Firesign Theatre Partners with Barnsdall, 10/21-23

THE FIRESIGN THEATRE, comedy's legendary quartet, comes to the Hollywood's Barnsdall Theatre for three nights, Thursday, October 21st - Sunday, October 23rd.  Showtime is at 8:00PM and tickets are available by going to www.firesigntheatre.com.   Tickets range from $40.00 - $60.00.   The Barnsdall Theatre is located at 4800 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. 
 
The Firesign writing partners and voice artists, now in their 43rd year of working together, are Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman and Phil Proctor.  They have collaborated on more than twenty "movies for the mind," introducing listeners to surrealistic adventures including Nick Danger, Porgie and Mudhead, "Beat The Reaper," "I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus," and "Everything You Know Is Wrong." 
 
Their 21st century CD Trilogy, "We're Doomed," received Grammy nominations for "Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death" and "Bride of Firesign."  The Library of Congress added "Don't Crush That Dwarf" to their highly selective recorded archives.  Firesign's many hours of live radio broadcasts and rare movies are now carefully restored collector's items.  The group has recently been profiled in two coffee-table books on The Sixties when, according to LIFE magazine, Firesign were "The favorite comics of the Rock Age."
 
They are, in fact, creators of what Stereo Review's critic Eric Salzman called "contemporary, relevant, multi-level non-linear theater - a kind of verbal electronic opera."  The quartet presents the work in the authentic voice of its author-improvisers of whom Rolling Stone said, "The very least they should get is an Academy Award."
 
Working for the first time on a simple stage with no props or costumes and utilizing only their unlimited character voices, Firesign is now able to give their classic scripts a brand-new performance. 
 
 The first act weaves together two favorites, "Waiting For The Electrician" and "Don't Crush That Dwarf" - existential tales of border-crossing, channel-switching and selling-out.  The second act allows the "Nick Danger" cast (Rocky, Bradshaw, Catherwood) to riff, improvise and spoof the ageless radio dick, Nick Danger, Third Eye. 
 
Also on the bill are Ben Bland's Movie Matinee, School Lunch Menus, Ralph Spoilsport, All-Star Crowley and Shakespeare's Lost Comedie, "Anythynge You Want To."  The Firesign's full-length iambic farce, in development for forty years, will get a cruelly shortened reading, in styles ranging from pure coarse acting to sincere imitations of ancient movie stars and starlets. 
 
Proctor, who appeared on Whidbey in George Tirebiter's "Radio Follies," has been recently heard as The Drunken Money in three "Dr. Doolittle" movies and as Harold in the "Rug Rats" films and TV shows.  He is currently on tour as Don Quixote with the L.A. Guitar Quartet.
 
Ossman recently directed the "Agatha Christie's The BBC Murders" at Tacoma's Theatre NorthWest with his wife Judith Walcutt.  The show made its debut at the 2009 International Mystery Writers Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky, and is preparing for national tour.
 
Bergman is creator of Los Angeles' Radio Club, a writing and performance workshop aimed at under-served kids.  He's is also a Castaneda-inspired voice coach and occasional comic monologist, now getting laughs with "2020 Vision."  Hear him on his own recently released Radio Free Oz (.com) internet commentary program.
 
Austin writes and develops his gardens at the South end of Puget Sound. A literary blogger, he'll have a book, "Long Stories and Short Stories," out in 2010.