Hit The Lights Premieres ISLA At New Ohio Theater

Hit the Lights! Theater Co. presents their original shadow puppet musical ISLA as a part of the New Ohio Theatre award-winning summer festival ICE FACTORY. In ISLA, three sisters' escape from their island and embark on a journey to redefine the meaning of home. Inspired by the family history of company member Samantha Blain, ISLA investigates the harsh realities of political refugees, the love of family, Cuban mythology, and the spirit of sisterhood. Mixing shadow puppetry, live-action, poetry, an original live score, and recorded audio interviews of the original sisters, ISLA blends magical realism and documentary theater to explore the experiences of being torn from one's home and the journey to create another.

HIT THE LIGHTS! THEATER CO. is an award-winning company created out of an artistic agreement to tell simple stories in unconventional ways. Hit the Lights! follows the motto 'Less Talk, More Rock.' This motto drives the creative process, culminating in work that is hyper-theatrical in nature: performers multitask onstage in real-time to create the technical, musical, and narrative components of a story simultaneously. Believing that motion, color, sound, and atmosphere are more evocative and experiential than spoken text, a heavy emphasis is placed on dialogue-less, action-oriented storytelling. Consequently, this allows the work to connect with audience members of varying theatrical experience, physical ability, cultural background, and age.

Past highlights include original works DUNGEON (Audience Pick of the Fringe at the Cincinnati Fringe and Editors Pick at the Minnesota Fringe), WHALES (nominated for three New York Innovative Theater Awards including Outstanding Innovative Design, Outstanding Original Music, and Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play, Artist Pick and Venue Award Minnesota Fringe), an original site-specific immersive theater experience in collaboration with the Know Theatre of Cincinnati THE OTHER RHINE, developing original shadow puppets for Vogue Magazine's March 2021 cover shoot featuring GIGI HADID, a live cinematic puppet adaptation of Gimlet Media's hit podcast The Habitat, a collaboration with New York Botanical Garden's Spooky Pumpkin Nights; a live music video for Grammy Award-nominated Sammy Miller and the Congregation, and being nominated for an Off-Broadway Alliance Award for "Best Family Show" for their theatrical adaptation of the book TASTE THE CLOUDS commissioned by New York City Children's Theater. HTL!'s Off-Broadway credits include performances at Little Island, APAC, Dixon Place, La MaMa ETC, New Victory Theater Lab Works, The Flea Theater, Franklin Stage Company, and Ars Nova in NYC where they were Company in Residence in 2018 and 2019.