, crew, and Rude Mechs company members keeping it awesome.


STOP HITTING YOURSELF is a commission of LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater. LCT3 produces shows by new playwrights, directors and designers - new ideas in a new space. Additional creation support comes from National Endowment for the Arts and MAP Fund. Rude Mechs is supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division.

Rude Mechs is an ensemble-based theatre company that has created a genre-defying cocktail of over 25 original plays that we produce in Austin, TX, and tour nationally and internationally. Our most recent productions include "The Method Gun", "Get Your War On" and "I've Never Been So Happy" which have all toured to such far-flung destinations as New York City, Los Angeles, New Haven, Columbus, Boston, Portland, Philadelphia, Helsinki (Finland), Edinburgh (Scotland), and Brisbane (Australia). Since our inception in 1995, we've received over 180 awards and nominations for artistic excellence and, most recently, the company's production "The Method Gun" was recognized by both Time Out New York and New York Magazine as one of the Top 10 theatrical events of 2011.

For more information about this production and all things rude, visit www.rudemechs.com.


Read more about Rude Mechs to Present Work-in-Progress Showing of STOP HITTING YOURSELF, 4/4-21 by austin.broadwayworld.com
Rude Mechs will present the first work-in-progress showing of "STOP HITTING YOURSELF."
"At tonight's party you were observed and those observations are currently being compiled into a list of the things you need to be taught. We have one month to perfect you. In one month, we're going to have another party. The difference is at this next party, the Queen will be in attendance. Improvement. Succor. Fate. Queso. Wardrobe. Charity. Belief."
Once a year at the Charity Ball a single worthy cause is selected to benefit from the Queen's annual good deed. Families of note compete to find the citizens most in need and deserving of assistance. This year, a socialite has discovered a wildman in the forest and brings him home to improve him. The wildman's desire to save the natural world and to bring about an era of love and harmony is a sure-winner. Now she must teach him how to eat and dance, how to bow and flatter, how to behave in society so that his cause can be victorious.
Rude Mechs is currently embracing the fundamental beliefs underlying late-stage capitalism and indulging in some 1930's Hollywood glamour. Part Pygmalion, Busby Berkley, part self-help lexicon -- all while tap-dancing around a queso fountain. STOP HITTING YOURSELF borrows from the plots of 1930's musicals to dig into the contemporary conservative dilemma: how to honor the steely individualism of Ayn Rand without disavowing the ministry of Jesus Christ. Tap dancing, fine dining, and the missionary position will all be employed in order to help all Americans stop hitting yourself.
Some of the Many People Involved: Hope Bennett, Thomas Graves, Heather Hanna, Matt Hislope, Hannah Kenah, Lisa Laratta, Lana Lesley, Jason Liebrecht, Kirk Lynn, Graham Reynolds, Brian Scott, Shawn Sides, Paul Soileau, Dallas Tate, plus awesome technicians, crew, and Rude Mechs company members keeping it awesome.
The show runs April 4 - April 21, 2013, Thursday - Sunday at 8:00 pm., at The Off Center, 2211 A Hidalgo, Austin, TX. Tickets: Thursday and Sunday - Pay What You Can; Friday and Saturday - $12 - 25 Sliding Scale. Tickets go on sale March 4th at www.rudemechs.com. The final weekend tickets will also be available through Fusebox Festival. Purchase with credit card in advance. Cash only at the door.
STOP HITTING YOURSELF is a commission of LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater. LCT3 produces shows by new playwrights, directors and designers - new ideas in a new space. Additional creation support comes from National Endowment for the Arts and MAP Fund. Rude Mechs is supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division.
Rude Mechs is an ensemble-based theatre company that has created a genre-defying cocktail of over 25 original plays that we produce in Austin, TX, and tour nationally and internationally. Our most recent productions include "The Method Gun", "Get Your War On" and "I've Never Been So Happy" which have all toured to such far-flung destinations as New York City, Los Angeles, New Haven, Columbus, Boston, Portland, Philadelphia, Helsinki (Finland), Edinburgh (Scotland), and Brisbane (Australia). Since our inception in 1995, we've received over 180 awards and nominations for artistic excellence and, most recently, the company's production "The Method Gun" was recognized by both Time Out New York and New York Magazine as one of the Top 10 theatrical events of 2011.
For more information about this production and all things rude, visit www.rudemechs.com.

