Three or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre at the Off Center, July 26 - August 17, 2013

(poster design by JennyMarie Jemison)

by Brian Paul Scipione

What Philosophers Call It

A pause button: many wish for it and none achieve it.

Many of life’s moments skyrocket past us with meteor-like frenzy. Some we miss altogether, because we were simply too wrapped up in, well, what we consider to be life. Vonnegut fantasizes about something similar in Slaughterhouse Five: the ability to stretch time out like taffy, look at each and every important moment from our past, and understand how they brought us to the present. Because, honestly, we know all along as it’s happening. One thing does lead to another,r and while nothing was actually our fault, if we could do it all over again differently-- we probably would.

Three or the Sound of Existential Nothingness is not science fiction or a playful modern fantasy. It’s a modern adaption of Chekov’s masterpiece Three Sisters. The play portrays the titular trio plus one lover and one brother. No special effects or time travel involved; yet while watching the play, the spectator is whisked back and forth, through a thousand moments: many seem insignificant but all matter.

Allow me to explain, if I can (avoiding spoilers and misdirection, of course).

Jeff Mills (photo: Will Hollis Snider)

Within the first three minutes of the evening the fourth wall is shattered. No objection to that; many people know that playwright Timothy Braun is adapting 113-year-old material for a modern audience: why not take a casual approach to the format? Alas, this is only the least of the changes to this inter-dimensional story. 

The crux of the drama lies not in what Andres the brother (Jeff Mills) says directly to the audience as the de facto narrator. Rather, it consists of every little thing the characters don’t say. Here, the five players of Three truly explode the parameters of Ia Enstera’s theatre-in-the-round set-up.

Wait, let’s pause and rewind. . . .

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . . 

Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre at the Off Center, July 26 - August 17, 2013

by Dr. David Glen Robinson


Brother Andre’s cell ringtone is Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, and that’s everything, right up front, for Three, or, The Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun. Each and every character on stage goes down, down, down in a burning ring of fire, seemingly without redemption.

Breaking String Theater produces the play at the Off Center, possibly the east side’s most prestigious venue. In marketing material, the play is described as a modern reworking of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. After having seen the show, I’m glad I decided to drink the play neat. Put down your Chekhov and go to the show.

Andre and his three sisters have been settled in an unbelievably small and provincial town distinguished by its nothingness. The town is located by the characters by spinning a globe and jamming their fingers onto it at random. Nothing could say every-nowhere better than that. The siblings’ doctor father did this to his four children when the town pleaded for a general practitioner. The doctor took the job and then died, leaving the children to attain adulthood and stumble through the wreckage of their lives, featuring advanced alcoholism, profligacy and gambling addiction. The play makes no mention of their mother.

The action takes place on the 21st birthday of the youngest daughter, Irina, and although Brother Andre bribes several of the townspeople to come to the weekend-long bash, only two show up, but these two are straight out of the family’s past. They are The Captain, played by Chris Gibson, and Officer in Training, played by David Higgins. Under the solvent of alcohol, the layers of denial slowly wash away, and the characters and their histories lie exposed and raw. We all have a little somethin’ to hide; but these people have to deal with icebergs, strip mines, nuclear waste dumps, and Cambodian minefields of the inner landscape-- with fracking in progress.

Director Schmidt leads us deftly through the carnage with an excellent cast. Cami Alys is notable as Masha, threatening, black-garbed; a Miss Attitude who, when not running with her scissors, holsters them prominently in her boot. She also scissors pictures out of library books as her sole prerogative as the town’s English teacher. Later, Andre says she is getting worse. We believe it. Ms Alys performs with supreme physicality, matched in the cast only by the gracile Gricelda Silva as Irina.

Jeff Mills as Andre and Dawn Youngs as Olga play with greater restraint than the others, as their characters require. With Andre this is due to a profound emotional weakness that leads him to trifle with the town punch and gamble with everything from the dog to the deed to the ranch. He talks smartass, even as a frame bending narrator, but his heart is in nothing but ennui. Mills’s accomplishment in erforming with this low intensity for all but a few minutes of the play is a credit to his skills. Olga, as the oldest sister, is bound by conventionality and the imperative to do the right thing. Youngs plays her with glimpses of Olga’s bottled rage and shows her physicality in games of jump-rope late in the play. This sequence, along with the party scene, adds creative dimension and relieves the audience after an hour of sturm and drang.

Click to read more of David Glen Robinson's review at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Video Promo by Robert Moncrieff: Three, or the or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre at the Off Center, July 26 - August 17, 2013

Robert Moncrieff's second promo video for the

presentation of

Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness

by Timothy Braun

directed by Graham Schmidt

July 26, 27 - August 1, 2, 3, 5 - August 8, 9, 10 - August 14, 15, 16, 17

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

In Timothy Braun's fantastical re-interpretation, five characters from Chekhov's 1901 masterpiece live highly circumscribed lives in a small town somewhere in present-day America. Breaking String presented an early draft at Hyde Park Theatre in December of 2012, and recruited an elite creative team comprising veterans of Austin's new works community, for a development process. The result is a highly playful and theatrical piece in which Mr. Braun explores themes central to Chekhov's work: loneliness, the yearning for a better life, and the struggle to connect. 

