Photo Flash: WOW Company's RECONSTRUCTION

Following on the heels of their 2010 Sundance Film Festival Jury Prize for the documentary Gasland, International WOW Company is proud to present Reconstruction, conceived and directed by Artistic Director Josh Fox and created by The International WOW ensemble. Reconstruction runs from May 6 - 23, 2010 in a limited 3-week engagement at the Ohio Theatre, located at 66 Wooster Street, between Spring & Broome Streets, in Soho.

Performances are Wednesdays-Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 3pm and 8pm, and Sundays at 7pm. Tickets are $15 and $20 and can be purchased online at http://www.SmartTix.com or by calling 212-868-4444. Running time is 2 hours. Post-show talkbacks will follow each performance. For more information visit http://www.InternationalWOW.com.

Reconstruction memorializes the Ohio Theatre’s pending closure in August, focusing on the current foreclosure crisis in both the housing and cultural spheres. The production highlights the debacle facing the Ohio Theatre and many of New York’s most valued cultural institutions, featuring scene after scene about foreclosure, including one in which a theater company performing The Cherry Orchard is kicked out of its theatrical home.

Like Surrender, the company’s first interactive theatrical drama, which dealt with the Iraq War and veterans’ issues, Reconstruction will be an audience-immersive and issue-oriented drama focusing on both the current foreclosure crisis and the burgeoning “Green Building” movement that addresses our worldwide energy/environment problem. As the audiences of Surrender were taught combat techniques and deployed into a war simulation, in Reconstruction the audience will be trained in carpentry, construction, green technology and sustainable building techniques, and work alongside the cast of green building professionals and actors as they construct an actual building during the performance. Built in a modular fashion over the course of the performance run, the completed building will ultimately be handed over to the community that built it.

Reconstruction is Josh Fox and the company’s first production since winning the 2010 Sundance Special Jury Prize for Gasland, the company’s second feature film. The film also won jury prizes at the Sarasota International Film Fest, the Yale Environmental Film Fest and the Big Sky Film Fest. Gasland premieres June 21st on HBO.

Josh Fox and International WOW, renowned for audience immersion -- in which spectators become a part of the show, reading lines and moving through the space -- and their physical, explosively visual, epic style, create a theatrical spectacle like never before. With an international cast from the United States, Canada, Scotland, Japan, Australia, Spain and the Philippines, Reconstruction promises to be a moving international exploration of gripping immediacy. Reconstruction was developed at the 2009 Ice Factory Festival, presented by Soho Think Tank.

Described by The New York Times as “one of the most adventurous impresarios of the New York avant-garde,” Josh Fox directs an ensemble of long-time WOW Company members, led by Lee Gundersheimer, Tommy McGinn, Deborah Wallace, Herbie Go, Evan True, Sara Gozalo, Melissa Chambers, Robert Saietta and 15 additional performer/dancers.

Josh Fox founded International WOW Company in 1996, a theater group with membership of over 100 actors, dancers, musicians, technical and visual artists spanning 30 countries on 4 continents. With International WOW Company he has conceived, written, directed and/or produced over 30 productions in Thailand, Indonesia, The Philippines, Japan and New York City. These productions include Surrender, You Belong To Me, Death of Nations Part V, Heimwehen, Limitless Joy, The Expense of Spirit, Death of Nations, parts 1-4 and The Trailer, Orphan On God’s Highway, The BOMB, HyperReal America (Time Out NY Top Ten Shows of 2001), Soon My Work, This is Not the Ramakian, The Sleeping and the Dead, Stairway to the Stars, and American Interference (Village Voice Best in the Fringe Festival). TimeOut NY called him “one of downtown’s most audacious auteurs,” citing his “brilliantly resourceful mastery of stagecraft.” His extensive work in Asia includes several productions at Tokyo’s Setagaya Public Theater, The New National Theater of Japan, The Cultural Center of the Philippines and at theaters throughout Thailand.

Also a filmmaker, Fox completed his first feature film, Memorial Day, produced by Jim McKay and Michael Stipe’s C-Hundred Film Corp, Journeyman Pictures in 2008. A film version of the company’s 2004 shocker, Comfort and Safety, it features Mr. Fox and members of International WOW ensemble. The film was initially shown at the CineVegas Film Festival and opened in February of 2009 at the IFC. His feature film, Gasland, a documentary on the effects of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania and New York, was the winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010 and will premiere on HBO June 21st.

International WOW is an ensemble theatre company with artists from around the world who create large-scale, new works, which are both visceral and driven by ideas. Based in New York City and Thailand, International WOW’s plays draw on performance traditions of the East and the West to position community and culture in an international context and redefine the dramatic event in this era of globalization. The company aims to respond immediately to the world’s ever-changing political landscape, exploring what it means to be a human being at a particular time and place in history. Founded in 1996, International WOW has created over 30 new works, which have premiered in cultural centers around the world.

The design team for Reconstruction consists of Nate Lemoine (Set Design & Stage Manager), Robert Lilly (Lighting Design), Josh Fox (Sound Design), Heather Denyer (Dramaturg) and Tracy Cameron Francis (Assistant Director).

Photo Credit: Hunter Canning