Read more about Rude Mechs to Present Work-in-Progress Showing of STOP HITTING YOURSELF, 4/4-21 by austin.broadwayworld.com

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Opportunity: Rude Mechs Accepting Applications for spring 2013 Internships

Up on the Rude Mechs' blog, Wednesday, November 14:

Accepting Internship Applications for Spring 2013

By offering internships to interested students, Rude Mechs offers a new generation of undergraduate and graduate students a unique perspective on collectively devising new plays and managing a mid-size theatre company. We are interested in creating opportunities to interact with our company and receive training in the areas of creation, production, and administration, with a focus on devised ensemble creation.

If you are interested in working with Rude Mechs, please fill out an application at http://rudemechs.com/programs/Internships.htm.

If you aren't familiar with our company, please take a few minutes to browse our website - look at our mission, our past productions, our programming... rudemechs.com

Arts Reporting: Eric Dyer's Recollection/Interview of the Rude Mechs and Their Reconstruction of Dionysus in '69, Bombsite.com, November 7

Dyer's lengthy article with photos, via a link published by the Rude Mechanicals, Austin, TX:








THEATER
Bombsite.com, Issue 122 

Preview: Rude Mechanicals


by Eric Dyer Nov 07, 2012

An exclusive preview: Theater group Rude Mechanicals show Dionysus in 69 is at New York Live Arts through November 10.

Hannah Kenah, Jude Hickey, Katie van Winkle and others (photo: Bret Brookshire)

The first meeting between the Austin-based company Rude Mechanicals and NYC’s Radiohole was at the Orchard Project in Hunter, New York, in the summer of 2007. Both companies were in residency, developing new projects—the Rude Mechs (their common moniker) were beginning The Method Gun, which went on to premiere at Humana Festival in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2010, and Radiohole were beginning ANGER/NATION, which opened at The Kitchen in 2008. It was a beautiful summer romance.

That summer at Orchard Project was the first and, to date, only collaboration between Radiohole and Rude Mechs. It was a spontaneous single-evening performance witnessed by few, if any, outside the two companies, and it will never happen again. Thomas Graves, Kirk Lynn, and I performed naked Tai Chi in the dark of night on the rocks in the middle of the Schoharie Creek, illuminated by Scott Halvorsen Gillette standing in the river with an old fluorescent work light and occasional flashes of lightning. With Lana Lesley, Shawn Sides, Madge Darlington, and the other Rudes on the riverbank chanting, Kirk, Thomas, and I swayed gently back and forth until Radiohole’s Maggie Hoffman appeared on the rocks out of the darkness in her long black Carrie A. Nation dress. We hoisted Maggie over our heads and slowly carried her over the rocks. We reached the edge of a large, deep pool and, with a collective exhaling, dropped her into it—we had made our sacrifice. There was a splash and Maggie drifted downriver into the darkness while Kirk, Thomas, and I resumed our swaying.

I relate this story because I cherish the memory—this was a performance in itself, and the vast majority of our work as theater/performance artists takes place in this way, hidden from view, outside the social-aesthetic frame of our regularly scheduled performances. Both the Rude Mechs and Radiohole explore the idea of theater as ritual, as a form of communal religious experience, though in distinct ways. This is manifest in the Rude Mechs’ work on the Performance Group’s 1968 production of Dionysus in 69, directed by Richard Schechner—the first in a series of reenactments of significant experimental performances from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.

Our companies share a creative ethos that is reflected in some basic structural similarities. Each is collectively run: the Rude Mechanicals by six artistic directors (five of whom founded the company in 1995) and Radiohole by its four founding members. Each creates original works from scratch, and each founded and runs its own venue. Radiohole’s venue is Collapsable Hole in Brooklyn; the Rude Mechs’ performance warehouse, the Off Center, has become home to many of Austin’s visual, film, theater, and music artists.

The following conversation happened on the eve of the Rude Mechs’ New York tour. It is pieced together from many fragments: emails, poorly recorded phone calls, and letters exchanged through the mail (remember that?). The conversation is not linear and reflects the compositional process more or less characteristic of Radiohole and the Rude Mechanicals. By the time you read this, the Rude Mechs will have brought their re-construction of the Performance Group’s Dionysus in 69 to New York Live Arts. We hope you will have experienced it and that this conversation might retrospectively bring new insight into that experience.

Read more at Bombsite.com . . . .