Photos by Will Hollis Snider for Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre at the Off Center, July 26 - August 17, 2013

A photo spread by Will Hollis Snider with costumes by Jamie Urban for the

presentation of

Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness

by Timothy Braun

directed by Graham Schmidt

July 26, 27 - August 1, 2, 3, 5 - August 8, 9, 10 - August 14, 15, 16, 17 

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

In Timothy Braun's fantastical re-interpretation, five characters from Chekhov's 1901 masterpiece live highly circumscribed lives in a small town somewhere in present-day America. Breaking String presented an early draft at Hyde Park Theatre in December of 2012, and recruited an elite creative team comprising veterans of Austin's new works community, for a development process. The result is a highly playful and theatrical piece in which Mr. Braun explores themes central to Chekhov's work: loneliness, the yearning for a better life, and the struggle to connect.

Cami Alys, Dawn Youngs, Gricelda Silva, Jeff Mills (image: Will Hollis Snider)

Gricelda Silva (image: Will Hollis Snider)

David Higgins, Chris Gibson (photo: Will Hollis Snider)

Click to view additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Video Promo: Three, or the Existential Sound of Nothingness, Breaking String Theatre at the Off-Center, July 26 - August 17, 2013

Robert Moncrieff's promotional video for the










staging of

Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness

by Timothy Braun

directed by Graham Schmidt


July 26 - August 17, 2013 (dates and times TBA)

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


In Timothy Braun's fantastical re-interpretation, five characters from Chekhov's 1901 masterpiece live highly circumscribed lives in a small town somewhere in present-day America. Breaking String presented an early draft at Hyde Park Theatre in December of 2012, and recruited an elite creative team comprising veterans of Austin's new works community, for a development process. The result is a highly playful and theatrical piece in which Mr. Braun explores themes central to Chekhov's work: loneliness, the yearning for a better life, and the struggle to connect.

Click for additional information at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

THREE by Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre at the Off CTHREE, Timothy Braun, Breaking String Theatre, Graham Schmidt, Austin, Texas, Austin Live Theatreenter, July 26 - August 17, 2013

presents

Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness
by Timothy Braun
directed by Graham Schmidt
July 26 - August 17, 2013 (dates and times TBA)
at The Off-Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street, near E. 7th Street and Robert Martinez (behind Joe's Bakery) - click for map

As the final production in its 2012-2013 season, Breaking String Theater will stage Three, or the Sound of the Great Existential Nothingness by Timothy Braun, directed by Graham Schmidt.

Three posits a small family adrift in a far-flung provincial town, scouring highly circumscribed existences for meaning, and the modest joys that make day-to-day living bearable. Having borrowed themes and fragments from Chekhov's 1901 masterpiece, Three Sisters, Mr. Braun reshaped the play, achieving a magically realistic world in which the ensemble will explore Chekhov's themes and concerns, colliding them with the images and sounds of contemporary life as we live it, asking again where we are going as individuals and as a race, where to find "our Moscow," and why we feel ever more lonely even among those we know the best.

With Three, for the first time Breaking String will draw on its strengths as a company rooted in meticulously dramaturged Chekhovian productions, this time using that knowledge to fuel a new-play development process, loosely based on that employed for the highly successful Austin riff on Hamlet, - The Assumption.

We have partnered with Timothy Braun - an accomplished and innovative playwright who brings a commitment to contemporary forms and fresh perspectives to Breaking String, best demonstrated in his work as Editor of New and Social Media for Fusebox Festival - as well as a stellar ensemble comprising artists who will be instantly recognizable to frequent patrons of Austin's vibrant new-work and experimental performance community: Cami Alys (The Rude Mechs' I've Never Been So Happy, Intergalactic Nemesis), Jeff Mills (The Assumption), Dawn Youngs (Dionysium, The Schooling of Bento Bonchev by Maksym Kurochkin), Chris Gibson (Intergalactic Nemesis) and Gricelda Silva (Trouble Puppet Theatre Co.; Glass Half Full Theatre Co.; Flying by Olga Mukhina). The creative team is rounded out by all-star designers, including perennial standout scenic-lighting pair Ia Enstera and Steven Shirey, Glenda Barnes (costumes) and Buzz Moran (sound).

Mr. Braun wrote Three at a playwriting residency during the summer of 2012; in December, the play received a reading at Hyde Park Theatre, and after a brief development process, the play will receive its world premiere at The Off Center this summer.

For more information about Mr. Braun, please visit his website: timothybraun.com

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)