FTF Works' HEROCYCLE Opens 6/21

FTF Works announced today the opening of Herocycle, conceived by Kym Longhi and Erik Hoover, directed by Kym Longhi with music composed by Sam Brooks and Kalen Keir. The production will open Friday, June 21 and run through Saturday, June 29, 2013 at Old Arizona Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

An epic aerial musical, Herocycle is set in the psyche of Evel Knievel as he prepares for his last jump-his passage from this world into the next. It is a suspended moment in which Evel Knievel remembers his life as a series of jumps set within the larger context of Joseph Campbell's monomyth. What happens when Evel Knievel crashes into Joseph Campbell? Does he disintegrate or does he survive the test as a hero? What is the real cost of following one's bliss? Herocycle seeks answers to these questions as it takes us on a death-defying journey across American pop culture.

The cast stars Beth Brooks, Sasha Gibbs, Erik Hoover and Jim Peitzman.

Director Kym Longhi stated, "Herocycle celebrates risk and failure - gloriously. It's about being alive, sometimes even painfully, and having the guts to make big mistakes in pursuit of that thing we call "our bliss." I am excited by the challenge of exploding the iconic image of Evel Knievel to release the essential life force embedded in his story. I want to bring the audience face to face with their personal hero myth, and to inspire them to risk the journey in their own lives."

America in the 1960's and 70's was a time of cultural upheaval and great national disappointment. Watergate and Vietnam catalyzed a new civic cynicism and America's collective imagination was bereft of heroes. Enter Evel Knievel, dressed in rEd White and blue, flying through the air and often landing in spectacular disarray only to rise again. In Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell posits that a hero will emerge because history demands it, and the hero's journey is a metaphor for individuals and cultures as a whole. Thus, Evel becomes a cipher for our own journey-so that for a few brief moments we get a different sense of the possible.

Herocycle originated in the Red Eye Theatre 2008 Works in Progress series, played to sold-out audiences during the 2008 Minnesota Fringe Festival, and returns to the stage this June for a limited engagement as an evening length production by FTF Works.

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