University of Texas Selects Rude Mechs as Resident Theatre Company

Just published by the University of Texas Department of Theatre and Dance:










Rude Mechs Selected as Resident Theater Company

The nationally acclaimed, ensemble-based theater collective Rude Mechs has been appointed as the resident theater company of The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance. The three-year residency provides university students an opportunity to work with members of the Rude Mechs, learning their methodology for devising new plays and managing a professional theater company.

Since its inception in 1995, Rude Mechs has earned more than 180 local and national awards and nominations. Its touring and off-Broadway productions include I've Never Been So Happy; Get Your War On; How Late it Was, How Late; Cherrywood; Lipstick Traces; and The Method Gun, which was selected for the 34th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays.

Known for its cutting-edge practice, Rude Mechs’ original works break the traditional structure of theater, setting performance as a center for collaboration and community. Its explosive energy, innovative storytelling and collective spirit have placed the group at the center of the nation’s leading theater companies.

“The Rude Mechs are one of America’s hottest, most creative and most outlandish theater companies,” said department chair Brant Pope. “Celebrated in The New York Times and playing to packed houses across the nation, the Rude Mechs, as UT’s resident theater, are now working alongside our students. ‘What starts here changes the world’ is the motto of the university, and this partnership is one of the best expressions of that pledge.”

Rude Mechs’ work has been presented in top national venues including The Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis), The Wexner Center (Columbus, Ohio) and Woolly Mammoth (Washington, D.C.). Connected to an international community of artists, the group has performed in Austria’s SommerSzene, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (winner of the Total Theatre Award for Best New Play by an Ensemble), and the Under the Radar Festival (New York).

Residency activities include student internship opportunities with the Rude Mechs in the areas of development, marketing, arts education, venue management, and production. The company will also serve as a guest responder on Department of Theatre and Dance productions. As a result, students will receive invaluable insight and feedback on their work from company members.

Dionysus in 69, open rehearsal, Rude Mechanicals, October 29

(www.rudemechs.com)

Rude Mechs is proud to present a one-night-only open rehearsal of Dionysus in 69, our re-enactment of The Performance Group's radical 1968 re-imagining of The Bacchae.

In December 2009, Rude Mechs faithfully recreated the original Performance Group production, using Brian de Palma's filmed version of the play as well as the 1970 book, Dionysus in 69, as source materials.

Please join us on Monday Oct 29th to celebrate the god and gear up for our November tour to New York Live Arts in NYC, where we'll victoriously return this legendary work to its original birthplace, 44 years after its premiere.

Monday, October 29, 2012, 8 p.m.
The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo St., Austin, Texas 78702 (click for map)Tickets: $10 (only 50 seats available)
Get tickets at: http://dionysusin69.brownpapertickets.com/

Dionysus in 69 was the first production in Rude Mechs' Contemporary Classics series, focused on producing exact re-enactments of significant, experimental performances from the 60's, 70's, and 80's that radically influenced the work of contemporary performance artists, dancers, and theatre makers. Because all performances are ephemeral, and avant-garde performances even more so, most people never experience these germinal works. Rude Mechs remounts these productions as closely as possible to the originals to share these works with our Austin audience, to educate ourselves, and to celebrate 40 years of experimental (and "environmental") theatre, by experiencing and learning about Dionysus in 69 in the deepest way - through its performance.

"'Dionysus in 69' is strong stuff, but anyone who wants to know where the modern theatre is going will have to see it."---The New York Times, June 7, 1968

"Cunning. Joyful. Transcendent. Theatre at its absolute best." Austin Chronicle, 2009

The show runs approximately 90 minutes with no intermission. Rude Mechs invites you to attend and be moved by the spirit of 69: feel free to wander throughout the room, disappear and reappear, participate in the fun or fade into the background. We encourage respectful interaction. Photography of any kind will get you booted, your camera confiscated and your pictures deleted.

NOTE: All seating is on wooden platforms accessed by wooden ladders or on the floor. There are no chairs. If you need special accommodation, please let us know 24 hours ahead of time. Thanks!

WARNING: Nudity and adult content. No one under 18 will be admitted without a guardian.

Opinion: Robert Faires on Now Now Oh Now, Boom and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Austin Chronicle

Austin Chronicle Arts Editor Robert Faires offers reflections on learning at the theatre in his engaging portmanteau review of the Rude Mechs' Now Now Oh Now, Capital T's Boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, and the Doctuh Mistuh production of the musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson directed by Michael McKelvey and featuring David Gallagher. Here's an excerpt; click the link to read the full text.

David Gallagher

All Over Creation: 

Continuing Education

Turns out theatre is a great place for getting schooled

Robert Faires, Fri., June 15, 2012

The woman said that she was going to speak to us about evolutionary biology.

Now, had this been back in my school days, that declaration would have shot a torrent of Barton Springs-chilled water through my veins. See, at some point in my adolescence, science and math stopped coming easily to me, and the deeper into those subjects I ventured, the more I floundered. In my ears then, "evolutionary biology" would have rung with the sound of being dropped into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico without a flotation device.

But I was not in a classroom, and those days were long behind me. In fact, this was just a few weeks ago, and I was inside the Off Center, seated at a long table along with some two dozen other people, and the woman addressing us was a company member of the Rude Mechanicals, playing a character in the troupe's most recent production, Now Now Oh Now. Now, she did indeed go on to discuss concepts in evolutionary biology, and most of it struck me as beyond your basic Darwin – the primary notion being that nature may select for beauty as well as survival skills – but rather than being at sea, I was thoroughly engaged. I mean, I caught that wave way out in the Gulf and rode it all the way in to the Padre shore. What she talked about was not only clear to me, but it's stayed with me in the days since, and I've been much more attentive to birds, wondering about the extent to which sheer pleasure has shaped the development of their coloration and songs.

Click to read more at the Austin Chronicle on-line . . . .

Opinion: Travis Bedard on Repeats, Theatre and the Rude Mechanicals, 2amtheatre.com, June 12

Repeats

posted by Travis Bedard
at 2amtheatre.com, June 12

No matter how deeply you bury yourself in new plays and new play creation and theory, theatre remains largely a reflection of where we’ve been (check your local listings). Right now I’m in two shows that combined are more than 800 years old. So the tone of this Culturebot article is bizarre to me.

The linked blurb seems to ask what some of our best modern art makers are thinking putting up chestnuts like Dionysus in 69 or Einstein on the Beach. To answer Culturebot’s open question: what this says about the health of the field is that the best companies in the country are humble enough to know that they are following a path and that someone created that path. If you want to break new ground anywhere it’s imperative to know (really know) how others have done it.

Dionysus in 69 was a turning point for performance art, and what the Rude Mechs have done (and are continuing to do) is mine the history of their field to illustrate for their audience what has come before. This interleaved retrospective adds depth (and context) to the form defying work, such as the recently closed genre jumble NOW NOW OH NOW, that they are creating.

The Rude Mechs (and the also-mentioned Gob Squad) don’t stop making the new to reflect on their past. The Mechs loving, deliberate recreation (not reinterpretation) of the Performance Group’s Dionysus in 69 as well as Mabou Mines’ B.Beaver Animations wasn’t in lieu of The Method Gun or I’ve Never Been So Happy or NOW NOW OH NOW, they were simply part of the delirious stew they have cooking at the Off Center.

Read more at 2amtheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Now Now Oh Now, Rude Mechanicals at the Off Center, May 17 - June 9

present

Now Now Oh Now

May 17 - June 9, Thursdays - Sundays

multiple sessions each night, starting as needed at 7:30 and 8 p.m.; possibility of adding 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. start times

audience limited to 30 persons per session

at the Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo, behind Joe's Bakery and near E. 7th and Robert Martinez (click for map)

Tickets are $25 for general admission on Fridays and Saturdays, and "Pay What You Wish" on Thursdays and Sundays. Advance tickets go on sale staring April 17th. Tickets will also be available at the door for cash or check only. For more information and advance ticket purchases, visit www.RudeMechs.com.

The Rude Mechs will debut the first fully-mounted production of the original work Now Now Oh Now on May 17th through June 9th at The Off Center. Previously presented in various workshop versions under the working title CL1000P, the fully-realized staging creates interactive puzzle about the importance and impermanence of selecting pleasure over survival.

The concept, structure and content of the work were developed by Madge Darlington, Thomas Graves, Hannah Kenah and Shawn Sides. With a book by Kenah and staging by Sides, the production will feature actors Graves, Kenah and Sides joined by Robert Fisher, Lana Lesley and Jason Liebrecht.

Inspired by evolutionary biology, the Brontës, and live-action-role-play communities, Now Now Oh Now is performed as "a triptych tribute to everyone's inner geek." Embodying Rude Mechs' desire to create a more tangible, social, active and personal experience for their audiences, the performance marries serious scientific content and virtuosic movement with the nerdy pleasure of puzzles and gaming - with the guilty pleasure of Murder Mystery Theatre.

An intimate consideration of how individual choices lead us through life and impact the world, the staging takes a locked room puzzle, a lecture on sexual selection in evolutionary biology and the world's weirdest night of Dungeons and Dragons - and weaves them all together to "paint a picture of why the things you find beautiful are important to the world," according to the creative team.

Now Now Oh Now is a recipient of the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Theatre Pilot. The goal of the program is to encourage artists and their collaborators to create high-quality works of contemporary theater - and provide for extended life of these works through touring to multi-disciplinary presenters, producing theaters and other venues.

Performances will be staged on Thursday through Sunday nights at The Off Center. Now Now Oh Now will be performed for an intimate audience of only 30 people per show, so several showings of the performance will be offered each night. Tickets will first be sold for a 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. showings each night. If these performances sell out, additional performances will be added at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.

Upcoming: CLP1000 - Round 2, Rude Mechanicals at the Off Center, February 2 -10

Found on-line:

Rude Mechs is proud to present a work-in-progress showing of

CL1000P Round 2 (working title),

sharing the creation of our newest play.

Feb 2 - 11, 2012

Thurs - Sat at 8 pm

at The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo St., near E. 7th and Robert Martinez, behind Joe's Bakery (click for map)

TICKETS: $10

(Friday Feb 3, $100 tickets - see below)

So far, CL1000P is an interactive puzzle for the stage inspired by alternative reality games, and the imaginary world built by the Brontës.

You may have attended our workshop production in December 2010 - if you did, you will either be pleased or sad to know that most of that has been thrown out and we have started pretty fresh.

This workshop production will introduce and explore some ideas we've been working with: audience mobility through the piece, audience opt-in interaction, puzzles, mystery, and acting within acting. We're looking for your feedback: what's interesting, what's annoying, where should we go from here as we work toward a full production in May?

Come play with us, have a drink, some marshmallows or popcorn. There will be a talkback with the cast/audience every evening - so come and let us know how we can make the play of your dreams. And we have a couple of amazing interns working with us this month, who will be tracking our progress and observing our process on our blog at http://rudemechs.blogspot.com/

SUPPORT NEW PLAY CREATION by purchasing $100 tickets to attend the Friday, February 3rd performance. We will pay extra special attention to you that night. In a good way. We swear.

Video Teaser for The Method Gun by the Rude Mechanicals on OnTheBoards.tv

Found via Tweet from the Rude Mechanicals:

[Apple users: can't see the video? Click to go to Vimeo.com]

Vimeo legend: Rude Mechs' The Method Gun filmed as part of OntheBoards.tv, a contemporary performance on-demand site.

The Method Gun explores the life and techniques of Stella Burden, the actor-training guru of the 60s and 70s and creator of “The Approach” (referred to as “the most dangerous acting technique in the world”), which fused Western acting methods with risk-based rituals to infuse even the smallest role with sex, death, and violence. Using found text from the journals and performance reports of Burden’s company,The Method Gun reenacts the final months of her company’s rehearsals for their nine-years-in-the-making production of A Streetcar Named Desire. The Method Gun addresses the ecstasy and excesses of performing, the dangers of public intimacy, and the incompatibility of truth on stage and sanity in real life.

Since 1995, Rude Mechs has created a mercurial slate of 23 theatrical productions that represent a genre-defying cocktail of big ideas, cheap laughs, and dizzying spectacle. What these works hold in common is the use of play to make performance, the use of theaters as meeting places for audiences and artists, and the use of humor as a tool for intellectual investigation. The company tours these performances nationally and abroad; maintains The Off Center, a performance venue in Austin for arts groups of every discipline; and operates a year-round arts mentoring program for teenage girls.

This performance was filmed at Imago Theater as part of Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's Time Based Art Festival.

Jeremy M. Barker comments on CultureBOt.net, "OtB.tv uses multiple high-quality digital video cameras and quality editing to present video documentations that’s several steps above what most of us are used to. It’s $5 to watch or $15 to download and own; other subscription options are available."

Arts Reporting: Kirk Lynn of Rude Mechs Receives $50,000 Fellowship through USA Artists

Following up a note published by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin in the Statesman's Austin360 Seeing Things blog, December 5:

Playwright Kirk Lynn of Austin's Rude Mechanicals is one of fifty U.S. artists selected as USA Fellows, receiving a $50,000 fellowship funded by Jeanne and Michael Klein of Austin, Texas, through the non-profit organization United States Artists. Among other grantees this year are playwright Annie Baker, musician Donald Byrd and playwright Octavio Solis.

Lynn's bio posted at the USA Fellows website reads:

Kirk Lynn is a playwright and Co-Producing Artistic Director of the Austin-based, experimental theater collective Rude Mechanicals (or Rude Mechs). Lynn co-founded the Rude Mechs in 1995 and, with them, he has written and adapted over a dozen plays, which have been performed around the world. His works have been honored with several awards, including the Total Theatre Award from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for Get Your War On (2007) and an NEA New Play Development grant for I’ve Never Been So Happy (2009). He teaches at the University of Texas, Austin.

Reviews from Elsewhere: The Method Gun, Rude Mechs, Mention in Scott Brown's 'Best of 2011' in New York Magazine, December 4

Via link tweeted by the Rude Mechs:

The Off Brand

Some of the best shows came and went in a flash.

By Scott Brown, December 4, 2011

It’s fashionable to write off Off and Off–Off Broadway—hey, I do it all the time, for fun and profit. But 2011 made that a difficult proposition: My favorite shows of the year, as a bloc, were those wee, untransferable gems and oddities from smaller theaters throughout the city, the sorts of shows that regularly blow in and out of town in two-week runs. Most of the time, frankly, two weeks is far too generous a cushion. Not this year, not for these ephemeral, yet unforgettable events.

I’ve made Sweet and Sad my No. 1 pick for 2011, but it’s just a tributary to a giant, churning underground reservoir of nanoscale theater-art. I thrilled at a revival of Howard Barker’s furious Restoration anarch-omedy Victory: Choices in Reaction, starring the great Jan Maxwell, which spoke directly to our present viciousness, revanchism, and social cannibalism. The Method Gun, a nothing-short-of-magical mousetrap rigged by Austin’s excellent Rude Mechs troupe, purported to tell the story of an acting guru named Stella Burden and her cultlike teaching techniques, but really massaged the old American ache for purity in theory and practice—and made the stakes of an elaborate theater-game feel like life and death. [. . . .]

Click to read full text at New York magazine. . . .

Arts Reporting: Backstage.com on Austin Theatre (Mostly A Puff Piece for Zach), November 17

Following up a Zach tweet:

ZACH and Other Theaters Make Austin a Magnet for Talent

By Doug Strassler November 17, 2011

Austin, the capital city of the Lone Star State, has plenty going for it. Kiplinger magazine ranked it number one on its "Best Cities 2010" list, and the city is third on CNNMoney.com's roster of "America's Most Recession-Proof Cities."

Clearly, Austin is doing something right. It has long been defined by its music scene, which is how it became home to the popular and growing South by Southwest festival. But Austin has emerged as more than just a base for music. In fact, it has become a mecca for theatrical and visual arts as well. So what makes the city such a bastion of creative energy?

"Historically, you can blame the University of Texas," says Robert Faires, senior arts editor of The Austin Chronicle. "Since the 1880s, it's been drawing creative types from all over the state—most of whom felt like lonely outsiders in their small hometowns—to this spot in the heart of Texas. They all discover one another here and begin to interact, and then the creativity just begins breeding. Because it's so fulfilling for them creatively here, they decide not to leave."

"We're a blue oasis in a red state," echoes Dave Steakley, the producing artistic director of Austin theater ZACH for more than 20 years. "People, even politicians, come from the conservative parts of the state to be their true selves. It's an unbelievably desirable place to live."

If there is anyone who has his finger on Austin's artistic pulse, it's Steakley, who has shepherded ZACH to its position as the linchpin of the Austin arts scene. [. . .]

Click to read more at Backstage.com . . . .

Reviews From Elsewhere: Los Angeles Times on the Rude Mech's I've Never Been So Happy, October 10

Link tweeted by the Rude Mechs:

Theater review:

'I've Never Been So Happy' at the Kirk Douglas Theatre

by Charles McNulty October 10, 2011

Rude Mechs, the crazy-as-a-fox performance troupe from Austin, Texas, loves throwing audiences for a loop. So for the benefit of any Rodgers & Hammerstein innocents out there, let’s acknowledge upfront that “I’ve Never Been So Happy,” the company’s new musical at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, could potentially give “Oklahoma!” addicts a stroke with its cowpoke sendup of musical theater conventions.

This freewheeling carnival of a show, which opened Saturday under the zingy direction of Thomas Graves and Lana Lesley, adopts its air of insouciance with a deadpan mask. Why, our wacky friends from the Lone Star State, last seen at the Douglas just a few months ago during RADAR L.A. with the sprightly mockumentary “The Method Gun,” have returned to host a little shindig. What could be more normal than seeing wieners roasting in the theater’s men’s room and the lobby decked out like a country fair for our intermission pleasure?

Thankfully, audience participation isn’t a requirement of this DouglasPlus offering. Theatergoers, however, must be willing to go along with the joke or the mayhem may start to seem raucously dizzying. But for those on the same wacky wavelength as Rude Mechs — and this boldly experimental group has earned its cult following — “I’ve Never Been So Happy” will no doubt possess a cobweb-clearing comic force.

Read more at the LA Times on-line . . . .

Arts Reporting: L.A. Stage Times on the Rude Mechanicals' I've Never Been So Happy, October 5

Via a link tweeted by the Rude Mechs:

The Rude Mechs Return to LA and They’ve Never Been So Happy

Feature by A.R. Cassell | October 5, 2011

Yippee-ki-ay! The West is about to get even wilder with the arrival of the Texans who make up the Rude Mechs, the experimental theater company whose latest creation I’ve Never Been So Happy will begin performances this Thursday at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.

Continuing their relationship with the Center Theatre Group (audiences may recall their production of The Method Gun at the Douglas during the RADAR L.A. festival in June), the “Rudes” are blazing new frontiers with their first bona fide musical…that is, if a “musical” is what you’d call it.

Otherwise called a “transmedia hootenanny,” I’ve Never Been So Happy, written by Kirk Lynn, centers around two star-crossed lovers in the wild wild West who, along with the help of some talking dachshunds (it’s true), must fight to stay together despite the efforts of their parents, a mountain lion, and whole slew of colorful characters. Composer Peter Stopschinski’s score ranges everywhere from down-home country, to ballads, heavy metal, opera and R&B. During the extended intermission, there is a shindig, which is described as a “interactive carnivalesque performance party.”

[image: Paul Soileau, Jason Liebrecht and Jenny Larson, via www.lastagetimes.com]

Read more and view additional images at www.lastagetimes.com . . . .

Upcoming: The B. Beaver Animation, Rude Mechs' recreation of the Mabou Mines 1990 piece, October 27 - November

Located on Facebook via Twitter:

mount a faithful reanimation of

The B. Beaver Animation

(1974 and 1990 by the Mabou Mines of New York City)

and give Austin an extraordinary opportunity to relive history.

co-directed by Madge Darlington and Shawn Sides

October 27, 28, 29, 30; November 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13 at 8 p.m.

The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo, behind Joe's Bakery on E. 7th Street (click for map)

Tickets on sale October 5, 2011 at brownpapertickets.com - Sliding scale: Free-$25.

After wowing Austin two years ago with a remounting of the Performance Group's Dionysus in ‘69, the ever-daring Rudes reach back in time for another contemporary classic: Mabou Mines' The B. Beaver Animation.

B. is a devastated and stuttering beaver – a beaver who’s forgotten how to construct his dam! Debilitated by the prospect of his family being washed away because of his spontaneous deficiencies, he awaits mail order dam-building manuals and sorts through the damning messages damming his mind!

This seminal work confounded and provoked its 1974 audiences by introducing to the stage a radical style of story telling, an eclectic patchwork of words and action some called a “Performance Poem”. Writer/director Lee Breuer combined such diverse influences as Brecht, Grotowski, Bunraku puppet theater, rock and roll, and the collective input of the Mabou Mines ensemble, to create a deeply personal performance about his struggle with writer’s block. Part monologue, part manifesto, part slapdash circus, B. Beaver muddles the real and the symbolic, relating common themes in uncommon ways.


CAST & CREW:
Adriene Mishler as JoAnne Akalaitis
Elizabeth Doss as Ruth Maleczech
Ellie McBride as Dawn Gray
Aron Taylor as David Warrilow
Caroline Reck as Terry O’Reilly
and
Robert Pierson as Fred Neumann as B. Beaver

Click to read the review by Mel Gussow of the Mabou Mines 1990 re-mount of the B. Beaver Animation, May 24, 1990

Reviews from Elsewhere: Oregon Arts Watch on The Method Gun, Rude Mechanicals, September 13

Published at the Oregon Arts Watch:

TBA:11/ Rude Mechs, ‘The Method Gun’: art and self-reflection

By Brett Campbell ⋅ September 13, 2011

I approached the Rude Mechs show The Method Gun with some skepticism. I generally detest art about art, with its usual insider references (or so I thought) and the premise sounded oh-so-meta: a theater piece about a theater company’s staging of a theater production. Happily, the Austin-based company merely used the subject matter as a vehicle to do what the best theater always does: tells us about who we are and why we do what we do. In giving us a deliciously deceptive story about art, they’re telling us about ourselves, artists and non artists alike.

It’s really a story about an absence — though not the big lacuna alleged in the story, which concerns a famous (though fictional) theater director named Stella Burden, who devised a way of making theater more real called “The Approach,” and if this sounds suspiciously like a famous nonfictional Stella (Adler) and “The Method” she created, it’s hardly an accident. (As for the surname, I wonder if it references the Los Angeles artist Chris Burden, who wanted to make art with so much impact that he staged a performance in which a collaborator actually shot him. He survived and is happily making art to this day; I visited his Los Angeles studio a few years ago, where he was making a big installation involving old lightposts.)

Stella B’s conceit is to stage a version of A Streetcar Named Desire — without Stanley, Stella, Mitch or Blanche. Like them, Burden never appears in The Method Gun. The show is about the actors she left behind, somewhat like Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is about the bit players in Hamlet. “She gave us ourselves, and now we don’t even have that,” one wails.

Read more at Oregon Arts Watch . . . .

Reviews from Elsewhere: NYT Feature on Rude Mechs' Method Gun, February 27

Found on-line:

Many Methods to Collaborative Madness

By JOAN ANDERMAN, New York Times, February 27, 2011

IT began, as actors’ stories often do, with a guru. Her name was Stella Burden, a k a “the other Stella.” Ms. Burden created a risky suite of training exercises called the Approach, attracted a fervent band of followers and abandoned them nine years into rehearsals for a high-concept production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” to be performed without Stanley, Blanche, Stella or Mitch.

What in the name of madcap Method acting is a company member to do?

That’s the absurdly literal and keenly figurative question at the heart of “The Method Gun,” a play about the creative process by the Austin, Tex., ensemble Rude Mechs, which since it was founded in 1995 has become one of the nation’s leading proponents of devised theater: works developed collaboratively by a company rather than an individual playwright.

“The Method Gun,” which comes to Dance Theater Workshop from March 2 to 11, is the most autobiographical of the company’s pieces. It’s satirical and celebratory in roughly equal parts, exploring ideas of togetherness and loss, the dynamics of being part of a tight-knit group and what it means to take care of one another.

While the show’s premise nods to celebrated acting teachers like Stella Adler and to extreme, emotion-based techniques like the Method, specifics are left aside in favor of merciless riffs on codified approaches to art. But the Rude Mechs’ wicked sense of humor tempers a sincere streak that the company wears like a badge of honor.

Read more at the New York Times on-line . . . .

Upcoming: I've Never Been So Happy (full version), Rude Mechanicals at the Off Center, April 21 - May 7

Found on-line at AustinOnStage.com:

The Rude Mechanicals

present

I've Never Been So Happy (full version)

April 21 - May 7, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Matinee performance on Sunday, May 1

at the Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street (click for map)

Tickets are $15 to $25, and the Saturday, May 7th, special closing night performance will feature a post-show concert by entertainment group CHABLIS - voted "Best Local Show 2010" in the Austin Chronicle Critics Poll.

For tickets and more information, visit www.RudeMechs.com.

After two workshop productions at The Off Center in 2008 and 2009 - plus residencies with The Orchard Project and The Musical Theatre Initiative at The University of Texas - The Rude Mechanicals will stage the world premiere of their fulllength western operetta I've Never Been So Happy April 21st through May 7th at The Off Center.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .